So, this blog is 6 years old today. It still boggles my mind how it’s possible that I held on to it for so long and continued to post, even if not as much as I would have liked in the last few years. As I mentioned before, there were good reasons for not posting a lot, but that’s a topic for my end-of-year reviews.

Each time I plan to write this post, I’m also surprised that I started this blog in August. Usually, August in Europe is an incredibly slow month, so it was probably like that. However, knowing myself, I probably just went to a provider, created the website, bought the domain, and started writing. It was perhaps a question of going for it and not looking back. You know what they say:

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

My memory is terrible, but this worked out in my favor, and I’ll explain more later. Back to the topic at hand, there were many changes, so let’s take a look.

What did work?

Many things worked, but the one that continues to stand out are the Power Automate References, such as the Power Automate Function Reference, Power Automate Trigger Reference, and Power Automate Action Reference. These were created because I needed a place for me to store information that I learned while using them. I always found minor things that I thought, “I need to keep this; otherwise, I’ll forget”. And people found it helpful. That’s great, so I’ll continue to publish more and more articles about this.

The Power Automate section continues to be the top-requested, and that makes me happy because it means the articles I create are helpful to you. I also publish many things that people ask me, so if you have an idea, please let me know. It doesn’t mean for sure that I’ll publish it, but I’ll write about it if I think it will be a good time investment, meaning that the time I invest in writing it would help the most people possible.

What didn’t work?

Any other section in the site is dwarfed by Power Automate, meaning that if I spend time writing about it, there will be people who will find it useful, but not as much as the other sections. This is something of a conundrum for me, as I want to diversify the topics I write about here as much as possible. However, on the other hand, time is limited, so I want to present information that has as much impact as possible on you.

Another thing that didn’t work was the “weekly skill boost” for two reasons. One reason I ended up not having enough time to do it systematically and another was that people didn’t pay too much attention to it. I’ll figure out if there’s a way to make it work, but the consensus so far is that people don’t need it.

Experimentation

I’ve been experimenting with various automation tools, in addition to Power Automate. Power Automate is excellent, but I’m a strong advocate for using the right tool for the job. I’ll share my experiments publicly soon(ish) but the idea is always the same. To learn in public and share what I’ve learned so that it can save you time.

Experimentation is the key to learning, in my opinion. It’s the way I learn. I struggle to understand concepts from abstract online content. I need to come up with projects or try to integrate tools on my daily life and see if they work or not. This makes things more complicated because it means that I keep on having processes broken and changed, meaning that there’s also some overhead in this learning “strategy,” but it works for me.

Challenges

AI has been revolutionary in the way it helps people become more productive, and I utilize it extensively in my automation tasks.

I also noticed a significant drop in traffic to the website. I’m not motivated by analytics or want to grow as much as possible. I started publishing without even caring about analytics. They serve only to guide me to what people need and nothing else. But this drop is also a challenge because I don’t want to end up writing only to train AI algorithms. I think the market will reach a stabilization stage, but now things are moving fast, and companies are experimenting with different strategies. However, the aggressiveness with which companies are crawling sites is concerning.

Additionally, people are concerned because we’re paying hosting costs and spending time writing. Then tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity will obtain that information and display it to the user, sometimes (but not always) without crediting the original authors. Therefore, the effort is unrewarded. It’s something I need to understand better and adjust if needed, but I think I’m not alone in this. Everyone is trying to figure out this complete paradigm shift in the way people do things.

The Future

The company (Skillful Sardine) is strong, and I’m thankful for that. I support the site by helping people and companies solve their problems. If you have a need, please reach out, , and I’ll be happy to help. I strive to make my rates as approachable as possible, but I’ll also work to find solutions that can help those who cannot afford them. Stay tuned!

As I mentioned previously, I’m working on some stuff to publish here other than Power Automate, so if you’re interested, please come back and take a look.

I’ve learned my lesson, so I won’t promise something that I’m working on. I’ll only announce ready things, and I think I can keep delivering at a constant pace.

BIG THANK YOU

Thank you for reading my content, commenting, and interacting. It means a great deal to me, and I appreciate the feedback. It means a lot to me that you read the things I publish and that they are helpful to you. 6 years a is a long time, so let’s figure out how to continue for a few more.

You can follow me on Mastodon (new account), Twitter (I’m getting out, but there are still a few people who are worth following) or LinkedIn. Or email works fine as well 🙂