2012 was a busy year for me.

I did well at my day job as a consultant for Sogeti. At the beginning of 2012 I was promoted to Senior Manager consultant. Of course, that title means nothing to you, but there are only a few of us in Michigan, so we are basically responsible for leadership in the unit. I think my biggest accomplishment in this role was to improve our counselor program, encouraging senior consultants to serve as mentors to more junior consultants.

I also completed a number of successful projects for a string of Sogeti customers. Along the way, I learned more about Windows Azure, SQL Server Reporting Services, Identity Management, and cascading style sheets.

I continued my active role in the developer community.

Although I didn't seek re-election as an officer of The Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG), I remain involved in the group and focused much of my time on recruiting speakers. Seth Juarez, Sarah Dutkiewicz, Phil Japikse, Kathleen Dollard, Steve Smith, Gael Fraiteur, Mike Wood, Randy Pagels, Jason Follas, Jimmy Bogard, and Ted Neward all spoke at GANG during 2012 - an impressive list by any measure. As a bonus, we held an extra meeting in October at which Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin interviewed Jeff Wilcox for an episode of The Tablet Show, which you can hear at http://thetabletshow.com/?ShowNum=55.

Early in the year, I organized the first Detroit Day of Azure, an event that featured 14 outstanding speakers from 7 different states. The conference sold out and the feedback was positive. You can watch many of the presentations at http://detroitdayofazure.com/.

I continued to do a lot of public speaking in 2012, delivering about 30 public presentations during the year. I spoke at 15 conferences, 6 user group meetings, and a couple companies during the year. The most challenging event was the Tampa Code Camp, where I delivered 5(!) different presentations in a single day. The high point of my 2012 speaking came at Tech Ed North America, where I won the Speaker Idol competition. As a result of winning this contest, I was invited to speak at the 2013 Tech Ed conference in New Orleans this June. I was able to attend a lot of conferences in 2012 thanks to the Support of Telerik. As a member of the Telerik Insiders program, they sponsor my travel and I help to promote their products and company at the events where I speak.

I taught an Azure Kick Start for Microsoft in March.

At the beginning of the year, I accepted an invitation to join the INETA Board of Directors and in March, I was elected INETA Treasurer. INETA is an organization that supports .NET User Groups around the world. My primary role is promoting the Champions program, which recognizes people who contribute their time to help the developer community.

At the end of the year, I volunteered to help Dave McKinnon organize 1DevDay Detroit, an ambitious conference held at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit. We sold 600 tickets to this event and I was honored when Dave asked me to serve as Master of Ceremonies.

I continued producing episodes of Technology and Friends and I think the show has improved with time. I'm proud to say I was able to publish at least one episode every week of 2012. Hopefully, I can keep this streak alive during 2013. As of the end of 2012, I had release 246 episodes.

In November, I won the first annual Compiler Award, which was created by the current GANG officers. They presented me with an engraved trophy and I was surprised and grateful to receive it.

I had a lot of success this past year, but I also received a lot of help. The user group volunteers kept GANG going strong and many of them helped run the Day of Azure. When I whined on Twitter that I was stressed about teaching the Azurei Kick Start, Dennis Burton volunteered to teach two of the modules – a huge relief for me. I facilitated an Azure “Birds of a Feather” session at Tech Ed and I was fortunate to have experienced Azure developer Mihai Tataran to co-present and answer all the hard questions. When running the INETA Champs program, I enlisted the help of Dave Noderer and Mark Rosenbert, who are connected to the developer community outside my local region. It’s largely because of the help I receive that I’ve been so willing to give my time to others.

As I look back on 2012, I'm proud of the things that I accomplished, but I realize that I focused a disproportionate amount of my time on work.

There were reasons for this: My two sons are getting older (18 and 21) and have become independent and I have no intention of stifling that independence; also a long-term romantic relationship ended suddenly and unexpectedly (for me, anyway) at the end of 2011.

I did spend many weekends this past spring and summer traveling the country with my son and his basketball team. The summer season ended at a tournament in Las Vegas, NV.

Both my sons are preparing to graduate in the next few months – one from high school and one from college. Tim has been accepted to 4 different colleges, but has not yet decided on his destination. Nick will complete a business degree this summer and plans to launch a career coaching college basketball. He is currently the Freshman basketball coach at Okemos High School.

Bu my time commitments were different this year than they have been the past few years, so I put my time and energy toward achieving my goals and I tried to accomplish as much as I could.

In 2013, I plan to have a bit more balance in my life. And a bit more sleep.