2009 coming to an end - Welcome 2010
2010 is just a couple of days away, I thought I’d do a recap of 2009 and what has happened in my little world. :)
Back in August 2008 Balder was at a proof of concept stage and I had close to abandoned the project, I had so many things I wanted to do which resulted in not doing anything. Along came a couple of emails from Clinton Rocksmith who found the project interesting and wanted to know how he could contribute. I was really surprised, I never imagined anyone actually looking at the project. Timing was a bit off, I had just signed a contract with a new company and never got around to prioritize Balder, other projects always came in the way. Again, a couple of months later the project was at a stand still and I was getting again to a point of almost abandoning it completely. In the beginning of 2009 though, I got contacted by Gastón Hillar who also found the project interesting and wanted to include a couple of samples in his upcoming book. This spun me completely of my axis. I worked closely with Gastón in providing him the best possible solution and bring Balder to a new level. For me this was a true turning point for Balder and I quickly decided to put all other projects on a complete halt and focus my energy on Balder. The result was that we managed to get Balder to an API level that felt a lot better, performance was increased with several hundred percent and the codebase quality was increased dramatically with retrofitting unit tests for critical parts.
The project was all of a sudden going somewhere, it was time to look for other developers to join in. A good friend of mine; Petri Wilhelmsen joined the project and has contributed a bit and will commit more time next year to the project. Another friend of mine; Raymond Holmboe has been contributing some on and off since I started the project back in the days and will be committing more time next year as well to the project.
The ultimate result from all of this is that there has been quite a few commercial interests in the project, everything from companies wanting to buy the project as a whole to companies wanting to utilize it professionally. This is something I can disclose more information on later next year. One thing is certain though, Balder will stay open source and free to use.
Also this year, I was suggested as a Silverlight MVP and was eventually moved from Xna to Silverlight. Thanks to Justin Angel for recognizing me and suggesting the move, its a true honor.
Although I had a very nice job at Objectware, the distance of 125 KM to work one way was to big. Even though I didn’t commute everyday, it got to be a strain on my family when I had to go early in the morning and wasn’t back till late and most nights after the kids had gone to bed. So I started sniffing the market to see if there was opportunities closer to home. I ended up at a company called Bouvet, and don’t regret my decision. Bouvet has in my opinion the right focus for consultants, and it just feels right. Happy to be onboard.
Professionally I’ve had the opportunity to work full time on a Enterprise Silverlight project, I’ve worked on two Microsoft Surface projects, some WPF projects and finally ended up spending the last 3-4 months of the year working on an ASP.net MVC project with some Silverlight content.
Its also been a very busy year when it comes to speaking engagements, I’ve been part of Microsoft Norways MSDN Live tour, been speaking at NNUG a couple of times, Game Camp, did a Silverlight course.
2009 has truly been an exciting year, busy, but very exciting. With the release of Silverlight 3 this summer and the beta version of Silverlight 4, I’m at a point were I really can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning and just find the keyboard and start hacking away. It has never been more fun to be a developer, a lot is happening these days, not only in the Microsoft arena, but in general. I can’t wait to see what 2010 brings.
Happy new year everyone, looking forward to participate next year. Thanks to everyone who has made 2009 so much fun and exciting, especially I’d like to thank my wife and kids, who has really been patient with me and supported me along the way.