2017 Year in Review

This year I did a little better with getting my year in review out. It isn’t quite March yet, we still have to finish out January and get through February so I am making progress on my procrastination. Without further ado, my year in review!

Good bye 2017, hello 2018!

Last year was okay, not the best. Went through some heart break, family surgery, but did manage to make it out of all of that alive and spoke at 5 conferences, which was a huge achievement for me personally and professionally. I didn’t travel much, so lets talk about all the things.

Travel

I didn’t make it to Denver a whole lot, I think once the whole year and that was in August. Had a great time though, couple professional things to take care of, spent a night in Strawberry Springs and hung out in West Wash Park. I got to speak at a conference in Virginia Beach, that was pretty fresh.

I hope this year I get a chance to travel more and make it over sees to some destination, whatever it may be.

Community

I took a big break from community this year. I only went to a handful of meetups but still managed to design and print the stickers for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

I was asked to be co-organizer for the Ann Arbor Accessibility Group, that was definitly a big deal for me. Other than that, I didn’t do much. I hope to change that this year and bring the community together in an impactful way, especially focused around accessibility on the web.

Life

Not many life changes happened last year. My mom had cancer surgery at the beginning of the year and she is doing well. I call her “half-off” becuase now she only has one kidney. It is rather funny if you knew our relationship.

I am still working at United Shore but transferred to a new team to focus on responsiveness, performance, and accessibility of a new project and to be a lead in those areas for three more projects as well as implementing PWA’s for our applications. I am stoked to be spearheading that.

I spoke at 5 conferences lastyear, that’s right, I said 5. The first was CodeMash (2 talks), IgniteUX MI (1 talk), Self.Conf (1 talk), RevConf (2 talks), and Detroit.Code() (2 talks). Last year was a stellar year for conferences for me and a goal I set out to achieve. This year I I have two conferences already lined up and am stoked to fill up the year.

Code and Blog Things

I didn’t get much done last year in the way of coding and writing. I lost a lot of motivation as the year progressed, I became very depressed again and my back started acting up until I was referred to see a surgeon by my 8th chiropractor, which I am doing now. Surgery is in the future, I am excited for that and getting my life back. A good thing that came out of my writing was that I wrote an article for David Walsh’s Blog all about focus styles and accessibility, check it out here!

Still can’t JavaScript myself out of a paper bag, but you know what, that is okay. There is a vast community of developers out there that can’t, devs who excel in other areas andare valued for those other skills, not just being a JavaScript developer.

I participated in Hacktoberfest too and I got my shirt and stickers!!

Started a podcast called Tales From the Script! Check it out on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

This year I will try to write more and work on projects and attempt JS again, knowing after surgery that I can live life again will be a huge help.

GitHub stats for the year:

2018 Goals

This year I have a set of goals that isn’t outrageous like last year, but there are some things I want to get done.

• Submit to all the conferences that I can.
• Start and finish more projects that I have on the back burner.
• Level up my JS skills big time. I have to find a way for it to click, or not.
• More community involvement.
• Write more blog posts about web development and things that interest me in the industry.
• Write for another magazine or web dev blog.