My 2017 Year in Review
I had a really great time writing my previous 2016 Year in Review, so let’s do this again 😊
Work 👩🏾💻
This year, for many reasons, I decided it was time for me to get a job at a company outside Nigeria. I started applying for jobs in December last year, and applied for *loads* of jobs, most of which either never responded or responded negatively.
It wasn’t until I tweeted about my search for a remote job that I got many meaningful responses, which eventually led to me getting a position with the awesomest company, eyeo!
At eyeo, I work as a Frontend developer, building websites for our various products.
In addition to working at eyeo, I helped start Bitkoin Africa, a platform for trading Bitcoin in Nigeria (and soon all of Africa). Working in these two environments has been an amazing learning experience for me, as I have gotten to experience the best of both very different worlds. Working at eyeo has taught me a lot about working with other people, and developing processes. Working on Bitkoin, on the other hand, has taught me how to build large, complex, web applications with very particular audience needs.
Personal Projects 👩🏾💻
This year, I didn’t start nearly as many new personal projects as I did last year. Although I still wrote a lot of code (1,460 contributions to GitHub), the vast majority of it was either as contributions to other people’s repositories, updates to my existing projects, or new secret 🙊 projects.
Writing ✍🏾
My writing goal for this year was to, unrestricted by a weekly schedule, be able to write both longer and shorter articles. I did more of the former, but still haven’t felt comfortable enough to write really short, bite-sized pieces yet.
With starting my new job at eyeo (and spending a lot of my personal time on Bitkoin), I didn’t manage to write as many articles as I usually do. In total, I wrote 20 articles, half as much as I did last year. However, those 20 articles gathered over 500,000 Page Views, almost the same as the 40 articles did last year. My mailing list also grew substantially, from 1,431 to 2,541 subscribers!
These were my 10 most popular articles written this year:
- Linting HTML using CSS
- 3 New CSS Features to Learn in 2017
- Understanding the Critical Rendering Path
- How the minmax() Function Works
- Asynchronous vs Deferred JavaScript
- CSS Grid Terminology, Explained
- CSS Animations vs the Web Animations API: A Case Study
- How I Animated the bitsofcode Logo with CSS
- How calc() Works
- What’s the Deal with Collapsible Margins?
I also continued with my goal of doing more video tutorials, and released a 6-part video series on how to implement Web Push Notifications using Firebase.
Speaking & Community 🎤
This year I spoke at 13 different events, giving 10 different talks. Two of those events were particularly notable and challenging for me. The first was speaking at WeAreDevelopers in Vienna, because I spoke in front of an audience of over 1,000 people, the largest I have ever done!
The second was speaking the the Google Developer Experts Summit, because my audience consisted entirely of actual web experts. Luckily, I had really positive responses from both these talks 😊.
Here are some of the talks I gave:
- Web Accessibility: It Doesn’t Have to be Hard (Slides)
- Web Components: The Future of Web Applications (Slides)
- What about CSS? Progressive Enhancement & CSS (Updated)(Slides)
- Becoming a GDE & Overcoming Stage Fright (Slides)
Besides speaking at conferences abroad, I started a new Frontend focused conference here in Lagos, Nigeria called Frontstack. We had our first ever event in October and it went incredibly well. We aim to have conferences every few months, so if you live in the area and are interested make sure to check out our Forum for any new information.
One of the highlights of the year was getting to meet with Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google. At a Google for Nigeria event, I got the amazing opportunity to speak with him about a Progressive Web Application I built and the community work I do locally. It was awesome! 😭
Finally, I decided to start a small scholarship program to get more Nigerian women into technology. The IA Scholarship is currently sponsoring a few women to complete a Udacity Nanodegree of their choosing for 6 months. The first batch should be over in a few months, and hopefully I’ll be able to do it again soon after.
Life
Travel ✈️
The best part of speaking at conferences is being able to travel to and experience new countries. This year, I got to visit 3 new countries — Poland, Austria, and Belgium.
Reading 📖
Although I generally don’t read a lot, I read a handful of really interesting and impactful books this year. My top 3 were:
- “Letters to my Little Sister” by Anna Akanna
- “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah
- “Hostage” by Guy Delisle (Graphic Novel)
Yoga 🧘🏾♀️
This year I started doing daily yoga, and have done it everyday for the past 3 months. I’ve always loved yoga as a form of exercise, I used to do Bikram Yoga in university. Doing daily yoga has been a great way to start my day and I hope to continue it for as long as I can.
What about 2018?
I’m always excited for the new year, but 2018 should be particularly interesting. My goals for next year are mainly to continue on the path I took this year. With work, I want to continue doing great work with eyeo and Bitkoin. With speaking, I want to continue giving talks on more interesting and challenging topics. With life, I want to travel more and experience new countries.
