2022 … The Year in Review!
A Quick Look Back At the Highlights of The Year That Was 2022
The year is almost over! At the time of release, we are a little under three weeks away from the start of 2023. So what better time to look at the year that was 2022. For me, 2022 was in many ways a big year, so in this post what I want to do is to go over the highlights for this past and to look ahead to 2023. If you’re reading this, I would love to see your highlights of 2022, so why not share them in the responses below or on social media.
So with all that being said, let’s dive into the highlights of 2022.
My Personal Highlights of 2022
In a lot of ways 2022 was a significant year in my development, particularly on a community contribution front. 2022 was the year that saw me do even more than any other year, part of that was due to in-person events starting to occur more often after the lockdowns we saw through 2020 and the impact it had on 2021. There were a number of people in the Trailblazer that dove back into the in-person events this year as well, it wasn’t just me.
Admittedly, it’s going to be hard to write just a short piece covering the highlights for me across this year. But my aim here is going to be to keep it brief, so I’m going to focus on my top 5 highlights for 2022. So let’s dive in.
#1: Meeting So Many Amazing Trailblazers
Over the course of the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a number of different amazing Trailblazers from all across the globe. Some of these meetings occurred virtually, many happened in-person while attending events all across the globe. Part of that has been an uptake in the number of Trailblazers I have had the pleasure of mentoring. This year I’ve been able to mentor three Trailblazers through the Supermums programme. Over the course of the past year I’ve been able to meet a number of people that until this year, I’d only met virtually. Many of the people I met for the first time in-person this year included people that I’ve personally looked up to during my time in the Trailblazer Community and Salesforce ecosystem.
If I was to write the names of all of the amazing people I’ve met this year, I would probably need another two or three posts just to include them all. Out of all of the highlights of 2022, this to be has to be at the top of the list.
#2: Getting to Travel the World
Prior to 2022 I hadn’t really had the chance to travel for work or even for holidays. Historically my family would do day trips to places like the Lake District rather than go on holiday abroad. In fact, before I went to Prague in May for CzechDreamin’, I had only been out of the UK twice (one of those times was to go to Ireland). Before my trip to Prague, I hadn’t been abroad in almost a decade, and I hadn’t been on a plane in over 15 years.
This year I’ve been able to have the chance to go to a number of different countries for the very first time, I was able to travel to 5 countries across three different continents. This to me was really cool as I found that I do actually quite enjoy getting visit different places … even if I do struggle with the food at times. It’s been great to go to all these different places.
Over the course of 2022, I got to visit Prague, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Casablanca and Paris. Never before have I been able to travel so much. I thoroughly enjoyed my time going to all of these different places. It is my hope to be able to go and visit at least some of these places sometime soon.
#3: Launching Automation Dreamin’
When I first started to get involved in the Trailblazer Community, one of my pipedreams was to launch a community conference. Originally my idea was to start one up for the North of England, but after I started to get more involved in the declarative automation space in the ecosystem I began to reconsider that idea and came to the conclusion that pivoting towards a conference focused on automation would be a better fit.
This year, along with my co-founder Vicki Moritz-Henry, I finally launched a community conference, and it couldn’t have gone any better in my view. We saw around 400 people come and join us across two days, filled with sessions covering a variety of topics within the automation umbrella. We talked about Mulesoft, Flow, and marketing automation (just to name a few examples). Why not check out the recordings now from our initial event.
This was a particular highlight for me this year. It’s always great to be able to check off items of your list of goals, but with this being a goal for around 3 years now, this felt great to check off. I think a number of people who were there found the event to be extremely helpful as well, so that makes this a highlight for me even more so than simply checking off a goal.
#4: Levelling Up My Contributions in the Trailblazer Community
I don’t think I could in good faith write this post without talking about the community contributions I have made this year. Over the course of 2022, I spoke 15 times across 11 conference events, spanning 7 countries both in an in-person form as well as virtually. It was a packed year for sure.
On top of that I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at a number of different community group events across the year and continued to help out with the Open Source Commons Programme with Salesforce.org where I could. On top of the stuff I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, I also ran a 10-week series on Flow which saw a number of Trailblazers come to learn more about how to use Flow Builder. In many ways it seemed that this past year was a year where I was laying the groundwork for the future.
#5: Contributing in Salesforce Content and Events
Last but certainly not least are the contributions I was involved in with Salesforce itself. If you had asked me when I first embarked on my career journey in the Salesforce ecosystem back in 2016 if I would one day see my face and name on official Salesforce material, I would have honestly said no. However, this year that actually happened, and it was really special.
