Looking back on 2019 — by Erick Wendel

7 countries, 98 talks, over 100 thousand people reached, two software awards, one software competition in Silicon Valley, and overwhelming joy! Yes, my friends… This year has gone down in history and I would like to share with you all the excitement of having so many achievements in so little time! I want to tell you about some of the most incredible moments of my life, and I hope you enjoy it and share with your friends.

January/ 2019

January was a relatively calm month, but it brought on some great accomplishments, big decisions and, most importantly, it’s the month when I was recognized among thousands and thousands of professionals in my field.

Paragliding in Santos, SP

• 01/01 — On the first day of the year I had the idea to take part in one of the scariest sports, for some people — paragliding. There’s a video on Youtube so you can enjoy the whole gliding experience — click here: Voo de Paraglide — Erick Wendel.

Interview about my career for an important Tech channel.

• 02/01 — Starting the year in full swing, I was invited by Rodrigo Pokemon to tell a bit of my story on the show The Velopers #21. As many of you know, I come from a poor neighborhood on the East Side of Sao Paulo (Sao Mateus) and I’ve been able to achieve many things that I’d never even dreamed of. In this video, I talk a bit about how the process went down. If you’ve never heard of me before, I strongly advise you to take a look at this video.

The world’s first Coding Dojo using VSCode Live Share.

• 10/01 — Have you ever heard of VSCode Live Share? There is an extension for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code that allows you to access your peer’s editor through the internet, debug code and even develop collaboratively. Emmanuel Brandão and I had the idea to make the WORLD’S first Online Coding Dojo using this tool (and managed to crash it midway through the video LOL). You can access this link to check it out.

Nominated Google Developer Expert on Web Technologies

• 17/01 — Yes, this truly was a magical day for me. The Google Developer Expert award is given to developers who have proven to be specialists in their field. I had to go through three steps: First, an interview about the impact of my contributions towards software communities. Then, another interview about my influence among software communities; and finally, an interview with a Google employee who judged me at a technical level on projects I was developing involving the area that I was applying to (Node.js). I’m thankful for Felipe nominating me for the program. It is remarkable that there were only 30 GDEs in Brazil and that I was the second in the whole country to hold both nominations, for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and Google Developer Expert.

Professional milestone reached as a Software Consultant and Instructor

Not many of you know it, but I, unfortunately, do not make any money directly from my contributions to software communities. The thing that provides me with the means to pay my bills is my work in software architecture consulting and providing training in software specialized areas. On this date, my mentor Marco Riveiros taught me how to do business and how to show my skills with deliveries. Then I was able to take a big and important step at Kroton Tecnologia, which is a major education company in Brazil with at least one thousand employees, by providing hands-on training on Kubernetes and Docker.

Delivering the free Node.js course for beginners

• 27/01 — A course to teach from the basics of Javascript to the applications od Node.js in production. This was extensive content that I created and in which I’ve spent at least 300 hours or preparation and more than R$10.000 out of my own pocket. It costs around $99 monthly to stay online (today proudly kept by Projeto Amigu, its the main sponsor). This course takes a considerable level of commitment until now, with more than 8 hours of content and over 20 thousand active students. It is still relevant and you can find it here — treinamento.nodebr.org.

The decision to go on an Exchange Program in the United States and invest all of my savings

With so many great things happening, I knew I could maximize everything that was in motion and concluded that this would be the ideal moment to take the next step in my career. I then decided to take an intensive English course in the USA to perfect my language skills and, as a bonus, be closer to famous developers such as Github, Microsoft, Twillio, Slack, Facebook, and Google programmers and, especially, to core Node.js developers, since it’s the platform I’m actively teaching about. This was a tricky point in my career because I’d invested every penny out of my savings, at the risk of not being able to make important payments such as my mother’s university tuition, my rent and my overseas personal expenses. I do believe this was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and that all the following achievements derived from it.

February/ 2019

I hardly knew that it was only the beginning. I was ready to go on the Exchange Program, studying English so that I wouldn’t get there so raw, and still fighting not to miss anything that was happening in Brazil.

