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2017 had finished with a talk at SydCSS that got very positive feedback. I was amped up and full of ambition for the year 2018. How did it stack up?

Starting with a bang šŸ’„

New Year resolutions are fun. Most of the time, theyā€™re out the window within a few weeks.

In this case, one thing IĀ really wanted to do was to produce anĀ egghead.ioĀ course onĀ TailwindCSS.

The sooner the better. I committed early, and within the first two weeks of the year, I was done. My course was in queue for publishing.

A few weeks later, there it was!Ā Build User Interfaces by Composing CSS Utility Classes with Tailwind.

As I am writing this post, the course has been completed byĀ more than 400 peopleĀ and has aĀ rating of 4.6/5Ā based on 83 ratings!

Building a team šŸ’Ŗ

In March, I organised my first series of interviews, as we were hiring for a front-end developer position atĀ SocietyOne.

I was responsible for creating the job ad, promoting it, reviewing applicants, scheduling phone interviews, in-person interviews etc.

I surprisinglyĀ really enjoyedĀ the whole process. I think I was pretty good at it too! A few applicants mentioned they found the whole procedure very friendly and well conducted. šŸ¤—

In April, we hired a fantastic candidate, my now good friendĀ Verity Stothard, who turned out to be a great fit!

Berlin Bound! āœˆļøšŸ»

This is a big one for me. One of theseĀ way out of the comfort zoneĀ thing.

On May 15th 2018, my good buddyĀ Andrew WelchĀ suggested I submitted a talk for theĀ DotAll 2018Ā conference organised by theĀ CraftCMSĀ folks.

TheĀ Call For SpeakersĀ was closing in less than 24 hours. I giggled, and went back to work.

ā€œSeriously, Simon. Submit a talkā€, Andrew said.

Sure, why not. So I put together a talk outline for a topic I have at heart: utility-first CSS.

The next morning, I woke up to an e-mail titled ā€œSpeaking at Dot All 2018ā€.

šŸ˜±šŸ˜±šŸ˜±

Just like that, I found myself embarking on an epic 40+ hour journey across the globe to Berlin!

The CraftCMS community is special. Itā€™s truly something else. I couldnā€™t wait to catch up with all these people I consider friends but have never met in real life.

Slack buddies, twitter buddies, but no IRL buddies.

Oh and my close friend, mentor, colleague, and the reason I submitted the talk in the first place: Andrew Welch.

DotAll CraftCMS conference 2018 logo

So, ummm.. I stepped on stage at an international conference and I nailed it! šŸ˜Ž

I had a blast! The conference was superb. Such a welcoming and interesting community. Everyone knows each other from Slack, but mingling in person was awesome.

Uumm.. soĀ my talkĀ was scheduled to close day 1 of the conference. Sort of a mini keynote! :) It went extremely well and the discussions it sparked showed my presentation definitely hit a nerve.

These few days in Berlin are a sure highlight of my year!

Laracon AU šŸ‡¦šŸ‡ŗ

Same talk, different community.Ā Home crowdĀ here in Sydney.

My second ever conference talk, and also my second in three weeks!

Stepping on stage didnā€™t feel nearly as overwhelming as it did in Berlin. I had done it before, and although still very nervous, I knew I could do it again.

This time, my talk was scheduled early in the morning. The second talk of the conference, right after the headline opening act:Ā Adam Wathan.

Holy crap.

Adam isĀ kind of a big deal in the Laravel community. He is also the author ofĀ Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework I feature multiple times in my talk.

It was both an honour and a fright to go right after Adam.

The talk went well. I had some dreadful ā€œclickerā€ hiccups that messed up the flow of my talk (timing, jokes..) but I am happy with how I delivered the talk overall. TheĀ feedback from the audienceĀ was really positive too!

Overall, another incredible conference. The talks were very interesting, but again my highlight was the people I met.

Oh - hanging out with 3/4 of the Tailwind CSS crew was real fun! Itā€™s awesome to spend some quality time with people that build software you use every day. I am a people person, and getting to know the fine folks behind Tailwind makes me appreciate the framework 10x more!

Bā€™ball Championship šŸ€šŸ†

If Iā€™m not writing code, I love playing basketball and surfing.

When I moved to Sydney 4 years ago, I joined a rec league competition, itā€™s good fun!

The team is awesome. Weā€™re almost all dads. At 37, I am one of the youngest players on the team. But we whooped a bunch of athletic teams in their early 20s.

We get in their heads and grind them out. And weā€™re the league champs! šŸ’Ŗ

Love this team. As long as I live in Sydney, Iā€™ll be playing with them! Years go by and I get slower, but I can still drain threes like thereā€™s no tomorrow! šŸ‘Œ

Basketball rec league champions team photo with the cup

Grand final champions! Ok ok, rec league div 3, but still! šŸ˜Ž

Landed a new job šŸ™Œ

To wrap things up - I have some exciting news: I will be joining ThinkmillĀ in January 2019.

This should be really exciting, very much looking forward to this new chapter!

Wrapping it up

I am pretty pleased with myself and what I have accomplished in 2018. I am now wrapping up the year with my little family on a camping trip.

See you all in 2019! ā¤ļø


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