Reflections on 2018

In 2017, I stopped working as a consultant and started playing the role of CTO in Berlin. I learned a lot moving away from consulting into a full-time management role. I am happy with the direction the technology team and platform is moving, given where it was when I started. You can read more about what we achieved in 2018, and I’m proud to have been a significant part of that.

I expected to travel less as a consultant. Yet that didn’t seem to really work out. Places I visited for both work and leisure included: Barcelona, Munich London, Brussels, Austin, Capetown, Budapest, Vienna, Heiligendamm, Sitges, Zurich, Siegen, New York, Krakow, Oslo, Cadzand, Malmo and Amsterdam.

I still spoke at many conferences and meet ups including: NDC London, OOP Conference, Microservices Munich Meetup, keynoted the inaugural LeadDev Austin, Landing Festival (Berlin), Craft Conference, We Are Developers, CTO Roundtable Berlin meetup, FrontEnd conference, JDD Conf, GoTo Berlin, the inaugural LeadDev Berlin meetup, Øredev and a number of evening meetups for my company across Berlin, New York and Barcelona.

I was still able to post a number of blog entries across the year. I also focused on sharing a lot of research material on twitter. It seems to be very well received or appreciated so far. I also was able to get back into a lot of reading. I’m a big fan of Pocket, perfect for reading when I’m flying or traveling. According to them, I was in the top 1% of readers, getting through the equivalent of about 49 books. I also got into the habit of reading whilst commuting with my Kindle. Between a handful of real books and ebooks, I got through about 40 books.

What did your 2018 look like?