Happy New Year! It’s that time of year again, the time when we all wonder when it’s socially acceptable to say Happy New Year to people we speak to. In all seriousness, I do hope that your 2022 finished in a positive way, or if 2022 was not a good year for you, then I hope 2023 bring you better times ahead.
Last year, I fell behind on my blog badly, I hope to do better this year and have more time to blog about things happening in the community, as well as all things DevOps, cloud-native, and software engineering. I love the cloud family I am a member of and hope that in 2023 we welcome more great people into this community, and I hope that I have the ability to share more with this great group of people.
Looking back at 2022
Now I’ve had some time of the festive period to look back at 2022, it was an incredibly busy year. Work with Transparity, and outside in the community was thick and fast through out the year. I have to admit, that when I thought about the year just passed I was a little dissapointed I’d not done more in the community, something which I hope to fix in the new year.
While I missed out on some conferences last year that I would have loved to attend, I managed to get to some user groups and attend a couple of conferences. It’s really great to see how strong these events are as we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic across the globe. I loved getting the opportunity to speak at so many user groups during the pandemic, but it’s great getting back to in-person events again, getting to meet other speakers, friends, and colleagues in this fantastic industry that we work in.
One of the highlights for me was Tech Week Humber, getting involved in a local event and giving back to the local community means so much to me, as I recently blogged about that event, I loved getting to know people in education and listen to them passionately talk about how businesses can help education, and help nuture the next generation of technical engineers and leaders.
I’ve also enjoyed working in an advisory capacity on a local project called The Edge Hub. Created to to showcase and deliver skills and enterprise in the Hull & Humber region. Plans for this project are at an advanced stage and exciting times are ahead with this project. I cannot wait to share more about it with you.
Thinking ahead to 2023
With that, what is in store for 2023? One of the best things about working on a software product for my day job is that I genuingly don’t know. Of course we have some plans in place on how to grow the product and have a general idea of direction we want to head. But past this quarter, I can’t say with certainty what we will be working on as a team.
Outside of my day job, I have some things in the works at community events to speak at, I’m always on the lookout for speaking opportunities, if you’d like me to speak at either a user group, or a conference, either virtually or in-person, then please let me know.
With my MCT and MVP status, I am also hoping to drive some free learning this year, make sure you keep an eye on my Twitter for more details in the coming weeks. After my work at the end of last year in education, I understand the importantace of making sure business plays it’s part in not only closing the skills gap, but ensuring those who come into employement in technology related fields have the skills we need for them to be successful and grow their own careers.
I also hope to launch a successful side project this year, I don’t want to say too much about this at the minute, but it is something I have been working on for sometime and are close to working on development of that project.
Finally, as I mentioned in my look back at 2022, more plans are afoot for The Edge Hub. It’s an exciting time of the year as the team looks to build and refine those plans, and I look forward to playing my part in making those exciting plans come to fruition.
With that, whatever your goals are for 2023, I wish you all the best for the year ahead, and hope to connect with you throughout the year.