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2023 year in review

A long tail

I'm writing this year in review because it takes discipline, something I don't have. Also, reflecting on oneself allows you to ask the hard questions like "What does my tail look like and is it acceptable?"

I don't lose, sometimes I win slowly.

I continued to iterate on Speedrun. With 44 releases, I extended its reach beyond the AWS Console and CLI. I added support for direct invocations of Lambdas, Step Functions and dropping events onto an Event Bus. In true honey badger fashion, I open sourced it and submitted it to Show HN (1 upvote!). Hold on to your butts, I have some big ideas for it in 2024.

Invoking a Lambda

That's bait

I tried a few things I haven't before.

Reaching out to other founders

Founders are hungry for feedback. I reached out to founders in the space, let them know I was going to try their product and gave them some detailed feedback on it. A few returned the favor and tried Speedrun. I got meta feedback this way and made some friends. I still prefer feedback from actual customers, but this is a 4D chess way to understand what other founders think is important.

Started a personal Twitter account

To build some rapport with the community I started a personal Twitter account rooToTheZ . This is where I encourage others, drop some knowledge, shill and occasionally lightly roast. If you follow me, understand two things. If I'm posting technical content, I'm being serious. If I'm posting banana facts like this, I'm definitely clowning.

A banana fact

Blogging

Serverless developers always need MOAR LAMBDA COLDSTART CONTENT. Also, I often make a sentence salad and fail to convey a concise narrative. Blogging forces me to practice this. I'm strong at finding the fire when I see smoke, finding creative shortcuts to problems and connecting dots. I'll continue blogging as a teaching medium and as therapy for those who cannot live dangerously themselves.

Attending re:Invent as a non-employee

This was wild. I tapped into the same YOLO mode energy I brought with me to GitHub Universe in 2022. Not having to present or answer non-stop questions with a dry mouth on the expo floor freed me up to be my best self. Normally I'm calculating and reserved, but my internal brand is troublemaking. I handed out stickers and achieved the coveted "What is even happening!!!??" reaction as people stared at my demo in disbelief. I also got to meet some of the people I've only interacted with online. 10/10 would recommend.

YOLO mode from GitHub Universe 2022

That's not me

Something I love doing is discovering others doing truly inspired things. Dreamchasing if you will. I've realized that when I mention my background, it can be intimidating and drags the conversation into my past life at Amazon. I'd rather hear your story and about what excites you. So when I talk to you, I'll leave that bit behind. I'm just another developer, let's focus on what is important to you.

What's next

I never reveal more that 50% of my secrets so I can continue to shape shift. But I will say this, I'm going to go hard on learning new things this year. Maybe I'll finally learn frontend dev. You are not ready!

Cheers

Thanks for reading. Raise a glass and start chanting "One of us!, One of us!" Here's to a great 2024!