Year in Review: 2023

> Solid year

November 30, 2023

Notable Happenings in 2023

Earned the Sitecore Technology MVP award for 2023
Represented One North as the sole Sitecore MVP
Mentored a few junior developers, as well as an up and coming developer who will be applying for the MVP this year
Led development on a prominent NextJS project for a major client and built more proficiency in Docker and Vercel
Worked on a handful of great MVC maintenance projects
Attended SUGCON NA and MVP Summit 2023 in Minneapolis. Joined in on the "Cheesebabies" food tour. Took some great photos of people in the community.
21 blog posts, ~10 of which were deeper technical dives. The ones I am most proud of are:
Doubled down on my Sitecore Stack Exchange contributions. As of the time of this writing, my contributions span over ~330 actions, out of an all time total of ~670. Almost doubled my reputation. Top 4% this year. Ranked ~#11 out of 11,532 total users. 31 questions. 42 answers. Earned the gold "Fanatic" badge with 100 days of consecutive visits. Less than 500 reputation away from achieving moderator tools, the most interesting of which are related to analytics / stats of SSE itself.
Continued to contribute on Stack Overflow (top 4% this year).

This year I switched my keyboard to an Advantage360 Professional by Kinesis. It took some time to get used to, but the tented and split keyboard design has been a game changer for keeping my wrists and hands in a more natural position.

I also switched to a Logitech MX Ergo trackball mouse which reduces repetitive motion significantly. I'm a trackball believer now. I 3D printed a custom stand for the mouse so that the mouse sits almost vertically.

Review of Last Year's Goals

Continue to build expertise in the following technologies:
- ✅ XP / XM 10.x
- ✅ XM Cloud
- ✅ Sitecore JSS
- ✅ C#
- ✅ React
- ✅ NextJS
- ✅ GraphQL
- ✅ TypeScript
- ❌ Svelte
- ✅ Cloudflare
- ✅ Blockchain
- ❌ Machine Learning
❌ Complete at least one Udemy course related to the above
✅ Continue working on side projects that leverage the above
✅ Compose 12 long form blog posts
✅ Compose at least 12 short / medium blog posts
✅ Attend Symposium 2023 and take more photos of people in the Sitecore community
✅ Continue contributing on Sitecore Stack Exchange
✅ Earn 2023 Sitecore Technology MVP
🤔 Compete in the 2023 Sitecore Hackathon
❌ Earn least 1 new Sitecore certification
🤔 Share at least one code gist / repo on GitHub
✅ Continue to research cutting edge memes

Favorite Quotes

This year, the quote theme is technology:

Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward.

-Edsger W. Dijkstra

If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as “lines produced” but as “lines spent.

-Edsger W. Dijkstra

Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares.

-Michael Feathers

The older I get, the more I realize the biggest problem to solve in tech is to get people to stop making things harder than they have to be.

-Chad Fowler

There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to fix it or to do it over.

-Daniel T. Barry

What I Learned in 2023

Good habits carry you. Gamification is the real deal. Time is precious.

Goals for 2024

Here's how I'm planning to spend some of my time next year.

Compose around 20 blog posts
Continue to contribute on Stack Overflow and Sitecore Stack Exchange
Get certified in at least one of the following:
- XM Cloud
- Sitecore 10 System Administrator Certification
Continue to build expertise in modern web technologies
Attend Symposium and MVP Summit 2024 and take more great photos of people in the Sitecore community
Earn MVP status once again

Keep going,