Overview

For those that aren't on Twitter, there is a common tweet that goes out around this time of year where people do their best to sum up their year with a emoji led bulleted list. Here is mine for 2018:

• 📢 Spoke at 4 conferences
• 👨‍🏫 Taught at 3 conference workshops
• 🎙️ Appeared on 2 podcasts
• ✈️ Traveled to 11 different places
• 💼 Got an awesome new job
• 🏅 Became a Vue.js Community Partner
• 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 Made incredible new friends

That said, let's do a deep dive shall we?

Speaking & Teaching

This was a big year for me as it was the one that I finally had my breakthrough and spoke at my first tech conference.*

* More on this later, but I must note that this was a difficult journey leading up to this point. It was not a magical overnight success in any way, shape or form.

You can find all my material online here at my Notist profile. As far as a quick rundown though:

Conferences

• VueConfUS
• DevFestDC
• VueLondon (attended)
• ConnectTech
• VueToronto

Workshops

• FluentConf (sole instructor)
• ConnectTech (teaching assistant)
• VueToronto (co-instructor)

Podcasts

• My JavaScript Story #082
• Views on Vue #037

Meetups

• RefreshDC
• Women Who Code DC

Travel

This year has been a ridiculous year as far as travel goes. In terms of placed that I traveled to:

• Los Angeles, CA
• San Jose, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• London, UK
• Toronto, CAN
• Orlando, FL
• New York City, NY
• New Orleans, LA
• Chicago, IL
• Atlanta, GA
• Maui, HI

Fun fact: I ended up flying so much that I ended up as an MVP for Alaska Airlines 😅.

My Job

2018 was a difficult year for me in this particular aspect. On one hand, it was a big year with a promotion, a lot of new responsibilities, and a new opportunity I could not have forseen. On the other hand, it was fraught with a lot of indecision regarding my own aspirations. If you had asked me in July 2018 whether or not I had any intention of leaving my old job, I would have told you with certainty that I was planning on staying for at least another year to two. After all, I had a lot that I wanted to do before I left. However, life is rarely so predictable and often throws you for a loop when you are most certain of things.

That said, circumstances changed and I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to join the Meltano team at GitLab! It's only been a few weeks, but it's been a lot of fun so far and will be sure to write more on it as time goes on.

Other Achievements

Other things that are worth noting in 2018 include:

• VueMeetups - an open-source initiative to centralize all Vue.js community meetups and events with a lot of collaboration from the community
• VueDC - a local meetup I helped to co-found in December 2017 that is still going strong and hosted over 15 events in 2018
• My Twitch Channel - It's still a work in progress, but I started streaming on Twitch! Still figuring out how to make it consistent and establish a pattern for content, but taking it one step at a time
• My Blog - Though not a major achievement, I'm glad that I was finally able to get my site up and running with a Vue powered engine and actually start writing again

What about 2019?

Though my head is still a little fuzzy from getting sick at the end of the year, here are some high level goals I want to achieve this year:

• 📝 Write a lot more
• 📹 Create more content (i.e., YouTube, tutorials, etc.)
• 👨‍💻 Improve my technical abilities so I can contribute to OSS projects
• 📚 Read a lot more books

It's weird, but 2019 seems like the year of preparation for what is to come in 2020. I can't tell you what's coming in 2020, but it seems like a big year and I have much to prepare for if I'm going to be ready for it.

With that said, wishing you all a great 2019. Cheers! 🥂