I remember it well… It was a sunny day in June 2006. A few days earlier Paul and I talked about DirTeam and his blog. I told him I was interested and that day I got a message stating my username and password. That day marked the beginning of this blog!

Now a year later I write this post.

Looking back

Since June 2006 I've been writing down stuff I thought would be worth mentioning about Active Directory, Windows Server,  enterprise systems management and Microsoft Exchange Server.

English

I live in the Netherlands and I am not a native English speaker, so for me it wasn't very obvious I would spend a couple of hours each month updating this little English-speaking corner of webspace. There were times I got lost for words and there were times I searched long for English proverbs matching Dutch ones. Avoiding Dunglish at times seemed the hardest. One might suspect spelling to be hard, but good blogging tools, like Microsoft's Live Writer (still beta) helped me a lot in that area. (If you want to you can now fill up the comments section of this post with all the errors I've made in all my posts)

Writer's block

I also experienced writers block, or more appropriate "bloggers block" from time to time. These tips helped me cope with it most of the time. After a couple of episodes I realized it had nothing to do with Microsoft or technology, because there's always something interesting to write. (I still have a couple of drafts I can try to turn into little gems for my blog) I realized work can just get me out of energy sometimes, but I guess that's the price I pay for doing the stuff I love to do.

Posts

I also realize a couple of things when I scroll through my list of posts. Some posts were barely read at all, other posts raised a lot of traffic. While some posts resulted in a lot of comments it seems other posts didn't make you register on this website to add a comment.

Since I started analyzing visits to my blog using ClustrMaps in October 2006 I came to some interesting conclusions. I noticed there were persons reading my blog from all over the world! From the northern parts of Norway to the island of Tasmania. From well developed areas like Seattle to the Southern regions of Iraq.

Another thing I noticed were the number of hits. Looking at the numbers per week day I don't seem to be successful in luring people here on Tuesdays. (Sorry if you're reading this on a Tuesday, you're obviously an exception) Looking at the grand total of visits I surpassed the magic 5000 hits and I saw my hits increase from 10-30 hits per day to 50-150 per day.

Looking forward

I am about to start my second year of blogging. I intend to keep the same interval which means you can expect me to write a blogpost roughly every week.

Topics

Windows Server 2008 and Active Directory will still remain my focal points. I think Active Directory is 'the big enabler' that makes the lives of system administrators easier and places the goals of companies within their reach. Windows Server 2008 is likely to become Microsoft's Server Flagship during the upcoming year and the Release Candidates might still have some tricks up their sleeves. Since Server Core helped me become No1 Speaker Talent this week it will remain something to work with. (and subsequently blog about)

I guess there will be more than enough other stuff to write about. Powershell, BitLocker, Network Access Protection and IIS 7 are topics I'm looking into or plan on looking into. I also strongly believe in the added value of Data Protection Manager, the System Center family, Office Communication Server, ISA Server 2008, Windows Mobile and Sharepoint. Hardware like the Office Roundtable and the devices codenamed "Tanjay" worked their magic on my last time I got to play with them and I didn't even have time to update my Media Center machine to Windows Vista! Don't be surprised if I start blogging about these topics as well.

Concluding

Just one year of blogging is better than a lifetime in the dark.

Thanks for making the past year an unbelievable experience!