It’s the last day of 2021. Do you know where your year went?
Blogging grew in popularity during 2002 and 2003. I wanted to investigate it, but I had begun the work of starting a new magazine in February 2003 and didn’t have time. In December 2003 I began playing around with Dave Winer’s Radio Weblogs application, set up a Website, and started writing. Eighteen years and 2,700 posts later, this has grown to where even this specialized site attracts more than 150,000 page views per month.
I don’t encourage New Year’s Resolutions. They don’t work. Full stop. However, that doesn’t mean that you should not pause at the end of the year to reflect on what good you did this past year and where you grew personally, professionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Then, you can use that pause to reflect on where in your life you can do good next year, where you can grow personally, professionally, intellectually, and spiritually in 2022. We can choose to live better next year. And we can choose to make our piece of the world a little better.
Reflections on 2021:
- IoT has been incorporated as part of edge-to-cloud architecture rather than being its own thing;
- Connections are more important than ever;
- Open source and interoperability have grown;
- Consolidation of the automation and controls market continued with the rankings of companies essentially stagnant except for acquisitions;
- Large IT companies have invaded the industrial software market in a significant way;
- Gatherings began a comeback–I attended trade shows in Chicago and traveled to Automation Fair in Houston and IMC2021 in Marco Island at the end of the year.
For 2022, I hope to see many of you in person at a few events. Meanwhile, be kind to yourself and others.
