My Annual Review 2018

Here’s my annual professional review covering 2018.

News

This was an important year for me professionally; here’s a summary of what I did:

  • Built a private inventory management app for a nonprofit (not open source or public at the moment)
  • Spoke at ElixirDaze 2018
  • Stayed on the same project for a year, deeply exploring React, Redux, Gatsby, GraphQL, slicing, testing, and the JS ecosystem. Learned new communication techniques from the extended relationship with this team
  • Spoke at the React Chicago and Atlanta Elixir Meetups. Organized 10 Vim Chicago Meetups
  • Attended Chicago JS Camp 2018 and React Boston 2018
  • Wrote a handful of blog posts for my blog and the Hashrocket blog
  • Served as a formal mentor for the fall cohort of Code Platoon, which was awesome!
  • Started #100DaysofCode (in progress). Built two programming languages, shipped some projects, became obsessed with TypeScript
  • Celebrated four years at Hashrocket 🎂

Last Year’s Goal

My professional goal for 2018 was to submit 10 proposals to technical conferences. That number was based on my previous 1/10 proposal acceptance rate.

This did not go as planned; the first proposal I submitted was accepted to ElixirDaze 2018. I summarized that wonderful experience for the Hashrocket Blog. TL;DR: code formatters are good and you should use them!

For me, speaking at conferences is exhilarating but daunting, and after going through that experience again so early in the year, I decided to refrain from submitting any more proposals in 2018. Unless I start repeating talks or develop a more improvisational style, one conference per year seems to be my limit.

This Year’s Goal

This year I plan to pivot to a single mantra: ship.

I want to get good at turning the river of ideas I have into products. Some will be silly demos and jokes, some will be open source libraries I plan to maintain, and some will be products in production.

I’d want to move away from “learning for learning’s sake” and start learning by facing the real challenges of shipping. I want the exhaust of my learning in public to be tangible products that people use to improve their lives.

Here’s to more shipping in 2019.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone at Hashrocket, my Meetup crew, clients, family, and friends for making this year memorable.