2025: A Number Containing Two 2’s, One 5, and a 0

My whack at a year in review

All the cool kids are writing year-in-review posts. I reckon I’ll write this one. For me, 2025 has been a year filled with different. Some of the different has been very cool; some has not been cool at all.

If you’ve stumbled onto this post / newsletter (I’m writing this on my blog at andyleonard.blog and cross-posting it to my newsletter, engineerofdata.substack.com because, well, that’s different), odds are you’ve never heard of me. And that’s ok. Like the Man in Black from The Princess Bride, I am no one of consequence.

Before I begin what may rightly be viewed as a negative post, feel free to search for “I look better in a pair of jeans” as evidence the tone of this piece shifts later.

Me

Some Bad

I’m an over-recognized, though less-recognized recently, data engineer. I’m a Christian, husband, Dad, grandfather, engineer, and author. To a diminishing handful of data people, mostly data engineers, I’m a commenter on technology and data-related stuff, mostly data engineering. And that’s ok, too.

It’s been over 10 years since I wrote Andy-Frickin-Leonard. As will happen, my views on a lot of things have changed since that time. That because a lot of things in my life have changed in the past 10 years. I find more than correlation in those sentences. One thing that’s changed is my over-recognition has decreased, and that’s ok (I’m sensing a theme…). Andy-Frickin-Leonard was a complaint about my over-recognition and the first-world problems that accompany people thinking:

• I know more than I know

• I do more than I do

• I’m a better person than I am

If you believe any of those positive things about me are accurate, it’s proof of one and only one thing: you do not know me well enough to make such a judgment.

If you don’t know me well-enough, that’s ok, too. While I am more transparent than many of my fellow geeks, I’m not as transparent as many judge. This realization struck me when my older son, Stephen, shared it with me last month in Seattle while we were attending the PASS Data Community Summit 2025. Exhausted, I left a networking event early. I all but walked away from friends in the middle of a conversation, abruptly announcing a version of, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.”

Stephen shared with my friends (who remain friends [I think] despite my rudeness), who were taken aback. “But then I explained to them, Dad, that you’re not that out-going person many people think you are. That you’re really a pretty intense introvert, and that the only reason you bust out into teaching and training is because of your intense love of learning. You’re sharing what is, in your heart, the best thing ever – knowledge; knowledge gained from experience, good judgment acquired from bad judgment. Your drive to help others learn from your mistakes, sparing others the pain of having to make mistakes themselves, overwhelms your inherent introversion.” Stephen shared this with me when he got back to our room. It was more than ok, it was illuminating. I remember being struck by it in the moment. I remember joking – since we both work with AI – “you’re absolutely right!”

Having adult conversations with my adult children has been one of the “differents” of 2025, after 43 straight years as a Dad of minor children. (my youngest became a legal adult in August).
More more-than-a-correlation…

Some Ugly

Stephen’s sharing triggered a month of introspection which, combined with personal therapy (another 2025 “different”), has led to what-I-sincerely-hope-is more clarity. Part of the clarity is rejecting notions I’d not entirely rejected regarding the press I received (over-recognition) in years past. A confession that several people already know: I’m not all that and a bag of chips. I’m bad with money management. But I make up for that by stinking at sales. I’m opinionated. These aren’t all my character liabilities, either. I’m not sharing all my character liabilities, at least not at his time. And that’s ok.

Some Good

2025 has not been all solemn. I (re-)started taking better care of my health in early 2024. In March 2025, my doctor prescribed Mounjaro. My blood sugar has dropped dramatically to normal levels. I’ve lost 65 pounds and I look better in a pair of jeans and a Carhartt shirt than I have in decades. Maybe ever. I experimented with a new type of business opportunity this year: In addition to delivering data engineering consulting and training, I branched into staff augmentation, something akin to people management that I’d not really practiced since leaving a management position at Unisys in 2010. The move afforded time and money at the same time, which was a combination that’d be nigh impossible to achieve as a consultant selling hours for money.

