I have a tradition here where – usually – I write up a "here’s what I did this year" post. Typically I write this just for myself as I figure it’s a good way to take stock and really appreciate what I’m accomplished. Sometimes it’s just a nice way to say goodbye and look forward to the next year. I feel like every year is incredibly busy as well as exciting, but kind of in the Chinese curse manner. That being said – my kids are healthy and happy, my wife is healthy and happy and I’m well employed. No matter what else happens, that’s a win for the year over all.

What I Accomplished

This was a huge year for my blog and I’m very happy to say that this will be my one hundredth post! While I’m not at the crazy high levels I was back in the early 2000s, I’ve been really inspired this year when it comes to writing. I discovered, and wrote about, some really fun stuff, like Aline.js and Cloudinary. I continued writing in Python and built a bunch of Eleventy demos as well. If you are truly bored, you can see all my stats for the blog on my ugly, but functional, stats page.

I also continued to write for our team at Adobe on our developer blog. I released a book with Brian Rinaldi on the Jamstack. On top of that, I’m still writing for external publications. You can see them listed on my About page. I plan on integrating those articles a bit more into the blog via the method I described here: Support External Articles in an Eleventy Blog

Speaking wise, I gave 19 talks, with maybe a bit more on the virtual side than in-person. Overall I’m happy with that, but my current speaking queue is kind of slim so I need to start submitting more CFPs. Also consider this an open invitation to anyone reading – I want to speak to your group!

What I Want in 2023

Survival. Ok, so maybe a bit more than that. Last year I mentioned three things I wanted to do in 2022 – learn Power Automate, Oracle Cloud Functions, and Adobe Sign. I definitely got more familiar with Power Automate, and while I definitely prefer Pipedream, Power Automate is an incredibly powerful platform. I also played with Adobe Sign, writing a few blog posts and just getting more familiar with it. Sadly, I signed up for an Oracle developer account and did the prereqs, I never got around to actually kicking the tires on their serverless platform.

For this year, I think I want to focus on:

• Writing even more Python. While dependency management and updating is a bit of a pain, I still absolutely love the language itself.
• Finally look at AWS Amplify – something I’ve been meaning to do for a while
• Redesign the blog. The current design is nice, but I think I want to go even simpler, perhaps killing off the lovely images I have on top. I’ve seen a variety of very good light weight blogs lately, super light weight, and I think I want to go that route. We’ll see.

Thank You

As a final note, if you actually read this, thank you. I truly appreciate the readers who have given me feedback this year as well as those who have contributed. At times, it can feel like I’m in a room speaking to myself, so any and all feedback is always appreciated.

I’ll also note that you will not find me much on the bird side anymore. I still have an account, and will still auto-tweet new blog posts, but I’m going to be mainly on Mastodon. You can find me at https://mastodon.social/@raymondcamden. With this blog post, I’m even removing my Twitter link from the left hand nav. I may return in the future, but for now, I’m just happier off of it.

Raymond Camden