Aw man! What a year! So many great experiences, so many mixed feelings!
2016 was full of retrospective meetings. Why not make one for my-self and for the year past. I did set a few goals last year.
What I did
- Travel more
I visited Bucharest, Romania in June for jscamp.ro. Didn't have the time to walk around a lot so I will get there again in any chance given to me. Also, visited Paris for the dotJS/dotCSS conferences. What a magnificent event!
- Read/Write more
Nah, I can't say I'm satisfied with this one. I was watching a lot of blogs and I was reading Medium a lot. Didn't read all the books I wanted to read. I enjoyed Big Brother and The man and the see. I started Aurelia but never finished it. Zero to One was a great read as expected. Started Lean Analytics a few weeks ago.
But, I did start a podcast! [http://devastation.tv] started back in February and it's single purpose is learn a lot more and share those learning with my fellow greeks. Much like writing tech blogs posts!
"Data Migrations with Node.js" was my most ridden piece this year.
- Stay fit
I did a lot of running and I did notice a lot of improvement over the previous years. I didn't manage to make it my priority and a formal habit though. I still have to convince myself in order to get out of the building and go running. Still room for improvements here.
- Speak to a big conference
Does being listed in a big conference's speaker list as a speaker counts for this one? I did manage to get on that list but never made it to the conference. Everything was setup (thank you Bogo for you support, sorry for the mess) perfectly, there were two days left for the conference and I was about to travel by car the next day, until borders closed by Greek truck drivers riots. All three roads that could lead me to Sofia from Thessaloniki were closed. Airlines also do not favor Thessaloniki and I had to fly to Athens in order to land to Sofia. I was very disappointed with this one.
Nevertheless, I did fly to Athens mid-December to give a talk at GreeceJS, the biggest Javascript meetup in Athens. It was a great experience, met a lof of new people there. Photos soon to come
2016 was also hiding a few other surprises. I left Goodvidio a month ago and now I am in the process of getting a new job. It has been 18 amazing months, full startup mode! Met some brilliant and wonderful guys over there. I am going to miss them for sure.
Where to go next
So, what's on for 2017? Well, I won't include the travel/read/speak/write thing! I want those to be parts of my life but I don't want to keep track of them. I will try this year too and even harder.
I will try to put a single goal for this year. I have been amazed by Universal Javascript trend that hit the since last year. I think 2017 will be a great year for Isomorphic applications along with progressive apps guidelines. I want this year to get my hands into and build myself an app that will follow all those principles.
That's my goal for 2017!