Looking back at my 2023

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

As the year is coming to an end, and as I did last year, I want to take a moment and reflect on what I have been up to in 2023, how I have performed against my goals, and most importantly set some public goals for 2024 to keep myself accountable.

While it has been a very hard year personally and very overwhelming at times, I am very happy with how this year went for me professionally.

I have been able to achieve most of my goals, I have started a new role, I have shipped new apps and I have a clear idea of what I want to achieve next year.

The highlights

Let’s start the year’s recap by going through some of the highlights of the year.

🙋‍♂️ My own apps!

This is by far the thing that I am most proud of this year! After a long time of being an iOS developer, I can finally say that I have my own apps in the App Store!

I finally decided to overcome all my fears and with a bunch of encouragement from mates and colleagues I decided to take a leap and ship my first solo app: QReate.

While it has been challenging at times, it has been an amazing learning process and to see your app being used in the wild is an incredibly rewarding feeling. I still remember walking into the room at iOS Dev UK before my talk and seeing that the organisers were using QReate to generate the QR codes for their slides!

On top of shipping QReate, and after meeting Hidde at a conference, we decided to join forces and work together on NowPlaying. We both own the app now, which is a super fun and interesting product and being able to work with a good friend on an app that you are both passionate about is just the best!

🗣️ Public speaking

This year I have been lucky enough to speak at 6 different developer events all over the world which, considering that I only spoke at a single in-person conference in 2022, is a huge improvement!

Not only has it been a great opportunity to improve my public speaking skills, but it has also been a great way to meet new people, make new friends, and explore amazing parts of the world such as Turin 🇮🇹 or New York 🗽!

I would thoroughly recommend any iOS developers to give in-person conferences a go, it’s a fantastic way to grow professionally and find people who, as it was in my case with Hidde, you share interests and passions with and can even become your business partners!

🙏 Sponsors

First of all, I want to give a massive shoutout to Runway for being my first sponsor ever. They started by supporting me on the iOS CI Newsletter and then decided to further support me by sponsoring my blog as well!

I am incredibly grateful for their support and I am looking forward to continue working with them, along with some other awesome sponsors in 2024! 👀

If you are interested in sponsoring the blog or the newsletter next year, please check out the information on my sponsorship page and don’t hesitate to get in touch.

🚲 A new adventure

Due to personal circumstances and after 9 amazing years in the UK, me and my partner decided to move back to Barcelona in October this year. This meant that, after 2 years where I grew a lot as an engineer and got promoted to Senior iOS Engineer, I had to leave my job at the BBC.

I am super grateful for the opportunity they gave me to work in such an amazing place and to live cool things such as being able to visit TV and radio studios and even pose as a BBC Breakfast presenter on my first office day 📺 🎥.

After a bit of job hunting, I got an offer for a Senior iOS Engineer role at Glovo here in Barcelona ahead of our move. I am super excited about the new challenges that this role will bring and, while I am still getting used to the new company and role, I am already enjoying it a lot and trying my best to bring my experience and knowledge to the team.

My goals

Now that I have shared some of this year’s highlights, I want to take a moment to review the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year in more detail one by one.

I find this to be a great exercise to keep myself accountable and find areas of improvement for the next year.

1. Weekly articles on my blog: This year I have written 48 articles on my blog which is a massive improvement from last year’s 24. I have doubled the number of yearly articles and I have seen the results of the hard work I have put into this goal. The traffic on my site has increased, I have been able to land sponsorships and this has had a positive impact on other goals too. Despite this, I have missed a few weeks here and there and I want to make sure I don’t miss any next year! 💪

2. Speaking at more than 5 conferences or events: I have spoken at 6 events all over the world this year, which has been an incredible experience. I have met amazing people, made new friends, and visited amazing places. I want to thank all conference organisers for allowing me to speak at their events and I am looking forward to speaking at more events next year!

3. Find a sponsor for my blog or the newsletter: As I said earlier in this post, I have been lucky enough to find a sponsor to help me with my blog and newsletter. I want to thank Runway and Gabriel Savit in particular for their continued support and I am looking forward to working with them next year!

4. Grow my Twitter following to 1k: As of today, I have 1,702 followers on Twitter (or X 😅) which means that my presence in the community continues to grow positively and that I can reach and help more people with my content.

5. Release a monetisable product: This year I have diversified my revenue streams as an indie software developer and content creator by releasing my first-ever solo one-time purchase app QReate. On top of this, I have also joined forces with Hidde to work on NowPlaying, which we both own now and I love working on!

6. Grow the iOS CI Newsletter to at least 500 subscribers: Ever since I started the newsletter last year, I knew that it was going to be a long-term project I would look to grow over time and, with a lot of effort and consistency, I have been able to not only surpass the 500 subscribers mark but also the 1,000 subscribers one! I want to take this opportunity to thank all my subscribers for their continued support and I am looking forward to continue bringing you the latest and best CI/CD content in 2024!

What’s next?

Now that I have gone through what I have been up to this year, I want to take a moment to set some goals for 2024:

1. Grow my Twitter following to 3k.
2. Grow my LinkedIn following to 5k.
3. Grow the iOS CI Newsletter to 3k subscribers.
4. Ship two new solo apps.
5. Create an entire Swift full-stack project.
6. Weekly articles on my blog.
7. At least 52 updates across all my apps in 2024.
8. Start a new more general blog and newsletter.

I am aware that these are highly ambitious and might be hard to achieve, but I am dedicated to working hard and doing my best to make them happen!

To help me achieve these goals, I have already added them to Hidde’s app Gola and I will update them regularly as I make my way through 2024.