2022 went fast. This is the 4th year I have written this article but honestly? It feels like I wrote the last one yesterday. And here we are at the other side of the pandemic; in what still feels like turbulent times. In 2022 we've seen the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, it's terrible impact on millions of lives as well as its subsequent impact on the global economy. We've seen the growing political tension between China and the West. Natural disasters like the flood in Pakistan or more evidence of climate change - record breaking heatwaves and widespread wildfires such as the ones in Portugal or Spain over the summer. The overturning of abortion rights in Texas. Musk and Twitter. Iran. Afghanistan. It's easy to get caught up in the doom and gloom of it all. And occasionally we need to be reminded of the good things. In 2022 we are closer to fusion power than ever before. We have more people working in hybrid than ever before. As this nice article in Wired illustrates, there are numerous examples which don't always seem to grab so many headlines: in the US renewables generated more energy than nuclear and coal for the first time. There has been progress on the treatment of Alzheimer's. The successful test of the DART program to protect our planet against impact events. For people who worry about climate change, Scientific American reported that the global growth in renewables alone is estimated to have likely avoided 600 million tons in additional CO2 emissions, or slightly less than the 646 million tons of CO2 produced by Germany last year.

I was writing up an answer in the Microsoft Tech Community today when it struck me that Teams is nearly 5 years old. That's right - 5 years! Nearly as old as my son. Yet apart from feeling like time has gone by inexplicably fast - as you so often do as a parent, I also felt two things really brought home the fact that I am still incredibly invested in it. One - I still feel the best is yet to come: that even after five years of maturation we all know it can still be so much more than it is. And two, the longer I work with Teams the less I find myself concerned with the flash and more about the fundamentals; those little vital things which make it better to use on a day to day basis