2020 In Retrospective

The Story

Well, that's a wrap. This has been one of the most unpredictable year ever. In this post, I look back at how 2020 was for me and this will just be a little retrospection summary of things that went well and things that did not. I am starting this new tradition of celebrating the end of year as I looking back at some of my highlights of that year.

TL;DR

https://twitter.com/MphoMphego/status/1341658595780386819?s=20

What Went Well

Most of my other goals were financial and personal, however, I would like to reflect on some of my other goals I had set out for 2020.

• I was inspired by Derek Sivers’ /now page movement and started documenting things I was focused on each month from January 2020. This is what I am doing now.

• Got out of my comfort zone and became a mentor to an intern, which of course had its own challenges due to the working from home, apparently I'm brutal and tell it like it is (It's the ADD)!!!
  One thing I learned from this experience was to be patient with myself and mostly others.

• One of my goals for 2020 was to at least blog twice per month and I managed to publish 17 posts based on some of my experiences and things learned.

• I started being active on Twitter and some of the people I followed inspired me to take part in the #100daysofcode challenge.

  • You can read more about my experiences here while you are at it follow me: @MphoMphego and consider doing the challenge in 2021.

• I wanted to make more YouTube videos this year but I hadn't put a number which I should have. However, I was able to make 3 YouTube video tutorials:

  • If you are reading this please subscribe to my channel 2021 we going big: https://www.youtube.com/mphomphego1

• Made over 2400+ Github open&close source contributions (which was less than 2019 @ 2500+), 340+ PR's and 5+ projects

  

• Won an Intel Neural Compute Stick from an AI Face Mask Detection 33 GitHub Stars project that won the Deep Learning Superhero App Challenge on hackster.io

• One thing about me is that when I get bored I get the urge to learn something new even if I hadn't mastered the last one I previously learned (It's the ADD without the H hahaha), with that being said I proudly finished and evolved my skills:

  • 3x Udacity Nanodegrees Certificates:
    • AWS Cloud Developer
    • Intel Edge AI for IoT Developers
    • Udacity Mentorship
  • 2x DataCamp Certificates:
    • Data Engineering for Everyone
    • Image Processing in Python
  • 2x IBM/Cognitive.ai Certificates
    • Deep Learning Essentials
    • Docker Essentials: A Developer Introduction
  • 1x Coursera Specialization Certificate:
    • Deep Learning Specialization
  • 9x Coursera Certificates:
    • SQL for Data Science
    • Computer Vision Basics
    • Neural Networks and Deep Learning
    • Structuring Machine Learning Projects
    • Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization
    • Convolutional Neural Networks
    • Sequential Models
    • Exploratory Data Analysis for Machine Learning
    • Supervised Learning: Regression

What Didn't go well

• The sudden change of environment from working in the office and working from home with my wife and 2 kids at home, I had mental health issues, Dude it wasn't fun!!!
• One of my goals was to exercise at least 3 times a week, this didn't go well for obvious reasons my health deteriorated.
• Struggled to split time between learning, working and spending time with my family.
• I felt burnout during the COVID19 lockdown which caused me a lot of stress and sleeps deprivation; but looking on the bright-side I learned new skills while up all night ;-)
• The list goes on and on ...

My Goals for 2021

I am looking forward to 2021 (2020 won!) with a different perspective and expecting a lot from myself. Some of my tech-related goals for 2021 entails:

• Continue to advance my career at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) and my goal is to become a Snr. Software Engineer.
• Completing #100DaysOfML challenge with the primary focus on the Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow - Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems book I recently bought.
• Work with my son on building and programming the AlphaBot2 and Raspberry Pi Zero together with the Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 I won.
• Learn more about the fundamentals of MLOps and how to integrate it with software engineering.
• Revive TechTalk Tuesday which is an informal meeting (Meetup), where colleagues/external talent prepares a Tech Talk on Tuesdays during lunchtime.
• Be present on user groups around the world through virtual presentations.

Conclusion

This was the year of Deep Learning for me, one of the skills I gained was to be patient with myself, to take it easy and always remember that the meaning of life is; If you think about it, is that on the very beginning, the development of the first cell divided into two cells - the sole purposes of life has been to pass on what was learned. There is no higher purpose. So, this year I learned to start passing on the knowledge I have accumulated.