I like to do a little end of year review here to reflect on how things have gone throughout the year, and consider what the future will bring.

2017 has certainly been a busy year for me outside of this blog, which is shown by the changes in the numbers that I look at each year:

  • 100 new blog posts (compared to 135 in 2016). That’s still a lot, but the decrease is fairly simple to explain. I’ve had more non-blog work that has taken up my writing time. The posts I have written have often been longer, and more in-depth, requiring more time to write. And I also think it’s partly due to the way in which the Office 365 ecosystem is rapidly changing, but in chaotic way that is challenging to track. I often find myself pondering the best time to write about a new feature or a significant change. Should I write about it when it’s announced, when it hits preview, or when it hits general availability? Those can all be months apart, and sometimes I am struck by geographic disadvantages, with new features arriving in my own tenants much later than other parts of the world. Simply put, I think sometimes by the time a change reaches me, my attention has been drawn elsewhere.
  • There were 2894 new comments posted. That’s about 1/3rd fewer than last year, which neatly correlates with the decrease in my publishing of new blog posts.
  • My contact form was used for 1282 new submissions. That is, thankfully, a big drop from 2016 when I was quite overwhelmed by the incoming requests, and often could not respond to them. Most of the drop is attributable to work I’ve put in adding information to the contact page to answer the most frequent questions before you submit the form.

During the year I co-authored the update to Office 365 for IT Pros, which is now in its 4th edition.

I also published two new courses with Pluralsight:

Normally I include a list of the top 10 most visited posts on the blog for the year. However, that often includes posts written 2-3 years ago, which remain popular for a long time. Instead, I have dug a little deeper and looked for posts that I wrote in 2017 that I think were the most important, even if they weren’t necessarily the most popular. Here they are.

As always, I will be taking a few weeks of vacation with my family to relax and enjoy the best part of our summer. Thank you for all your support again this past year, I couldn’t do this without you.  Have a safe and happy new year, don’t work too hard, and I’ll see you again in 2018.

About the Author

Paul Cunningham

Paul is a former Microsoft MVP for Office Apps and Services. He works as a consultant, writer, and trainer specializing in Office 365 and Exchange Server. Paul no longer writes for Practical365.com.

Comments

  1. Adrian

    Thanks Paul

    Love the work you put into the site. You’ve earned the break

  2. Peter

    Keep up the good work – Cheers

  3. Irshad Ahmed

    Thanks for all the great articles. Happy New Year.. 🙂

  4. Rkast

    Thanks for all the great articles and big prop for always responding on comments!

  5. Michael Donovan

    Point number 1 is pretty easy to respond to. Giving us an inside track (assuming you have one), analysis or opinions is are always welcome at announcement time. Ongoing comments or GA are also help as well. I know that easier said. But this info is so timely. Blink and its so yesterday.

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Its a blurry line between inside track and what’s publicly announced. We’ll see how it goes. Just one more challenge to deal with I guess.

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