The farewell in Brazil and a new adventure in the USA.

• 01/02 — One of the most important moments that took place was my going-away party with friends. I felt a mix of happiness and anxiety. Undoubtedly, my friends’ support was essential for my personal growth (even if they’re not aware of it). We took over the pub, a whole lot of people showed up and then I knew that it marked both the end of one important life cycle and the beginning of another.

Invitation to IBM world’s largest event as a Tech Influencer

• 13/02 — Now in San Francisco, California, myself and my great friends (who are also IBM Brazil employees) Victor Shinya and Sergio Gama took part in this amazing event. It was completely different from anything I’d experienced before. For the last party of the event, IBM had Pier 39 — one of the major touristic attractions in the city — booked exclusively for the event, with all the restaurants and stores in the Pier at the attendees’ disposal, and it was all free. Unbelievable.

My first workshop in English for the Nodeschool San Francisco community.

• 17/02 — Having been in the States for under two weeks, I was already going at a thousand miles per hour! Those who know me also know that I’m the personification of anxiety, and I longed for an opportunity to leave my mark. I didn’t have much confidence in my abilities in English, but my official level was B2-III Upper Intermediate at the language school, which “proved” that I was of an Intermediate level (not that I believed it, LOL), but I didn’t let it stop me from applying. I submitted many talks, one of them being to Nodeschool San Francisco, where I created an Issue on Github with the topic I wanted to present and I got approved. Honestly, it was quite a challenge to talk for almost 3 hours about the step-by-step on how to build an application in a language that I considered really, really difficult, but I did it! Take a look at the content here.

Winning a software competition as a member of a Brazilian team against the world on Silicon Valley.

• 24/02 — This was also one of the most awesome accomplishments of my entire life. I was in the United States with a team of noisy Brazilians trying to beat Americans and people from all over the world. We were in the legendary Silicon Valley, where Brazilians are intimidated by the ability of programmers and technologists but we won using all of the drive and determination that we’d brought from home and we proved our worth. An article has been published where you can learn more about our product — read it here — Seeing is receiving genie gifting.

March/2019

Yeah, guys! I was invited to one of the most important events in the world and was able to teach in English to native speakers, and they loved it! The icing on the cake was winning a major software competition at the end of the month… but that was only the beginning and I could not tell what was to come.

Visiting the Github HQ on Silicon Valley

• 01/03 — My month was going great, I was attending language school and had a lot of meetups on my “to do” list. Since I was studying in San Francisco, California, I would cease all the opportunities and never miss a single tech meetup. Why? Because not only are they free, but they also happen at the headquarters of those large, legendary tech companies. That’s how I got to go to the Github HQ, got a bunch of stickers and saw fresh content on Docker and Web Assembly.

My first large international conference: JSKongress in Germany

• 12/03 — One of the most memorable days of my entire career. I was selected to speak in Munich, Germany, to at least 800 people from all over the world. It was the first time I saw snow. JSKongress is a large and renowned European conference that accommodates great names of the worldwide Tech industry. I’ve had the immense pleasure of speaking and sharing a beer with great names such as Michael Hladky (world reference in Angular), Manfred Steyer (core committer in the Angular project), Sean Larkin (core committer on the Webpack project and Microsoft Edge) and Kamil Mysliwiec (creator of the Nest Framework). At this particular conference, I got very sick one day before my talk and was really afraid I might not be able to make it. My stomach hurt and I had something similar to food poisoning but in the end, it all worked out and I came back with yet another accomplishment to make the world know what Brazilians are capable of. The video for my presentation is available here: Scaling Node.js applications with Kubernetes and Docker.

Second workshop at Nodeschool San Francisco

• 30/03 — Back to the USA, I applied to give a workshop at one of the most important Node.js communities of Sao Paulo via Issue on Github and guess what? I got accepted again! This time, the workshop took place at the company where I gave my first talk in English. It was magical to go back to that place and share content once again. There I met a super friend who has helped me since then, Fernando Larañaga.