Kent, Kevin, Brian, and FAM

I took the excellent advice of my good friend and brother, Kent Bradshaw, and invested the time in two projects: A Metadata-Driven Execution Orchestration Framework Application Manager and AI-related stuff. The two projects share some overlap. Kent and I have been involved in many efforts to produce a FAM, as we lovingly refer to the Framework Application Manager application. The first effort, inspired by a suggestion from another friend and brother, Kevin Hazzard, in late 2014, was sidetracked by my lack of leadership – a fault and personal failure that led to my separation from Linchpin People, a company I co-founded with my friend and brother, Brian Moran – may he rest in peace. Kent and I made a few runs at building FAM over our years working together at Enterprise Data & Analytics, my current consulting and training venture. I got distracted early and often, and the efforts floundered as a result.

In June, I found myself with very little consulting work and four individuals performing staff augmentation for a client. When I expressed the situation to Kent, he said, “You know what we should do, Andy? We should double-down on FAM.” And so we did. FAM passed all our functional tests in mid-October. I spent most of the following month heads down with Stephen building our PASS Data Community Summit 2025 precon about AI-Enhanced Data Engineering (although I just started using that phrase last week). Since Thanksgiving, Kent and I have been making FAM prettier, more user-friendly, and implementing product management support. We decided to do this last part before releasing the product. I think this is the right call.

EDNA

In important ways, EDNA (Enterprise Data & Analytics) is pivoting. We’re still available for consulting and training, but we’re shifting our focus into a blending of consulting and training. We started offering our Enterprise Data Concierge services years ago, now we’re emphasizing our focus on that model. Astute readers will note the absence of a link. Ping me if you’re interested in our Enterprise Data Concierge services.

We’re including and innovating with AI.

AI and Stephen

How? I hired Stephen as ENDA’s first AI Engineer.

Earlier this year, I introduced Stephen to AI, and he jumped on AI like a duck on a junebug. If you’re interested in a fresh perspective on AI from a young entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to subscribe to his Substack newsletter. He accomplished a lot in 2025. Although we cannot verify it, we suspect he may be the youngest person to deliver a PASS Summit precon (so far). His badge ribbons included “Precon Presenter” and “First Timer”:

Stephen nailed his part of the presentation. Applause count: Andy: 0, Stephen: 2.

An aside to parents of more than one child: I am equally proud of all five of my children. This post would be way longer were I to list all of their accomplishments, and it’s long enough as it is! They’re all amazing people and I am blessed to know and love them.

Stephen leads EDNA’s AI-Enhanced Data Engineering Consulting Framework offering, which complements EDNA’s Data Architecture Strategy Review offering.

DELM Suite

I officially launched Data Engineering Lifecycle Management Suite with the release of Fabric Navigator in 2025.

FabNav, as I refer to it, is a free utility to help Fabric data engineers, well, navigate Fabric! Kudos to the Microsoft Fabric Team for their recent improvements to the Fabric user experience. When I released FabNav, the UX was… not as pleasant as it is today.

Playbook(s)

I’ve also launched what-I-hope-will-soon-be a series of playbooks with the first playbook titled The AI-Assisted Engineering Playbook Series. There’s a strong likelihood the series will be renamed to better align with EDNA’s consulting and training offerings – AI-Enhanced instead of AI-Assisted – but stuff like that happens all the time in consulting and business and life.

The first offering in the series is The AI-Assisted Data Engineering Development Playbook, which covers how I set up a virtual server for modern data engineering development (the subtitle). At over 200 pages, I’ve published books that are shorter! It’s available for individuals, teams, and enterprises. Or you can score a coupon code for an individual license when you become a paid subscriber to the Engineer of Data newsletter.

Books

I read several books in 2025. Two books struck me this year:

1. Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire by Dave Plummer of Dave’s Garage

2. We, Programmers by Robert Martin “Uncle Bob“

The links are to Kindle books because I cannot increase the font size of print books and, well, I kinda need to increase the font size these days…

Like Dave, I was diagnosed in my 40’s (with ADHD, which is arguably part of the autism spectrum). It explained a lot and helped me better understand many people close to me. I joke, “What are the odds I married two women who both passed ADHD to my children??” (The answer is 1 in 4, in case you’re wondering… and they didn’t get it from their Moms…)

Uncle Bob – like Dave (and me) – is old school. Bob is older than me, Dave is younger. Reading of their coding exploits brought back memories. It’s cool to learn that others share my love of coding. In both books, I felt seen.

Conclusion

In sum, 2025 has been a busy year of challenges and opportunities. I know 2026 will bring different challenges and different opportunities. As I type, I am cautiously optimistic; cautious because I do not know what the future holds, optimistic because I know Who holds the future.