It has been 30 years since, as a PhD student, I introduced the concept of the proteome and coined the term. This talk will give some personal reflections on what I’ve learned about proteomics since then. It will also discuss some of my lab’s recent advances, where we have completely – or near-completely – defined all sites and cognate enzymes for a post-translational modification in a eukaryotic proteome. Comments on the future of proteomic technology, and its application, will also be presented.