5 Years to my Columnstore Series

5 years ago, on 5th of July 2013, I have started a new off-time project, something that I have had no idea where would take me professionally. I have started writing a blog post about something that is called Columnstore Indexes. I was very much excited about them and was playing with them regularly since I have had a chance, a couple of years earlier, but I had no idea where it would take me. I saw them still very much raw and unfinished (and I still so much stuff that needs to be improved), but the person who definitely pushed me with the conversation into the right direction was Igor Stanko during the very last European TechEd 2013 in Madrid. I remember telling him that I was looking to write about them a post or maybe two …
The result was something very mediocre by my current standards – Columnstore Indexes – part 1 (“Intro”), but it gave me a start with some ideas of what I could write on next. And so I wrote more … and more … and more, eventually asking my family to give me a weekend to write more – I remember saying to my wife “I can’t explain why or what for, but I feel and I know that it will become important”. On Sunday evening I have had 8 blogpost finished and published. Very small and very primitive blog posts, but they gave me a start. I started using my free time away from the regular hobbies and this whole thing become quite a passionate hobby, if you know what I mean :)
At that time I was an occasional blogger with some higher periods of activity, but overall I would let some months without writing – just take a look that before that posts, the last posts was published on 31st of December 2012, meaning that I had nothing published in over 6 previous months!

5 years later, with 124 finished blogposts, over 30 still in works, this means that roughly every 2 weeks I have published a new blogpost, with almost 3 years of CISL helping people to understand and optimise Columnstore Indexes, a good number of presentations (in person & online), workshops (including the very first Columnstore Workshop one at the PASS Summit 2017) and countless discussions… :)

During this time I have had high times and low times and some incredible people, such as Igor Stanko, Mark Souza, Sunil Agarwal, Vasillis Papadimos, Gjorgji Gjeorgjievski, Kevin Farlee and Joe Sack were and are my guiding lights on the way of Columnstore Indexes Discovery & Optimisations.

Consider visiting the location that joins almost all of the Columnstore stuff!

Oh, and by the way – watch out this space for some new stuff in the next weeks & days!

;)

Yeah! ;)