This year I was able to be part of the community blog series tied to the new Admin Skills Kit that was launched at TrailblazerDX back in April. I was invited to contribute in multiple sessions at Salesforce World Tour in London, spoke at Dreamforce and was asked to participate in the keynote at French Touch Dreamin’ by Princial Admin Evangelist, Gillian Bruce. Honestly, I am so grateful for all of these opportunities that came up this year. I’m not raising this point to try and make me look big or special, the reason I’m so proud of all of the contributions I was able to make in 2022 is because things like the Admin Skills Kit are great tools and resources to help people in the Trailblazer Community excel in their careers. Anything that I do this year or in the future in and around the Trailblazer Community comes with the express goal of wanting to see those things help people.
That all being said, it has been a really highlight to be able to contribute to the ecosystem in these ways this past year. I’ve been able to meet some of the people at Salesforce who I’ve admired for a long time. So I can’t really lie and say that I‘m not really proud and happy to have had those moments.
But What About 2023? … What’s Next for Me?
OK, so looking ahead to next year, what am I looking to do in 2023? Well, I have several things in mind for next year. I might not be able to do all of them, but all being well I’ll be able to do at least some of what’s on my list.
Here’s just some of what’s on the horizon (hopefully) for 2023:
#1: A Rebrand of Ragamuffin Admin
After a lot of deliberation over the course of several months and some polling I have made the decision to pivot my blog writing in and around the Salesforce space to be purely focused on Flow. The reason for this is similar to that of why I decided to launch Automation Dreamin’. That is that most of what people in the Trailblazer Community either know me or come to me for is Flow. So as I began to think in recent months more about what I wanted to cover with that blog I began to think about making my blog one that focused on Flow. In all honesty, I hold back on a lot of content ideas because this blog isn’t a Flow blog, so there are blogs that I have put on the back burner throughout 2022 because I didn’t want to alienate anyone who would read my blog. So with all of that context in mind, I will be kicking off my newly rebranded blog in early 2022 (hopefully in January). I’m currently doing the design and build of the website that I’ll host my blog on, I hope to have that completed by the end of the year ready to launch in January 2023.
I will be looking at creating a means for sharing other content that I want to share. That will most likely end up being through LinkedIn articles at this stage I think. That being said, I do think that this is the right move.
N.B. More details to come closer to launch of the rebranded blog site.
#2: Further Creation and Delivery of Flow Sessions
With running the Build It In Flow series during the last quarter of this year, I am currently making plans to run more short series’ on Flow across 2023. These will most likely take the form of short sets of sessions lasting around 4–6 weeks a piece. I’m working on some ideas for these different sets of sessions that I’ll be looking to start up sometime in the next year.
Some of the ideas I have for these series’ include:
- Automation Planning and Strategy
- Flow Design and Architecture
- Flow Orchestration Building and Strategy
- Slack and Flow Builder
I’m currently working on the content for these sessions. However, if you would like to share your thoughts and let me know what sessions you would like to see, you can respond to my quick form on that here.
#3: Continuing My Contributions to the Trailblazer Community
I’ll also be continuing my contributions to the Trailblazer Community throughout 2023. How things progress on the job front will determine how some of this looks. But I hope to get to be able to go to some of the amazing community events going on throughout the next year. I’m also looking into other things I can do in and around the community to help where I can. There are a number of ideas I have in mind, I don’t know yet whether I’ll be able to do them all next year or if some of them will roll on to future years. That being said, I’ll be doing what I can to to help our amazing Trailblazer Community like I’ve been working to do other the last couple of years.
Right now I have a poll going on about an idea I had to run a short series of sessions on the various career paths within the Salesforce ecosystem. If you would like to participate in that ongoing poll, you can do so via the link here.
Closing Remarks
I think 2022 has been an amazing year. There have been positive things to talk about, honestly I could have talked about many more amazing things that have taken place this year. But I wanted to keep this post brief, and to write it in such a way as to hopefully encourage you to share your stories from this year. I would honestly love to hear your highlights from this year. So why not share them in the responses below or online via social media. Let me know what your highlights have been of the year. Let’s close the year out on a high by sharing some of our favourite stories from the year.
Resources
- Automation Dreamin’: Website | Recordings
- Skills for Success: A New 14-Part Blog Series for Salesforce Admins
