2021 In Retrospective…

7 Min Read

The Story

Wow, I haven’t written a post in a long time. I hope this is a good start. In a nutshell, 2021 was a roller-coaster (Nod if you agree with me). This has been one of the most unpredictable years ever, well I think the pandemic is to blame but anyways…

In this post, I look back at how 2021 was for me and this will just be a little retrospection summary of things that went well and things that did not. I am continuing with this tradition of celebrating the end of the year as I look back at some of my highlights of that year.

Check out my 2020 In Retrospective for a more detailed look at what happened in 2020.

What Went Well

Most of my other goals were financial and personal. However, I would like to reflect on some of the other goals I had set out for 2021.

• Got out of my comfort zone and became an official mentor to one of our Junior Software Engineers (@AneleMakhaba), which of course had its challenges due to the working from home environment. One of the things I learned from this experience was to be patient with myself and most others. We collaborated and gave a talk at the @PyConZA 2021 conference, which was a great success if I say so myself.

• I had a lot of interest in becoming a Udacity mentor (mainly to learn from others from all over the world and most importantly giving back) and was motivated by one of the mentors for a Nanodegree that I completed back in 2020.

  • 2020 Q4, I applied and get accepted as a Udacity mentor for the Cloud Native Architecture Nanodegree Program and in the process, I learned a lot about how to work with other people and how to be a good mentor to the point where I was recognized by Udacity as an Elite Udacity mentor. Whooop Whooop!!!!

• My experience on how I became a Udacity mentor is documented here

• One of my other goals for 2021 was to at least blog twice per month and I started on a clear trajectory averaging 2 posts per month but it all went downhill from Q3 and I managed to publish 17 posts based on some of my experiences and things learned which is the same number of posts I made in 2020…Go figure!

• I became an AWS Community Builder member and I am now a member of the AWS Community.

• Made over 1400+ Github open & close source contributions (which was less than 2020 @ 2400+), 340+ PR’s and 5+ projects

  

• Proudly completed a list of courses (some are still WIP lol)and got certified at the same time evolved my skills (a list of all completed courses can be found here):

  • Pluralsight

  • 6x CloudAcademy
    • DP-100 Exam Prep: Designing and Implementing a Data Science Solution on Azure
    • Getting Started With NGINX
    • Introduction to Ansible
    • Introduction to Azure Machine Learning
    • Combining DevOps Tools at Scale-Jenkins, SonarQube, Artifactory, Splunk and Jira
    • Fundamentals of AWS
  • 15x DataCamp
    • Building Data Engineering Pipelines in Python
    • Data Processing in Shell
    • Introduction to Airflow in Python
    • Introduction to AWS Boto in Python
    • Introduction to Bash Scripting
    • Introduction to PySpark
    • Introduction to Shell
    • Introduction to SQL
    • Linear Classifiers in Python
    • Machine Learning for Everyone
    • Machine Learning with Tree-Based Model in Python
    • Parallel Programming with Dask in Python
    • Streamlined Data Ingestion with pandas
    • Supervised Learning with scikit-learn
    • Unsupervised Learning in Python
  • 1x Microsoft
    • Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate
• Above all, my employer recognized my value & skills and offered me a Señor Software engineering position. I recall manifesting this back in 2020. The power of writing down your goals and detailing steps to achieve them matters. If you are reading this then start writing down your goals and steps to achieve them. You’ll thank me later!!!

What Didn’t go well

• I lost track of my now page which was inspired by Derek Sivers’ /now page movement and focuses on detailing what I am doing now (think of it as a wan to know more about me page)

• I wanted to make more YouTube videos this year, but I did not even upload 2 and that is very disappointing from my end. I can do better.
  • If you are reading this, please subscribe to my channel. 2022 were going big (I hope): https://www.youtube.com/mphomphego1
• I struggled a lot with mental health issues & burnout and lost loved ones due to COVID-19 related illnesses, this year showed me that we as people do not prioritize mental health issues!!!
  • For some reason, I found TikTok being therapeutic (Yeah! I know what you thinking) and I was able to overcome my mental health issues through it. I even made a few videos on my own. Check my profile here and get to know me a little better.
• One of my goals was to exercise at least 3 times a week and this didn’t go well for obvious reasons. At least I was hiking every 2nd week of the month it’s better than nothing.
• I had too much on my plate this year and, I was unable to complete the #100DaysOfML challenge that I started a few months ago. 2022 I will be continuing with the #100DaysOfML challenge with the primary focus on the Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow - Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems book I bought ages ago that is just lying on my table.

My Goals for 2022

I am looking forward to 2022 with a different perspective and expecting a lot from myself. Some of my tech-related goals for 2022 entail:

• Deepen my understanding of AWS and Azure and learn how to use them to build production-ready ML solutions.
• Start working on an introduction to Python programming live and interactive zoom course for beginners.
• Be present on user groups around the world through virtual presentations.
• To be continued…

Conclusion

This was the year for me to find myself and learn how to be patient with myself, above all to take it easy and always remember what the meaning of life is (keep learning and pass on what you’ve learned). I really need to work on my punctuation. myeeeh!!! English isn’t my first language so…