{"type":"blog","id":"2017/2017-12-27-2017-in-review","title":"2017 in review","url":"/blog/2017/2017-12-27-2017-in-review","summary":"I began my round of 2016 with how eventful it was, and 2017 continued to deliver major world events that shook countries, cities and people. Despite this, I had a largely positive year, switching from an employee back to a contractor again, which was a largely positive move. I changed my major outlet from SitePoint to DZone, added a handful of others, wrote a lot of content marketing posts for tech companies, wrote a book and (nearly) finished a video course. On top of all that I travelled to many places, including cities and countries I had never been to before.","date":"2017-12-27","tags":["2017","Reviews"],"categories":["writing"],"body":"I began my round of 2016 with how eventful it was, and 2017 continued to deliver major world events that shook countries, cities and people. Despite this, I had a largely positive year, switching from an employee back to a contractor again, which was a largely positive move. I changed my major outlet from SitePoint to DZone, added a handful of others, wrote a lot of content marketing posts for tech companies, wrote a book and (nearly) finished a video course. On top of all that I travelled to many places, including cities and countries I had never been to before.\n\n## Writing\n\n{% assign 2017posts = site.posts | where:\"date\",\"2017\" | where:\"categories\",\"Chris\" %}\n\nIn 2017, I wrote approximately **{{ 2017posts.size }}** articles, blog posts and tutorials. In addition to this I contributed documentation to at least four major clients and contributed to Apache Flink, Webpack, Kubernetes and Docker amongst other open source projects.\n\nThe most popular on my Medium account remained '[A documentation crash course](https://hackernoon.com/a-documentation-crash-course-45006a85c15c#.790b6ze0w)', closely followed by '[Making Atom even more awesome](https://hackernoon.com/making-atom-even-more-awesome-my-setup-e7a89969a876#.s2yhf3joo)', from 2017 it was ['A Switchers Tale - My weeks with Linux'](https://hackernoon.com/a-switchers-tale-my-weeks-with-linux-deededb3b635). Most popular on DZone was ['Teaching Children to Code'](https://dzone.com/articles/teaching-children-to-code). I don't have access to statistics for any of my other outlets, but from 'feeling' I would say that my most popular post for Code Ship was ['A Comparison of Docker GUIs'](https://blog.codeship.com/docker-guis/) and ['Automating Screenshots in Documentation'](https://blog.codeship.com/automating-screenshots-in-documentation/), and on OverOps ['Docker Monitoring: 5 Methods for Monitoring Java Applications in Docker'](https://blog.takipi.com/docker-monitoring-5-methods-for-monitoring-java-applications-in-docker/).\n\n## Video and audio\n\n{% assign 2017podcast = site.posts | where:\"type\",\"podcast\" %}\n\nIn 2017 I experimented with the format of the podcast I began in 2016, eventually settling on a regular mixture of one-on-one interviews and links shows with my co-host, Cate Lawrence, and our most popular episode was an [an interview with Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup](https://soundcloud.com/gregarious-mammal/scott-heiferman-the-past-present-and-future-of-meeting-people-with-meetup-founder). I also contribute to the monthly podcast for documentarians, The \"Write the Docs\" podcast, and its most popular episode was xx. Overall, this equals **{{ 2017podcast.size }}** podcast episodes. On the surface, I didn't create too many videos, but have been working on a video course for Manning since April, which is nearly finished.\n\n## Presentations\n\n{% assign 2017events = site.events | where:\"date\",\"2017\" %} I spoke at, or reported on approximately **{{2017events.size}}** conferences and meetups in 12 countries, not including the roughly 2 a week I attend locally on a regular basis.\n\n## Looking forward to 2018\n\nIn all honesty, that later half of 2017 has been so busy, that I haven't given much thought to plans for 2018. A lot of my personal and non-professional projects went on hiatus, and I'm trying to work a little less to spend more time on my gaming and non-fiction ideas. We shall see, hope and dream.","links":[],"fields":{}}