2017 In Review
2017 was an interesting year for me. Aside from what was going on in the national and world stages (which I won’t really address here, but which had a huge impact on me emotionally and personally), I also found myself with a lot of family obligations (I am now both the committee chair for my son's Cub Scout pack as well as our school's PTA treasurer). Even though my free time was at a premium, I think it was a good year for me development-wise so here’s a look back at what I accomplished.
2016 In Review
This whole "Year in Review" blog post thing has gotten quite popular. At the risk of being cliché, here is my own entry. Even if no one else finds this to be a fascinating and important historical record, I find it personally insightful.
2015 In Review
A lot happened in 2015, both in terms of global news stories and in our little world of Microsoft developers. But it was also a very special and productive year for me personally. I'd like to take a moment to look back at what happened and what I accomplished in my own life.
Identity Crisis
Inspired by notable tech personalities like Scott Hanselman and John Sonmez who place a lot of emphasis on "personal brand", I've recently been thinking about my own personal brand. Because the username I used was common enough that I wasn't always the first to claim it, I ended up with a lot of slightly different usernames across different platforms. I was somedave on GitHub and Stack Overflow, @somedaveg on Twitter, somedavedg on Reddit, etc. and my website was somedave.com. I'm not nearly notable enough for this to make much of a difference (fun experiment, try Googling just "Scott"), but it bothered me none the less. When someone puts my username in a GitHub issue, I want that to also point to my Twitter handle, etc. Not to mention, my various usernames didn't really identify me. There was no real indication of who was behind them other than someone named Dave. And maybe one day, it actually will make a difference. So I set out to set things right.