2017: Year In Review

We're a month into 2018 and I already have a lot going on for the next couple of months. But before things are in full swing, I wanted to take a step back and review the past year.



Photo by Miesha Moriniere from Pexels

In numbers

  • Wrote 2 blog posts 
  • Won 2 awards 
  • Attended 5 conferences 
  • Spoke at 4 conferences
  • Attended 14 meetups
  • Spoke at 4 meetups
  • Read 12 books 

A lot of firsts!

Speaking
This was the first time I gave 3 completely different talks on different topics like design-developer collaboration, public speaking and leadership, and mastering Android's app resources. It was also the first time I gave a talk with a co-presenter at a conference (Chicago Roboto - Design Develop Deploy)

Community
Organized and helped run the first Android meets iOS meetup at Philly Tech Week.

Learning new things
This year I immersed myself in Kotlin via Kotlin Koans, Kotlin in Action book and Koltin programming challenges. It took me a while to write my first PR in Kotlin but now it's in production!

Recognition
I was awarded an employee recognition award by my company and a Best Tech Manager award thanks to nominations by my lovely co-workers.

What I learned about goals 

SMART goals are wise goals
It's easier to achieve a goal like "Write my first PR completely in Kotlin by end of Q3" instead of "Write more Kotlin".

Things don't always go as planned
I apply to many conferences to speak at but not every conference accepts my proposals. When I do get accepted, I have to move some things off my plate so I can focus on giving an informative presentation. Speaking and preparing to speak takes a huge chunk of my time after my day job so it's important to have buffer time for downtime and unexpected things.
It's crucial to check in often and frequently. If I'm not doing things on my list, maybe that goal is not important to me anymore.

 Gamification can help form better habits
I find that it's easier for me to form habits when I gamify them. I use a habit tracker called Loop so I can check my daily goals off at the end of the day. I'm currently on a 60 day yoga/meditation streak and a 120 day Spanish streak on Duolingo.

Here's to 2018 which is starting off with an exciting journey into AR and my first keynote at Chicago Roboto!

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