COVID-19

Wow, that escalated fast. In the space of just a few weeks:

• The MVP Summit trip to Seattle and Redmond was cancelled (and replaced with a virtual conference).
• My daughter’s school long anticipated school trip to Spain has been cancelled/deferred.
• Massive government interventions.
• People are dying.
• Many people (particularly those in service industries) are (or soon will be) doing it really tough.
• Our family is increasing our social distance as much as possible.
• I’m planning to run the next few months of ADNUG as online virtual meetings.
• I’m now working from home for the forseeable future. I appreciate that my job allows me to do that - not everyone has that option.

To avoid being cooped up in the house the entire day, the last couple of mornings before starting work I’ve gone for a short walk around the neighbourhood with my other daughter. It emulates my walk to the bus stop. Hopefully we can make it a regular thing.

Apparently my legs are a bit longer than hers, so a short break on a seat in the park along the way is required :-)

This is going to be a very disruptive time. Things aren’t too bad (yet) where I live, but the stories from overseas are quite scary. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

March update

January and February have come and gone, and March is now well underway. Autumn seems to have definitely hit Adelaide, though I wonder if there might still be some warmer weather around before Winter arrives? Time will tell.

Out of the ordinary

• This year was the first in a long time that we didn’t take part in the Tour Down Under community ride. The route wasn’t particularly inspiring this year, so we gave it a miss. Hopefully 2021 will be better and the Gardiner boys will be back in lycra, raring to go!
• I was all booked to fly over to Seattle/Redmond to attend Microsoft’s annual MVP Summit, but it was announced this week that it has been cancelled, and an online/virtual event will be run in its place. Thank Coronavirus for making this one of many large events that have been impacted. So, I’m staying in Adelaide instead of cramming myself into an international economy seat for 24 hours (plus the return flight home). As I said on Twitter, it is disappointing but I think Microsoft made the right call considering the circumstances.

Also interesting to read about Microsoft asking their Redmond-based employees to work from home (if possible) for the rest of March.

ADNUG

The Adelaide .NET User Group is back for 2020. There’s been huge interest in next week’s meeting, which is great to see. I’m hoping to fill out the speaker schedule for the next few months. Do get in touch if you’d like to present to the group (and that can be in-person, or remote via Skype/Teams).

If I have one wish for the group, it’s that I could find someone(s) to share the organising with. It would be good to have some load balancing (or at least a fail-over cluster!) Related to that, we’ve actually launched the ADNUG 2020 Member Survey. Please share your thoughts (and be in the running for a $100 book voucher).

I must say it’s been really great to have Simon and Kristine from Encode Management on-board as both sponsors and supporters - and I know they’re also working with other meetups in Adelaide too. It would be easy (and I think it has happened in the past) that sponsors just give some money, or might just pop their head in, but the folks from Encode are regular attendees and are often one of the last to leave after helping pack up. That sincerity and encouragement count for a lot in my book. And speaking of books, it’s Encode that are putting up the aforementioned book voucher. Awesome!

DDD Adelaide 2020

I caught up with Andrew this week to kick of planning for DDD Adelaide 2020, with our traditional ‘DDDumplings’ lunch meeting. We should really get Dumpling King on board as a major sponsor :-)

Welcome to 2020

Christmas has come and gone, and now it’s 2020. If there’s one thing that’s been a constant over this Summer period, it’s that it feels like we’re under seige from bushfires.

Here’s a view not that far from where I live. That’s a smoke haze (not really thick, but noticeable ), from fires on Kangaroo Island around 200km south. There’s been other fires around South Australia in the Adelaide Hills and over on York Peninsula. And then interstate there’s fires all over the place - basically all around Australia. A good drop of rain would not go astray.

I’ve been enjoying some time off - catching up with family, the odd bike ride or two, a few jobs around the house and just trying to switch off for a bit.

More to come…