General

So 2025 is done. It was both an interesting and a challenging year for me. I’m so glad for all you who have been reading my blog and hope you’ll continue into the future.

What Will Matter Most for Data Professionals in 2026?

As a new year begins, it’s a good time to pause and look ahead — not with hype or predictions, but with a practical view of what will genuinely matter for data professionals in 2026. Across consulting projects, training course development, and hands-on work with SQL Server, Microsoft Fabric, and modern data platforms, several patterns have emerged that are shaping how teams build and operate data solutions.

2026-01-01

2025 has been a busy and challenging year for me. I want to thank all of you who have been reading my blog. Every week, there are more views than before. I’m pleased to see that, even when I’ve been posting daily.

Whatever your belief system, Christmas is a moment of pause for many of us, but it’s also a reminder of how much data shapes the world around us — even in the stories we grew up with.

2025-12-25

Recently, I read a news report about a study that concluded that cybersecurity training doesn’t work. I can’t say that I’m surprised by that.

I spend a lot of time mentoring on client sites, and many of the clients are large organizations. Often these organizations require me to attend “training” on a regular basis, to satisfy their corporate compliance goals.

I don’t mind doing this at all, even though it’s incredibly repetitive. The course on conflicts of interest, or handling private or sensitive data, or IT security at company A is invariably almost word for word the equivalent course that I do at company B, and company C.

2025-12-04

I receive a lot of email. Most of it is relevant to me, or at least was at some point.

Dodgy brokers

That’s not the case for all my email though. A while back, I started receiving lots of email offering me things as a recruiter. But I’m not a recruiter. However, dodgy companies have included me in a list of recruiters for some reason, and then rent out access to the list to other companies in some way.

2025-11-21

I’ve heard people lately discussing the Save icon and how it’s not relevant now. The Save icons that are a picture of a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk are basically meaningless today.

I did have to laugh when I heard a kid who saw a 3 1/2 inch floppy for the first time comment that someone had made “a physical save icon”. I suppose that’s how it seemed to him.

2025-11-16

I posted yesterday about how a small company can grow by being hired by a large company. But there’s another key opportunity that’s often even bigger.

Smaller companies often find a gap in the offerings of larger companies, and are able to create their own offerings to fill the gap.

Gaps are everywhere

I’ve worked with data for a very long time. And over that time, I’ve seen countless small companies and startups created. So many times, what propels them forward is finding a gap in a popular offering from a large company, and quickly filling that gap with their own offering.

2025-11-13

One of the best ways to grow a small business is to find something a large business needs, yet for some reason, they can’t or won’t do themselves.

This happens for many reasons:

Specialized Expertise

Small companies often have deep niche skills that the large company either doesn’t have or can’t easily build internally (e.g., a boutique AI consultancy, a specialist in SQL Server performance tuning).

These small firms might work across many clients, so they’re exposed to the latest best practices and pitfalls the big company hasn’t yet encountered. Large companies often also have marketing-driven outcomes rather than just technically-driven ones.

2025-11-12

I was reading a Facebook post the other day, and it was talking about the sad tale of Keith Sapsford. Keith fell to his death from within the landing gear area of a DC-8 that was leaving Sydney, bound for Tokyo.

What was fascinating was that his fall was inadvertently captured by an amateur photographer named John Gilpin.

But why this fascinated me now, is that when I read all the comments about the post, the vast majority of the comments were saying that the photo was fake, that it was AI generated, and that this could not possibly have happened.

2025-11-03

I get a large volume of email every day. Part of that is always quite a lot of spam.

Now I don’t begrudge someone trying to make a living, and I understand that sometimes, they’re going to send me something unexpected.

But there are a few trends that annoy me.

The incorrectly targeted email

There’s a company out there selling access to email lists that has my company listed as a recruitment company. We’re not. I won’t shame this company by naming them, at least not today.

2025-07-25

One of the things many people don’t know about me, is that I spent many years both playing and umpiring baseball. Clearly that’s not so common for Australians.

In many ways, the umpiring was probably the most interesting. I’ve umpired up to state level games, including the Pan Pacific games. It certainly teaches you how to deal with strong views effectively.

Most people have seen the classic images of managers/coaches racing out to have a very heated discussion with an umpire. I’ve had so many people asking me how I dealt with that when I was umpiring.

2025-07-09