Thought I’d jot down some of the things that went down for me in the year that was 2008.

But before I do that, I thought I’d summarise – simply, this year was full of amazing people. I feel so privileged every day that I get to meet and hang out with cool, smart and inspiring people.

To everyone who had an influence in me becoming a better person this year, thank you! Most of you know who you are (you’re probably referenced in the post somewhere) and some of you are just so awesome that you have no idea of your impact.

This year was also full of travelling and speaking. I think I developed more as a public speaker this year more than any other.

Just for fun, I compiled a Wordle of all of the keywords from the feedback given at all of my talks this year.

And now the gory details of my year:

• My blog continued to take a major turn. It’s nowhere near as insightful as it was (or at least as I thought it was). It’s hard to be a critic/analyst when you work on the coalface of one of the most criticised companies in the world. One day I will figure out the balance if there is one to be had.
• I picked up my Canon TX1 this year and DG.TV was born. There is something to be said for having a 720p camera by your side wherever you go.
• Shane and I did Artists in Residence in March. It was a great experience for both of us and lead to …
• Ran Australia’s first (first globally outside of corp?) Artists in Residence. It was great fun and we were totally stoked with the outcome.
• Attended MIX 08 in Las Vegas and met truckloads of awesome people.
• Ran REMIX08 locally. It was one of the highlights of my year as much of my work came to fruition at the keynote.
• One of my favorite comics, George Carlin, passed :-(
• Presented both a session and part of the keynote at the Australian Partner Conference. Got to hang with the v/cool Christian Longstaff.
• Spoke at Student Day at Tech.Ed. It’s always a highlight to talk to students.
• Ran Ask the Experts at this years Tech.Ed. Not an experience I think I’ll repeat. ATE is a tough gig!
• Keynoted and did a session at Web on the Piste in the beautiful Queenstown. Got to hang with cool people.
• Microsoft Australia FY09 company Kickoff. I was recognised several times beyond my expectations. Like, I mean, a lot of recognition!
• Hung out at Web Directions South. Brought out and got to hang out with the very very cool August de los Reyes.
• Got some ink in The Australian.
• Spoke at the sold out AIMIA Future of Digital, Predications for 2009 event.
• The blog got hijacked. Once again a big FUCK YOU to registerfly.
• Shed myself of my old studio lights and went strobist baby!
• Went around the country on the Innovation Days roadshow. Talked IE8 and Silverlight 2 to Microsoft Partners and ISVs. Got to bond with Christian, Phil, Dave and Andy.
• Had the privilege of going to PDC in LA. Hung out with the awesome Dave Lemphers and Frank Arrigo while I was there.
• While at PDC, I gave Chris Auld his arm wrestle rematch and gave Adam Cogan an asswhoppin’ while I was at it.
• I grew a mega-sized beard (coincidentally in (mo)vember). I reckon I subconsciously did it to buck the system.
• Andrew Coates and I tried our hand at some Theatre Sports. We didn’t do too badly but could’ve done much better. It did make us both want to do it again (and take some lessons). As it turns out, Improv ain’t all Improv :-)
• Went White Water Rafting with Georgey and the Family.
• The Microsoft Surface lived at my cubicle for a while. Made me popular for a while. It also got stepped on a few times.
• It was the year of (the Australian) George as the year ended with his departure back to Lebanon. You will be missed cousin.
• Went through a QR code phase.
• I cut down on the twitter usage.
• The eeePC entered my world. Love that little guy.
• Bought a push bike.
• Went on a Quad-biking adventure for my birthday.
• While in Las Vegas for MIX08, watched the amazing Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil show and stayed in the unbelievable Venetian.
• Spent the earlier months of the year encoding our childhood videos.
• Shitloads of personal stuff also happened this year.

Professionally, 2009 looks like it’s going to be a big year. Things will change at work with new leadership and the sad departure of, IMHO, one of the last managers who “gets it”. We’ll find out this time next year I guess.

Thanks for being a part for 2008, and I look forward to an even more exciting 2009!

-mk

Another great game, Launch Ball. Can you tell what I’ve been doing all weekend?

-dg

Check out Auditorium, it’s one of the most innovative and creative games that I’ve seen in a long time.

Thanks Lisa for sending this my way.

-dg

While at PDC 2008 I hung out with the very missed Dave Lemphers. We nerded out about .NET Services for Azure.

-dg

Shane and I ran our first Artists in Residence last week.

I won’t do a play by play as Soul Solutions and Jordan Knight have done a great job of blogging their experiences.

I will say that Artists in Residence did live up to our expectations. We had a ball of a time and were very impressed with the quality, calibre and dedication our our attendees.

It proved to us that is innovative workshop style of learning with tangible outcomes is truly unique and totally more effective than the traditional classroom training style. Our attendees seemed to agree too.

To recap, Artists in Residence is a 5 day workshop where paired teams (1 designer and 1 developer) get together for 1 day of formal Silverlight training followed by 4 days designing and building an app of their choice with professional mentorship all the way through.

Thank you to all of the attendees you guys made this event a success. A special shout out also goes to Jordan Knight who came along the journey with us and adapted all of the way through, dude, you rocked.

-dg

For those in Melbourne, be sure to attend the Melbourne Silverlight Developer and Designer Network on Thursday 27 November.

The inaugural meeting will have two speakers:

Shane Morris: Shane will be, well, Shane. Not sure what he plans to open with but I’m sure he will provide insight into the goings on in land Silverlight.

The Awesome Jonas Follesø: I’m getting quite sick of this guy showing up all over the place and disseminating awesome wherever he goes. Jonas will be doing a PDC debrief and, as always, he will rock.

They’re also giving away an full MSDN subscription to one lucky punter.

So, mosey on over to the SDDN site and register if you want to attend.

-dg

I was playing around in VirtualEarth 3D tonight and found something very cool – CLOUDS!

Check it out.

I think they are based on actual weather data too. Pretty cool me reckons.

-dg

While at PDC Andrew and I found this tres cool Surface app.

-dg

Tim and Karsten are the brain parents of Ooomph.

Oomph you quizzically inquire? Oomph is defined as …

A Microformats Toolkit is for web developers, designers and users, making it easier to create, consume, and style Microformats. In short, Oomph makes consuming and producing content for the web just a little easier, more efficient, more fun.

You should definitely go and give Ooomph a go as it’s a great implementation of Microformats consumption. And to top it off, it’s written on top of the tres cool jQuery.

Ohh, and in case you didn’t know, Tim and Karsten are also the creators of the famous Flotzam.

-dg