Review 2019, prepare for 2020

The year is coming to a close, and it's a great time to look back upon what we've achieved this past year and what we want to focus on in the coming year. Let's talk about a few key things:

• What things in the last year have been the most significant to you? What are you the most proud of?
• Going forward, what things do you want to focus on?
• And what do you not want to learn?

My story

In trying to keep this brief and digestible, here's the short format of my 2019/2020 story. If you want to know a bit more and see the specific SMART goals that I've set for myself, check out my blog post on the topic.

Most significant events of 2019

1. Community: 2019 was the year I really got involved with the software community and sharing knowledge. I gave talks and workshops at local meetups, I became a co-organizer of the local Rust meetup group, and I started blogging.
2. Nix(OS): I switched to Linux (specifically NixOS) about a year ago, and it's been a blast. A lot of crawling the internet and irc logs, a lot of learning to use irc, a lot of time spent tinkering, but a blast. Everyone's been so friendly and welcoming and I have learned a whole lot. I've also started to rely on Nix for my dev environments at work.
3. Containers: Before 2019, I'd never used containers, but I was aware of them. 2019 saw me working with Docker and Kubernetes on a daily basis, and it's been fantastic. In particular, Kubernetes has become a great interest of mine, and something I'm looking to pursue further.

Goals for 2020

1. More community engagement: I want to further work on the community-aspects in the coming year: talk more, share more, meet more. In particular, by the end of the year I want to have:
   • Given at least three (3) talks/workshops at local meetups.
   • Applied to at least three (3) conferences as a speaker.
2. More konfiguration: A big part of 2019 was configuration, either as part of Kubernetes or as part of Nix. I'm really into both these tools, but I don't feel that I have mastered them completely just yet. To improve this situation, I want to set up a Kubernetes cluster somewhere and deploy an application developed using Nix for as much as possible.
3. More Emacs: Another tool that I really enjoy, but that I don't know quite well enough. I've been using Emacs for about a year and a half, and I love it. However, I've never really used raw (or custom configured) Emacs; only a version of Spacemacs. Spacemacs is great, but I feel like I need a better understanding of the underlying editor to really become one with Emacs. First step: RTFM.

.ignore

There's so many cool ideas and concepts around these days, you cannot possibly master them all. If you don't purposefully shut certain things out, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Here's a little list of things that I'm not planning to look into in the coming year:

1. Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence
2. Go
3. IoT / Home automation

Your turn

So what about you? Got anything to share? Comments? Let's talk it out.

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Happy new year, folks! Hope you achieve everything you set out to do, and if you don't: I hope that you at least learn and grow from it!