2024 has been…uh…interesting. I hesitate to call it a good year (for me) as it presented a ton of personal and professional challenges, but everyone I love is safe and healthy and that counts for a lot.
What 2024 was terrible for was blogging. I posted all of 5 posts all year on my personal blog (and honestly a couple of those were effortless announcement-type posts). Encouraged by the writing workshop on the Wiggle Work community (I encourage you to check them out), I hope to turn this around in 2025 starting with this year in review.
Professional
The big professional change this year was that I left LaunchDarkly back in July to take a role leading the Developer Relations team at LocalStack. I loved much of my time at LaunchDarkly. When I joined they had a wonderful hardworking but supportive culture, but, suffice it to say, the culture and work environment had dramatically changed once new leadership took over.
Sadly, LaunchDarkly was not alone in these sorts of changes. 2024 definitely saw a tech industry filled with layoffs, benefit cuts, increased stress and workload and deteriorating culture. It’s not as though there is a shortage of resources, but companies and venture capital have been pouring money into a very expensive AI race. Ed Zitron recently said, “This year has, on some level, radicalized me,” and this is one of the reasons that resonates with me. Interviewing for new roles only reaffirmed much of my growing apprehension of the tech industry as a whole – not just as an industry to work in but also in terms of its impact on the current state of the world (which, I think we can almost all agree, is bad and getting worse).
The good news is that I found a company and culture that aligned with my values, with leaders who care about their employees and colleagues who are genuinely nice and supportive. Plus, I really believe in and excited by the value of the product we’re building. We recently announced our Series A funding, so 2025 is going to be a year of rapid growth and changes, but I’m hopeful that it gives me the opportunity to build a great DevRel team.
Developer Community
My side work building CFE.dev and as President of Orlando Devs continued. It was very often challenging from a time and effort perspective and a big reason why I didn’t do as much writing as I wanted to. This forced me to do some hard thinking about where I want to go with these in 2025. To be honest, I haven’t fully decided on what (if any) changes I’ll make (though, as I’ll discuss later, some personal news will definitely impact my work with Orlando Devs).
CFE.dev
I ran 4 virtual conferences (and emceed them all as well), 16 virtual meetups and hosted 7 episodes of DevRel(ish) in 2024 via CFE.dev. In addition, I supported Nick Taylor in his hosting of the 2 Full 2 Stack and Ray Camden hosting <Code> <Br> on the site (creating banners, posting episodes and managing promotion and technical logistics). In addition, until making the decision back in July to shut down my Jamstacked newsletter, I’d released 15 issues in 2024.
It. Was. A. Lot.
Arguably, it was too much, which is what I’m reevaluating. I love running the site and I know it means a lot to folks (every time I am at a conference people come up and mention it, which feels great). Finding a proper balance where working on the site feels like fun rather than work is a goal for 2025.
Orlando Devs
I helped run 9 meetups and one hackathon via Orlando Devs. In addition, I helped manage our Slack, arrange venues for all our supported meetups (Orlando Innovation League, OrlandoJS, Orlando DevOps, Orlando PHP, Project Codex and more) and help with setup and logistics for most of their meetups this year. In addition, as President of the Executive Committee (Orlando Devs is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization), I led our weekly executive committee meetings and monthly board meetings.
My work with Orlando Devs is definitely one of the more satisfying things I do. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the impact that these events have on folks in the community – helping them build their skills, network and even, in some cases, finding them a job – is worth it.
Personal
There were definitely some big personal events in 2024. My youngest son graduated from high school and went to college (and then came back due to some struggles I won’t get into here). I ended up in the hospital for 5 days back in July, which precipitated much of my rethinking around the degree of my commitments. Everything is fine now and I actually have just completed all the necessary follow up tests and surgery (and there are no long term negative effects thankfully).
I also did a lot of volunteering around the election and have really struggled with the outcome. It has caused me to rethink much of what I was doing, where I was putting my personal effort and how everything was negatively impacting my mental health. I don’t have any clear answers yet.
The big news, which I haven’t shared widely until now is that my wife accepted a major promotion which will be bringing us back to Boston, probably around May/June this year. This means that early 2025 is a lot about getting ready for this move (selling the house, packing, finding a new place, etc.). It also means that my work with Orlando Devs will come to an end, so I am working with my colleagues on some kind of transition plan. Nonetheless, I’m excited about the move. We lived in Boston for 12 years before coming to Orlando and always loved it (except shoveling…I hate shoveling).
Goals for 2025
- Obviously, the big, time-consuming goal is the Boston move.
- Build a great team at LocalStack. We’re hiring now and we’ve got some big goals for 2025.
- Transition my Orlando Devs work. Hopefully I can find someone open to doing this work and bringing some new energy and ideas to this community.
- Run events through CFE.dev. We’ve already scheduled the 4 virtual conferences for this year. Ray and Nick are still working on their shows. I just need to figure out the timing and frequency of my work on the meetups and DevRel(ish). Also, I hope to rebuild the site using Astro.
- Speaking of rebuilding sites…this blog uses a really old Astro set up and I would like to update it.
- Blog more. Speak more (I only spoke at 3 events in 2024 and I would like to do that).