My year 2024 in review

Time for my personal annual reflections!

I started this habit a few years ago, and now I'm hooked into the December reflection period. I can sense that my mind is so eager to think of the future and next tasks and goals that sometimes I tend to forget to stop and look back. This is the time of the year to do that.

Business

At LTIMindtree's Salesforce consulting practice we started the year with one client in Nordic region and now we have a total of 5 customers, so things are definitely picking up to the right direction despite very good competition in the market. This actually exceeded my expectations, as there are many good competitors, but then again didn't surprise me as the potential with LTIM is exciting. What we call "hunting sales" is something that I truly enjoy; it gives me the pleasure of meeting new people from various companies and creating relationships of trust for years to come, and closing a deal after months of work is always rewarding. For me it is not really 'hunting', or acting as 'the alpha male', but rather building rapport. Creating connections and forming partnerships, not about war or aggression.

I also got to witness my first Dreamforce in person in San Francisco. Even if the attendance of 40 000 people was roughly one fourth or fifth of the peak years in last decade (before the pandemic), it was truly impressive! Meeting like-minded people in person creates something that one cannot accomplish over an online meeting or email exchange. We need the visionary people to lead the next wave of growth with inspiring, new ideas and positive drive for the future.

I am expecting 2025 to be a year of further growth, and a year of new AI introductions. The hype of AI will not be slowing down, I'm predicting it only to keep accelerating at large. Certainly some initiatives and pilots will be shut down, that is only realistic.

Learning

In 2024 I passed the "AI Associate" certificate exam by Salesforce. It was exciting to sit down to take the test, heart pumping and palms sweating as I hadn't taken (any?) exam for many years. I got hooked so much that I also studied for the next one, "AI Specialist" by doing Trailhead self-training with hands-on Agentforce AI assignments. It was fun to get into hands-on exercises and configuring a hotel booking service with autonomous agents. Doing that by oneself opens the eyes of how easy such things could really be for the customers, and how quick it is to create AI agents! I must admit that I didn't pass the certification exam, which is a good testament to appreciate the true technical experts who master the various prompts. I am happy to call myself an AI Associate, not a Specialist.

Another fun, and definitely educational, thing for me personally was to attend my 9 year-old daughter's school class. The teacher was inviting parents one by one to give a guest lesson of work life. I shared about my experiences in international business life, studies in technology university, programming background and project management.. but the class went through the roof when I turned the question to them to think of AI business ideas! The teacher actually had to stop the children as we would have run out of time and the noise levels got up too much for a Finnish school class. But I managed to write down couple pages of those ideas to my notebook. Not sharing them with you! I have to say that 9 year-olds don't need any teaching of what is Siri, ChatGPT etc.

Life & the family

It has been a good year in good health! Maybe I wrote last year when I learned the term "sandwhich generation" when you are looking after both your children and your parents. It is a good term, and so is the "rush hour years" too. This Christmas I re-installed Snapchat to my mobile (I tried it some 10+ years ago for a brief while) and now I was using that to send Christmas greetings to my god children. During 2024 I also learned to use Whatsapp Stories for sharing pictures with my children, god children and nieces and nephews - as I'm not connected with them on Facebook or Instagram. Being 43 and learning from the next generation is fun!

I haven't put back my rugby boots this year, so my pause is continuing there though I'm continuing to enjoy basketball. My son started football practice for preschoolers, and he has an amazing coach on the team. I am following his skills every week in admiration on how he brings the 5 year-olds' attention to him, motivating them to the exercises and keeps an eye on the whole field at all times. Us parents are required to be by the sidelines, as most of the times there is a ball hitting somebody's head or another hurtful moment for the young talents who then need a hug and a tap on the head to get back.

Finland

We got a new president in Finland this year and our government has been running quite wide cost cutting programmes. The international geopolitical issues haven't changed too much in the big picture in 2024, in Ukraine or elsewhere. The US is going to have a new president in 2025 which will create changes, hopefully for the better in the big picture. I am sensing that we are living through bit low key years at the moment, and I would argue that now is the time for inspiring leadership to take place, at work and in the society. There are debates about getting back to offices for example, generic statements that the "economy is poor" etc.

Let's get hungry for good news in 2025!

Jaakko