April/2019

All right, in April I became much more confident in my English skills and was out-of-control teaching! I talked about serverless apps in Berkeley, had a workshop at Nodeschool San Francisco about VSCode extensions using Typescript and got to speak about VSCode extensions at the renowned SFNode, one of the most popular Node.js communities in California. On this last talk, I created an extension that converted words from Portuguese to English by only selecting text on an editor. The crowd loved it and I personally believe it was my greatest meetup presentation in the region because I got to do a lot of live coding and all of my jokes worked (phew!).

My birthday in another country, far way my parents and friends.

Yeah, my friends… being in another country, rebuilding friendships, living in a different timezone and chasing your goals is neither as simple nor as glamorous as the internet makes it seem. I, at this point, was already feeling a bit lonely, with no one to turn to, and what bothered me the most: out of cash. Yes, I planned to focus on my English skills, not working and not worrying about my expenses back in Brazil. so, I kept paying rent and making other necessary payments in my homeland. At the language school, students were on average around 17–20 years old, which means, under American law, they are still underage. I could not even invite someone to go grab a beer because it was illegal for them to drink. That day, in itself, was quite sad. However, I decided to go to a meetup that some Brazilians were organizing, the Bay Meetup, where Rodrigo Pokemon would give his first talk in English. Before his talk, he asked for a minute for everyone to sing me Happy Birthday and that simply turned my whole day around. It was something I cannot even begin to describe, Brazilians are just awesome!

Approved to speak in Texas, Oklahoma, and Medellin

While I was still taking part in the Exchange program, working hard on improving my English skills and applying to give talks and presentations all over the world, I got approved to do many events in different regions of the world. I got the confirmation for a talk about serverless applications at 200ok.us, about Kubernetes and Docker at Texas Linux Fest 2019, and one of the most awaited approvals: to talk about Javascript performance at NodeConf Colombia. NodeConf at the moment was one of the events I most wanted to get approved at because all of the Node.js team would be there sharing experiences. For me, that was one of the biggest achievements of the year.

End of the language course and the Exchange Program

• 26/04 — My last test at the language school, where I obtained great results and achieved my goals. I started at the level B2–3 (Upper-Intermediate) and came out of my last test with the result of C1–3 (Advanced). That was something incredible for me and showed me that everything I was doing was worth the effort. I remember going to school, leaving and hanging out at Starbucks until closing. I would review what I’d learned in class and creating content using the rules and examples I’d learned. At first, it was quite hard to assimilate so much and try to compete with the young 17–20-year-old students LOL.

May/2019

Well, my friends, the year was not half over yet and I already couldn’t believe the course my life was taking. All those sleepless nights studying technology and sharing content were well worth it. May was my last month in San Francisco as an English student and so many cool things were already in the making, even though I didn’t realize it yet.

Farewell party in my honor, organized by community leaders in San Francisco to send me off

Can you believe it? The people from Silicon Valley, so well-known for being cold and distant, got together and wrote me a goodbye letter! I couldn’t believe it either until I’d read it for the third time! It really moved me and made me believe that I was an important part of those people’s lives, sharing knowledge and also the Brazilian software communities’ philosophy. It made me even more motivated and gave me the feeling that my duty there was done, but that I still had so much more to do around the world.

Back to Brazil after the Exchange

Coming back to Brazil was a pretty emotional time. I went abroad planning on not working to be able to focus on my studies, but when I came back, none of my clients were in touch with me anymore and I was at risk of not making rent, my mom’s university tuition and making ends meet.

• 05/05 — On the day I came back, we had a happy hour to reunite the gang. I won’t deny that I need neither reason nor encouragement to meet friends for drinks (call me and I’ll be there, LOL). But this was a pretty special moment for me because of the reality shock I got with the Brazilian friends’ warm welcome. I’m not saying that Americans/foreigners are not hospitable, but it’s simply beyond compare. Loud Brazilians, who want to hug everyone and crack jokes all the time, with no fear of judgment, it’s a whole other level of relationship/friendship.

