Well, it was a hard year, however some planned goals from last year has been achieved, some unplanned things happened, but I am writing this recap for the 4th year in a row to remind myself with the great things and share them with you and will keep the bad parts private. We got a new baby boy to my beautiful family, and moved to to a new job working on a cool product with huge scale.
I would summarize the year into sections:
1. Content Creation
- I gave 8 talks in different locations: that was fantastic to achieve one of the goals for me in 2023, 8 talks in different countries (🇳🇱Netherlands, 🇩🇪Germany, 🇭🇷Croatia, 🇺🇸USA, 🇪🇬Egypt) both in-person and online, feel free to check all recordings in my talks page.
- Semicolon Academy is now Yallacode: I changed the name of my arabic content initiative from semicolon to yallacode and created a landing page for the website (yallacode.com 🔗) until it is complete, feel free to check it out and subscribe to the newsletter as I am planning to announce some news soon.
- My recognition as GDE has been extended for the 3rd year: as I announced before about being recognized as a Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies in 2021, I got an extension email end of the year to keep the recognition, also, I got a plaque from google 🔗 as gift for GDE, also I have appeared in one of the GDE videos for the community (watch it 🔗 😉)
- My Youtube channels are growing: Unfortunately, I couldn’t make any content in Arabic for this entire year, however yallacode (formerly Semicolon) keeps growing and reached
~20k subscriberson Youtube 🔗 and~5k followerson X (@yallacode_) 🔗, maybe worth mentioning as well that my personal X (@med7atdawoud 🔗) account reached more than+15k followers🎉 and growing - Created Bluesky account: just because I didn’t like how X (Twitter) was behaving in the beginning after Elon Musk acquired it, I created an account on Blue sky 🔗, however most people are still on X (Twitter) and I am inviting you to follow me on blue sky and reach out to me on x (Twitter) in case you want an invitation 😉
- Gratitude: I am really gratiful for the great amount of people that I met this year for the first time in several places, also the online ones, I am gratiful for having a lot of well-known stars in the field of web and performance recogizing me more than before this year especially on X (Twitter), so thanks for every one who contributed to making this year a greate one and I hope I could be of any help for you as well 🙏
2. Career & Side Projects
- 1 year at Miro: as I shared in last year’s recap, I started working at Miro from the beginning of 2023, I can tell that it is one of the best steps in my career, working with brilliant people on a fantastic product that is leading the online white boards products, I proudly participated in delivering some great parts of the Enterprise Miro, looking forward doing more in 2024.
- Made some mentorship trials: What stoped me in the past from mentoring was the tight time, it is still a bit tight however I can assign mentoring others as part of my weekly schedule for around 4 hours per week, In 2023 I decided to give mentorship some time in a private 1:1 meetings, the feedback is not so bad, some improvement has to be done though, that will help for an official start in 2024 hopefully.
- Re-built my website using Astro: well I have been procrastinating this step for long time, the old version of my website was built using Gatsby 🔗 and it was really good and relevant 4 years ago, but recently I found that it requires a lot of changes to make it working properly again, and I was checking what is the best way to build a blog nowadays, the best option was using Astro 🔗 which I didn’t really use before but it was a great experience overall, more details about this step in a later post in details 👌.
3. New Gadgets
Well, I would like to share with you some of the gadgets that I bought this year and were very valuable to me, hopefully will be inspiring for you, and hint as well that other things that I am using can be found in users page
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New mechanical keyboard: for long time I was against mechanical keyboards, just because they are a bit noisy and mic is picking it up, until I found a good option (look and functionality), I was looking for a low profile small keyboard to upgrade after long time using the magic keyboard from apple, I bought NuPhy 75 keyboard 🔗 and its case as well for traveling, a bit fancy but works just as expected, I connect it to the MacMini and to the Laptop and switch easily between them, I can customize its lighting easily, no number pad so it is 75 only.
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Camlink from elgato: I used to use some software for turning my DSLR camera into a webcam, but after upgrading my machine to M1 the software was not working with that architecture, so I bought Camlink 🔗 which was really easy to setup and use
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Thermal printer (Phomemo M110): well, I love labelling, I used to have stickers and a bold pen in hand to label, but found another option online which is a thermal printer 🔗 that doesn’t require ink to work 🎉, and it turns out to be very convenient. One of the great things that I use it for is when I attend or talk at any conference or meetup, it is quite hard for anyone to follow others on X (Twitter) by writing the name letter by letter, so using the application I create a QR code sticker that holds my account and attach it to my name tag, when someone would like to follow me, all they need to do is to scan the QR code on my name tag, people loved it, always print some stickers and take them with me to events.
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Foam roll: this one was a recommendation from my physiotherapist, I was injured already for long time and I got injured a lot during running or even climbing stairs all day affect it, find out that sitting for long time causing my muscles to stiff, you have 2 things to do in order to avoid that stiffness, first always move yourself, second is to stretch and massage your muscles from time to time, this foam roll is great in activating your muscles at home, it is like a small massage session for your muscles, highly recommended.
4. Personal Life Updates
In this category, I love to speak about some personal events that happen along this year, it is a reminder for the future self that you were doing great that year and might be an inspiration for some of you 😉
- We got a new family member in March: we welcomed a new baby boy and we named him
Yunis, we are extremely happy he came healthy and gorgeous, also we were a bit exhausted at the same time 😅 - Started driving lessons in the Netherlands: for people who are not living in the Netherlands, it is pretty hard to pass the test of the driving from the first time here, but I am almost there and will test soon.
- 744 days streak on Doulingo: well, I am over 2 years of streak on Doulingo 🔗 learning Dutch obviously, I am learning a lot of vocabularies 5min every day, highly recommended and Free.
- I subscribed to Babbel application for languages: this app (Babbel 🔗) is quite different than Doulingo, helps a lot in learning full sentences, and grammar, this one is not Free though.
- I ran the Damloop for the 3rd time (10 miles) but got injured 🤕: I was planning to be back to running strongly this year, I trained and registered for 2 races, the dam tot damloop (10 miles = 16.1 km) which is usually in mid-september every year (I ran it 2 times before), and Amsterdam half-marathon (21 km) which is usually in october (I ran it once before). Unfortunately after running the damloop I got a serious injury after the 14th km and finished the last 2 km walking 😓, I went to Podiatrist and Physiotherapist and now I’m better and ready to run again soon isA.
- I visited Berlin twice: Well, I have a funny story to tell, I traveled to Berlin for the first time in Jan 2023 to attend Google’s GDE summit, and in Nov 2023, to give a talk in Cityjs event, for the first one there was a strike at the Airport of Berlin in the exact day I was traveling which makes my flight cancelled and had to change and travel by train (6.5 hours), for the second time it was not any better, in the exact day of my trip it was extremely windy in Amsterdam and also flight is cancelled and had to do it again using train 😅 I am traumatized now from Flying to Berlin.
5. Plans for 2024
For the upcoming year, I would like to make more reasonable goals, less ones that I can really commit to.
- 📢 Continue public speaking
- 👨🎨 Get back to Arabic content creation on Youtube
- 🪵 Start practicing Carpentry with a small project planned already
- 🏃♂️ Back to running (for real this time)
- 📝 Start an official mentorship program on Yallacode 🔗
- 🚗 Get my Dutch driving license
- 🕊️ Hope for the war in Gaza to be over and Palestine 🇵🇸 becomes Free
Tot ziens 👋