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10 years
Wow, time flies!
I started blogging back in February 2015, and here we are 10 years later—258 posts, thousands of visitors, and at my peak, 25,000 visitors a month.
Oh, and the cherry on top? I even got an MVP award for it.
How it all started
During my internship, I got into web hosting and domain names, and, of course, I wanted my own website, but then came the big question: what do you even do with a website?
Well… you start blogging. Over the years, I’ve jumped between a few different domains, but I’ve been settled on baswijdenes.com for a while now.
But hey, I’ve told you about that already in February 2022.
What I blog about
My blog has always been about the things I run into daily at work.
What those things are has changed a lot over the years.
I started as a helpdesk engineer, and now I’m a DevOps engineer.
But what does that even mean? (Still figuring that out myself. 😆)
Lessons from 10 years of blogging
You learn a lot after a decade of creating blog posts in an IT area.
One thing is for sure:
People behind a keyboard always seem to know better.
The internet is full of opinions, but only a handful of people actually give helpful feedback.
So, if you’re wondering whether you should start blogging or join a community, my advice? Just do it.
At the end of the day, it’s your blog, your opinion, and your space. And guess what? Making mistakes is part of the process.
So, you got an MVP award just for blogging?
Yep, mostly. I like blogging, but public speaking? Not my thing—and I’m totally fine with that.
Of course, I do other things too:
- List of Microsoft Graph API Endpoints
- The Optimized.Mga module
- …a fairly new project that I hope to share soon!
And even more than that, of course!
Will I get the MVP award again this year?
Honestly? I don’t know.
Life happens, priorities shift, and sometimes your time just needs to go elsewhere.
Blogging in the age of AI: is it still worth it?
AI has taken over the world in the last two years, and honestly, my way of working has completely changed because of it.
Where I used to Google error messages and dig through Stack Overflow for answers, now I just throw the error into an AI prompt first and see what comes out.
Saves time, and most of the time, it works.
But AI isn’t just for troubleshooting
- Need a PowerShell script that does this or that? Just type it in, get a base script, and tweak it from there.
- Need to revert an if else statement to a switch? AI will do that for you.
- Need to create a Get-, Update- or Delete- PowerShell function? After the first one, AI will create the rest for you.
So, does that mean blogging is becoming less relevant?
Yeah… I won’t sugarcoat it.
AI pulls a lot of its answers straight from tutorials and IT blogs—including mine.
When I was working a lot with Microsoft Graph API, OpenAI kept referencing the ListOfMicrosoftGraphEndpoints repository on GitHub. It’s kind of surreal.
WhoAmI
If you ask OpenAI who Bas Wijdenes is, it actually gives you a decent answer:
Bas Wijdenes is an IT professional and blogger known for sharing solutions and troubleshooting guides related to Microsoft technologies, automation, scripting (primarily PowerShell), and cloud services. His blog, baswijdenes.com, features a variety of technical articles that help IT admins and developers solve everyday issues. He has also been recognized as a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for his contributions to the tech community.
Are you looking for something specific about him or his work?
Even crazier, if you ask it to write a blog post in my style—with a problem, explanation, and solution—it comes close to how I write.
So yeah, blogging is getting harder, and I do see my visitor numbers dropping. Should I stop? Not yet because I enjoy it.
Blogging has always been something I do for myself first, and that hasn’t changed.
I’ve always used tools to improve my writing—Google Translate back in the day, spellcheckers, formatting tools.
AI is just the next step. Instead of fighting it, why not use it to my advantage?
Made with: OpenAI