Speaker in Tulsa, Oklahoma as a Keynote Speaker

• 17/05 — What a busy month! I had just come back from the USA, was short for cash and going back to America again. Something curious about this event: all of the content was chosen by the community without them knowing the speakers’ names/ profiles. In the picture, women are amazingly represented and all of them were chosen by the content they were presenting, which makes me incredibly happy. My talk was one of the best voted out of the whole event calendar, so I was made Keynote Speaker and mine was recognized as one of the most important presentations, speaking at the end of the event. Take a look at all the content I spoke about here: WTF are Serverless apps?

NerdZao: Celebrating the group’s 2nd anniversary and awards

• *25/05 * — This was an amazing moment for NerdZao’s history. 2 years of existence, 15K+ members and immeasurable impact made on the Brazilian software community. With over 30 organizers, e decided to reward those who contributed the most with a trophy and some handwritten letters. For a better understanding of how this special day went, access NerdZao: Behind the Scenes of a Brazillian Technology Community.

June/2019

Wow, what a complicated phase after the exchange. I had talks in three very different places, running the risk of not making ends meet and with a huge internal crisis eating me up inside. I remember that, as soon as I came back from those three months in the USA, I hurried to get back in touch with my clients, and luckily I got an architecture project to design. I paid whatever was pending for the month, but I still had no clue what to do the next month. I battled once again to get another customer. After some struggle, I was able to close the deal on another architecture project with a different company, and things started looking up. With very few clients and no ongoing projects, my anxiety crisis grew and so I decided to make the big, hard choice of going back to the job market.

Presentation at NodeConf in Medellin, Colombia

• 22/06 — I dare say that Colombia was one of the best places I’ve been to, as a speaker. It was my first time in a Latinamerican country and I felt at home. The crowd was engaged, laughing at my jokes, answering questions and making an effort to learn more and more. The event staff was remarkable, besides paying for everything, they also arranged an amazing dinner and drinks about Medellin’s local history and were incredibly thoughtful with speakers. Something curious about this event was that everyone, regardless of fame, knowledge or history, was chosen by submitting their presentations with hidden names, and got chosen according to the topic they would speak about. For me, that was one of the most important talks of my career, for being respected just as much as some worldwide famous speakers. Some of them were highly regarded names in the Node.js and Javascript ecosystem. Out of the members of the world committee and contributors to the Node.js project, there were Anna Henningsen, James Snell, Ruben Bridgewater, Tierney Cyren, Adrián Estrada and Julián Duque, all speaking and having a few beers with me (LOL). Check out the contents of my presentation in 10 secrets to improve Javascript Performance.

Started working at Beetech Global as a Leader Software Architect

• 28/06 — What a hard decision to make! I had just decided to go back to the market, so worried about what was to come. As I mentioned above, I’d invested all of my savings into my Exchange Program and was at risk of not being able to pay my monthly bills. Then I got a message, right here on LinkedIn, from the Engineering VP at Beetech Global and, two minutes later, from the company’s CEO. That was a real “Oh wow, they must really want me, LOL” moment. We got to talk and negotiated some financial matters and also adjusted expectations, and the following week there I was, joining the team. It was an important new beginning and an immense, endless challenge. Read the post they wrote about me at This is Bee — Erick Wendel.

July/2019

July was the month when I got many e-mails about events on which I applied to speak. Many of them were rejection messages. To give you some perspective, up until this moment I’d been approved for three international conferences. However, I must have gotten at least 200 rejection letters. Ultimately, I’m competing against the whole world, and living in Brazil makes it more expensive to get me to speak (since event organizations usually cover all the costs with transportation and accommodation), so in many cases, it’s not for them to take me to Europe, for example, when they have so many options around.

Ana Beatriz and Erick start dating

• 03/07 — I confess I was pretty surprised when it happened. Among so many trips, so many appointments and dreams, someone came along to give attention and to share things about life. That was pretty hard to believe. Today, Ana Beatriz, my current girlfriend, is my biggest support when it comes to making decisions and chasing my dreams. Not only is she also in programming, but she also provides me support and motivation. Everything that comes next is a direct result of her great influence and partnership.

Renewing the Microsoft Most Valuable Award

• 11/07 — I got my third nomination for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award. Microsoft recognizes specialists and influencers of specific areas who must keep their work relevant by producing content and/or organizing software communities. I was recognized for the first time in 2017 under the category Web technology, focused on Node.js. Access my profile to see my contributions to the field.

