2013 has been an amazing year and all any of us could hope for is that each year is better than the last. This has certainly been the case for the year of 2013. This post is number 698 for the year that you got for free. I’m proud to be one of the largest independent technology blogs in Australia and love to mix it with the big guys. This year will be the biggest traffic the site has ever received and that’s all thanks to you guys. The readers of techAU not only enjoy the content, but continually share it socially and pass it on to friends and family and for that I can’t thank you enough.
The highlights for me this year has to be the trip to Computex in Taipei, Taiwan where Ford announced AppLink 2.0. Being at one of the biggest trade shows in the world was great but one of my best memories was participating in a live streamed panel on the future of the automotive industry. Another is certainly Microsoft’s BUILD conference in San Francisco where as a journalist and developer, I was in heaven and I hope you agree was able to intelligently discuss the content. Of course there was some side benefits to the trip like seeing Steve Ballmer in one of his last keynote speeches, as well as spending time with Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurott and Ed Bott, journalists that I look up to and inspire me to work harder. The trip to Build was an adventurous one and due to a complication in flights meant I had an 8 hour stopover in Hawaii, naturally I headed to Waikiki beach.
Another amazing moment I’ll remember for the rest of my life was the opportunity to pull 8G in an aerobatics plane over the Gold Coast. Thanks to the Office 365 team, I said yes instantly and bloody glad I did. As a motorsport fan, my work with the Office 365 team also meant I was able to attend the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix and visit the garage of Raikkonen and Grosjean where Team Lotus leveraged the power of Office 365 to manage their race data and logistics. That same weekend I won brother of the year award when Team Vodafone also invited me and allowed me to take my brother into their garage a truly amazing experience. This weekend turned out to be the last time Mark Webber raced an F1 car in Australia.
My love for motorsport and technology certainly came together in a big way as I found myself in Tasmania for the V8 Supercar round where I got the opportunity to do a grid walk. Thanks to a tweet to V8Supercars I also did the grid walk at Winton and more recently also attended the Sydney round, so after seeing the V8s 4 times this year, I’m a happy man. As cartech emerges as one of the fastest categories of technology, I also ended up in Adelaide for the Kuga review which is now quoted in the dealer manual, this was one of the biggest posts of the year. To round out the motorsport theme I recently attended the launch of the Ford Mustang in Sydney and being part of an international launch was certainly something new.
While the paragraphs above may seem like a not so humble brag, really what its about is the fact that you guys constantly read and interact with my content. With a large, growing audience, techAU is getting noticed by more businesses and that allows for even more exclusives and early access.
I can thank my contacts on Twitter enough, they are the lifeblood of the site and my content. I follow some of the most amazing people in the industry who are always fast to breaking news. I always try and reply to every tweet but if I missed you, I apologize, with almost 8,000 followers now, I can’t imagine a life without twitter. It’s phenomenally helpful whenever I have a question I can ask and always get responses regardless of the problem.
So with all that I say thankyou and I’ll see you for a bigger and better 2014!! Happy New Year!!
Credit to @pdwnews for the original image.
