A Look Back on 2024

I don’t normally do retrospective posts, especially this far into the new year, BUT I was talking to a friend about everything I did last year and thought it would be good to capture it somewhere!

I’m going to focus on what I did in the software developer community, but might touch on some personal items.

Back to Speaking

In 2024, I spoke at 16 unique events, and delivered 20 talks. This was a big deal after a multi-year break from speaking, but it was nice to be in the thick of it again. I’ll still never put “Speaker” first in any bio, nor will I ever proclaim myself an “International Speaker” or “Keynoter,” but I’m still proud of what I did and the almost 700 people who attended my sessions I was able to reach during 2024.

I spoke at least once each month except for December.

I book-ended the year speaking at CINNUG, the first time giving my “Let’s Talk Interviewing” session and the second my “Spectre.Console” session.

I spoke at six conferences spread across four states. I won’t name my favorites, but I hope to be back to a couple of those in 2025.

Many of the meetups I presented for recorded the sessions which you can find here.

Oh, and I also spoke a couple times internally at work!

Blogging

I blogged 127 times in 2024, up dramatically from the pervious year. 51 of those were Interesting Links of the Week and 76 were articles I wrote during a pretty cool streak I had going during some bench time at work.

The biggest lesson learned was that writing and publishing every day is hard without a solid plan in place. I hope to get back to more steady article writing before summer hits.

Reading

My “Books of 2024” post is almost done and will be published soon, but a sneak peak is that I crushed my reading goal last year by 13 books. I had a good mix of business and pleasure and I’m on pace to beat the 2024 record.

Journaling

Journaling has been a daily habit since the end of 2019, and in 2024, I filled three notebooks totalling 1152 pages.

Wrap-up

2024 was a pretty good year, although I did spend some time on the bench at work (the life of a consultant). I took advantage of that time and got some use out of my personal Pluralsight subscription (and a little from my employers learning platform).

I’m looking forward to a solid 2025!

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