Class: APIs development with Node.js (a partnership with Gama Academy)

• 13/07 — Yes, I’m hyperactive and cannot sit still for a single second, LOL. Besides having great responsibilities at Beetech Global, speaking in many countries and keeping my relationship with my babe, I decided to add another responsibility to my list and teach a class for newly-hired Avanade employees, partnering with Gama Academy. Over 40 hours of content, from basic Javascript to an application under production. Would you like to schedule a class/training session at your company? E-mail me at comercial@erickwendel.com.br.

August/2019

A very busy month, full of changes. At Beetech Global, I was analyzing application performances, and solving all sorts of problems. Burning the candle at both ends and trying not to lose it. It was also this month that one of my favorite Brazilian conferences took place and I’m going to talk a bit more about that in a few.

Keynote at the largest technology event held entirely in English of Brazil — TheConf

• 17/08 — An event held 100% in English, in Brazil. Something that’s even hard to imagine, since Brazilians don’t need/use English in their everyday tasks and the language is considered difficult by many. This particular presentation contained some content I created out of chaos. At Beetech Global, I had a huge problem with load balancing between process queues while using RabbitMQ and Node.js libraries. As a result, I had to burn the midnight oil working long nights at the office. On a certain Thursday, I came into the office and only clocked out at 1 am on Friday. I headed to my apartment, ordered pizza and started writing this presentation. At 9 a.m., I still wasn’t finished, but I took a shower and went back to the office, even though I hadn’t slept at all. On that same day, I arrived home at about 7 p.m. and went straight back to work on my talk. Mine would be the first talk of the event, aiming at getting people pumped up for the day. Upon delivering the talk, realizing that all my hard work had more than paid off was amazing. You can access this content on GraphQL + Apollo Server + Azure Functions = Magic.

Talking at the world’s largest Javascript event: BrazilJS

• 23/08 — I’ve been to Colombia, Ukraine, the United States, Canada, and many other countries, but the feeling of speaking at BrazilJS was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, not only because it was a Brazilian event organized to receive over 2000 people, but also because it felt like home. Many attendees posted that my talk was the best on the event, that they related to my story and complimented me on well-executed content delivery. It was the same content I’d presented at TheConf, in English. Two different languages, two completely different experiences. The sleepless nights were totally worth every second of it! Watch my BrazilJS talk. Another fantastic thing that happened was the TypeScript developer Orta Therox speaking at the event and using my picture as an example of how to contribute to communities in an article I wrote about TypeScript back in 2016. At this event, I met many renowned people in the field, such as Kenneth Rohde, who works on Google Chrome and W3C specifications; Rajat Kumar, Netflix developer; MPJ from FunFunFunction and many others.

September/2019

September was the month of soaring high in my own country and having tremendous fun. Here are a few things that really got me this month.

Keynote Speaker at Campus Party Goiás

• 06/09 — Well, I’ve had some onstage trouble, but this Campus Party outdid anything I’d been through. As a Keynote Speaker, I was supposed to give the most important talk of the event, drawing everyone’s full attention. At the time of my talk, all the other presentations stopped so everybody could focus on the main stage. To be recognized like this was fantastic, but you have no idea what I’ve been through during this presentation. For starters, I was meant to do a presentation on the Internet of Things. However, there was no Wi-Fi signal, so the organizers had to drill the wall behind the stage so I could get a network cable. Speaking to over 800 people, everything was going according to plan until the freakiest thing happened: they interrupted my presentation for a Cinemark publicity stunt where someone in a Pennywise costume came on stage to entertain the crowd and get them to go to Cinemark to watch the movie. So far so good, except that when the photographer tried to take a picture of the guy in costume he inadvertently kicked the table where my equipment was, and everything came crashing down. I panicked because I didn’t know whether the equipment would be working or not after the fall. This has been recorded and can be found on YouTube, where you can see the exact moment when it happened. After the fall, lights were on and I picked it up from where I’d stopped. My RaspberryPi, which had a camera, just stopped working. Luckily for me, the way I developed the software allowed me not to rely on the equipment, so I was able to execute the whole demonstration as if nothing happened.

Being named in a book about Kubernetes

• 09/09 — The book Kubernetes: Tudo sobre orquestração de contêineres is a bestseller written by one of my greatest friends, Lucas Santos. He is an extremely hardworking guy who deals with multiple contexts all the time. This book, for some reason, kept being pushed back in his list of priorities and he’d been working on it for almost a year when I started nagging him about getting it done. I told him to keep writing and complete his work, and he even asked me to write a prologue, but my lame self wasted time and did not get it done on time. When the book was published and I saw my name on the acknowledgments page it made me incredibly happy.

October/2019

People see me traveling back and forth, but they don’t not even half of the hassles I go through during those trips. In October my patience and self-control got stretched to its limits, but it was also the month I got to see one of the best bands in the world.

Rock In Rio 2019 — Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Slayer, Testament, Sepultura and much more

• 04/10 — Life is about more than events, presentations, and technical content! I do enjoy good music and my all-time favorite rock band is Iron Maiden. Rock in Rio is the largest rock festival in the country I was able to be there to enjoy this phenomenal spectacle. I was truly surprised to run into this kid at the concert, who pulled me aside and asked “Hey, are you Erick? I’ve been following you online for a long time!” This guy was from the Northeast of Brazil, was there just having a good time at the festival, and recognized me amongst the crowd! I have to tell you, the feeling was priceless!

Speaker at the largest API and microservices event of the world

• 09/10 — I wanna say, this event wasn’t such a big deal for me. Ultimately, it ended up being an event to promote API-related startup products. My good friend Thiago Lima was also a speaker at this event and the attendees said we administered the most technical content they’d seen there since everyone else seemed to be more interested in selling their products than sharing knowledge. Nonetheless, something that really stuck with me was the reaction I got from two important people on the software development scene: Shruti Kapoor, Paypal developer; and Rajat Kumar, Netflix developer and Restify maintainer. Rajat wanted to meet me no matter what, and we scheduled to have lunch together, the three of us, which they said it was their treat. I literally could not believe the admiration and respect they felt towards me, and that was something that made the whole trip worthwhile. This was also one of the events where the organizers didn’t cover the costs of transportation and accommodation, but Beetech Global covered it as my main sponsor.

Speaker at UY VOpen in Uruguay

• 22/10 — I went to Uruguay and got to try their barbecue and the Uruguayan chimarrão. Despite the fact that they understand Portuguese quite well, I gave my talk in English, demonstrating the IoT project I’ve been developing. As usual, I did speak at the large event but also attended local meetups to share knowledge and get to know the local software communities. It was an astounding experience. On this trip, I lost my wallet at the bar and that led to a lot of trouble. Luckily for me, my friend Alexandre Brandão was around to help me get by through the remainder of the trip. He was even considerate enough to drive me to the airport and withdraw some cash to help me in my next upcoming trip, and I paid him back a few months later. After Uruguay, I’d still have a great adventure going to Google Developer Experts Summit, so that was only the beginning of a lot of hassles. Check out the post I wrote about this trip on “Sorte ou azar? Viagens pelo mundo.”

Participating on Google Developer Experts Summit 2019

• 27/10 — This year I was nominated Google Developer Expert, and that meant I got some benefits, such as having some trips paid for by Google. At this event, Google covered both transportation and accommodation costs. I got to meet GDEs from around the globe and share a lot of experiences. However, what really marked this trip for me were the hassles. Remember how I lost my wallet in Uruguay, with all of my credit cards and documents inside? Well, luckily I didn’t lose my passport. I went Uruguay — Paraguay — Sao Paulo — Mexico City — Los Angeles to arrive at my final destination, San Jose. As soon as I got to Sao Paulo, the Brazilian customs officials stopped me to check my bags, causing me high levels of stress before they realized I was clean. Then, in Mexico, the plane I was in ran out of fuel and needed to make a stop in Acapulco, causing a delay in the flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles. After that, when I got to Mexico City, around 1 a.m., I was notified I would be placed in a hotel up to 5 a.m. to catch the next flight out, and that’s how I spent one night in Mexico. On the following day, I was able to make it to my final destination. I’d been traveling for three days straight and I just wanted to take a shower and get some rest. So I got to the hotel and the receptionist told me I needed a credit card to be able to check-in. Since I’d lost my wallet, I couldn’t check it and had to wait in the reception area for hours waiting for my roommate. Then a guy who was there helped me by lending me his credit card and I was finally allowed to get in. GDE Summit recorded a video that you can watch here: Sizzle GDE Summit 2019.

November/2019

November was one of the most important months of the year, for it was when I got confirmation to speak at the most important event in my whole career, moved to a new apartment, and visited Chernobyl in Ukraine.

Speaker at JSFest Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine

• 09/11 — I could hardly believe where I was. I come from a poor family from Sao Paulo and I was at the farthest place I’d ever been. I was there, ready and determined to do my best and present the best content, to represent Brazilians as best as possible, and it was wonderful. One day before heading to Ukraine, a friend told me that Kyiv is really close to Chernobyl, where the great nuclear blast happened causing the mass evacuation of an entire city called Pripyat. This was one of the most unique tours I’ve ever done, the visit to a ghost city contaminated by radiation and controlled by the military. Another interesting tour was the one to the army and Russian Intelligence bases that were a part of the Soviet Union at the time of the blast.

December/2019

It was the last month of the year and I simply couldn’t take any more trips and planes. I could not believe I’d been selected for the most important Node+JS event of the world, with all expenses paid for by the organization.

Live coding at Open Source Montréal Meetup

• 09/12 — So I was in Montreal. Back in Brazil, summer was at the door with temperatures around 36 degrees Celsius, and in Montreal, it was -10 Celsius. I honestly thought I couldn’t take it! However, I had tremendous help from one of the nicest guys I’ve met, Ruy Adorno, NPM developer. Before the main event, there was a local meetup where I was invited to give a 20-minute presentation. Since I was busy with my main presentation, I decided to do some live coding explaining how Docker works, and the people went crazy! NPM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Fastify, and Node.js employees were there to see me and it was spectacular.

Speaking at the most important Node.js event of the world — Node+JS Interactive 2019

• 11/12 — The most coveted event for any speaker who’s involved in the Javascript and Node.js ecosystem, and I’d been approved to speak there. This year simply could not have ended on a better note. To give you some notion of what it was like, let me say this: The Node.js developing team was there talking to everyone, drinking beer and talking about life. People who work for TC39, a committee that dictates Javascript functionalities, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Heroku, companies and people who provide tech solutions were all there. Netflix and Heroku hosted amazing dinner parties for speakers and technology influencers, where I was able to crack bad jokes with V8 developers, which renders Chrome and the base for Node.js, developers who work on functionalities like Worker Threads and SO much more. I could truly go on all day about how intense this event was. Being there, side by side and being treated as someone who’s on the same level as people I follow and admire was an experience that I wish everyone can have someday. It was like I’d gone to the bar with Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden lead singer) and he’d told me about his life and his struggles and asked me for advice. Absolutely unforgettable.

Hello, 2020!

Before I go any further, if you’ve read this far, let’s grab a beer, because I have so much more to tell you about what’s happened LOL. What I’ve written here, I wrote hoping to get this message through: Luck is preparation plus opportunity. I’m privileged for having so many good people around me, for having someone to rely on during tough times, and I’ll never forget where I’m from and where I want to go. I always say that my goal in life is to be immortal, I want to be remembered for generations for my actions and my legacy.

I really hope my story drives you to go further and believe yourself. I know sometimes I don’t believe myself, and when I get these awards and praises I wonder if I really deserve all of it, but I also know it’s an ongoing process of constant improvement.

I haven’t mapped out all of my goals for the coming year, but my first goal is learning Spanish, so I can participate more actively in the Latin American community.

And, with that, I say my goodbyes to you and thank you for all of your support through this journey! LET’S ROCK NEXT YEAR!