2016 In Review: The Year of Exploits

For some unexplainable reasons, I already told myself that I won’t write any post related to my “2016 in review”, but then I saw Segun Famisa’s excellent 2016 in review article. Immediately, I was fired up!!! But then, me to me, I was like, NO!!!

The next day, after consuming large portions of beef and vegetable from my mama, I came online. Guess what I saw? Ire Aderinokun’s inspiring 2016 in review article. Me to me, again, I was like:

I would be the Special Adviser to the Devil on Lying Affairs if i said 2016 was ordinary for me. It was incredibly amazing, outstanding, and super-lit, OMG!

Open Source Projects

This year I had the privilege of working on a lot of open source projects. At different times last year, some of these projects surprisingly got massive attention. 😱😱😱😱

• Laravel Hackathon Starter: A comprehensive hackathon/MVP boilerplate for Laravel web applications.
• Laravel Password: Guard your users against entering dumb passwords in your Laravel 5 apps.
• Awesome Open Source apps: Curated list of awesome open source crafted web & mobile applications for developers to learn from.
• Laravel Paystack: Laravel 5 Lite Package for Paystack.
• Mvrd: Motor Vehicle Registration Information Search Portal Library.
• Jusibe PHP Lib: PHP Client Library for Jusibe SMS REST API Service https://jusibe.com . Also created a Laravel package and Notification Channel Library for it.
• Atom Aurelia Snippets: Atom package: Aurelia snippets using ES6 syntax.
• Linda Ikeji CLI: A CLI tool for Hackers, HR Associates, HR Managers and Lazy People to read Linda Ikeji. 💻 💁 🙋
• Laravel Identify: Laravel 5 Package to Detect Users Browsers, Devices, Languages and Operating Systems. 📦 📱

• In October, Celestine Omin(Senior Technical Assistant at Andela) and I gave talks on How to become a better developer, Scaling your applications and Developer War Stories in Accra, Ghana. Ahmed Salifou of PHPOcean did a recap.

• In October, I was invited to inspire the graduating students at Valley View University, Ghana. Who am I to refuse? Went in there & fired them up!!!

• On November 4, I was in Jos, Plateau State. I gave a talk on User Identity Management in Your Apps with Auth0 at HackJos. Check out the slides.

• On November 18, I gave an inspiring talk(So, I heard) about becoming a World Class Developer at GDG DevFest South-East, PortHarcourt, Nigeria.

• On November 19, I gave a talk about How to become a World Class Developer at the debut GDG Asaba event, in Delta State, Nigeria.

• Firebase for the Web was the title of my talk at GDG DevFest South-West, Lagos, Nigeria on November 25.

• I magically appeared in Abuja, Nigeria on November 26 to give another talk on Firebase for the Web at GDG North Central DevFest. Check out this wonderful video recap of the experience.

• I was in Nairobi, Kenya from November 28 — December 2 to mentor startups at the Google Launchpad Nairobi week long event.

Work ,Travel & Adventure

I worked as a Technical Trainer at Andela until around mid-year 2016. I spent the later part of the year consulting for Auth0 & Cloudinary. This gave me the opportunity to travel to the United States of America for the first time to attend Auth0’s Offsite Annual Event in Washington.

I had the opportunity to travel again to the U.S.A for Chrome Developer Summit and Google Developer Expert Summit in San-Francisco.

I also visited Kenya, Ethiopia, Germany and Ghana.

Recognition

My first open source project in 2016 got me trending for almost 3 weeks on Github top PHP developers. So this happened:

I got featured on laraveldaily.com.

I was nominated for the JavaScript Legend Award along side great developers like Eric Elliot, Addy Osmani(Googler), James Kyle(Babel), Dan Abramov(Redux & React), Rob Eisenberg(Aurelia), Wes Bos and Sindre Sorhus. Unfortunately it later got cancelled. Still, the nomination really got me fired up. Thanks to all of you that encourage and support me daily.

I got featured on TechCabal.

I got featured on Code Maven Open Source Podcast.

I got featured on Developeronfire.com Podcast.

I got featured on Guardian Newspaper.

I became a Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies, the third & youngest in Nigeria.

Life

• My Family: Dad, Mum and Siblings were all in good health in this year.
• I turned 24 in October this year & it was a very memorable experience.
• I registered my tiny company.
• I bought my first car this year. 💪✌️
• I lost an IPhone 6 and a MacBook this year. 😢 Well, I upgraded to an IPhone 7 and a better Machine, sorry Macbook! 🚀🚀🚀🚀
• I did not read any non-technical book this year. 😢

Finally, I met the goddess of sarcasm, an amazing young Architect & most importantly an Edo geh. I mean, what could be better than having someone constantly poking you to do better & supporting you all the way. Thank you, Elsie!!!

What about 2017?

I’m excited for 2017. In short, I already tagged it the year of excellence. As Uncle

already stated, I’ve activated the #beastMode for 2017. These are just a few of my world domination plan in the coming year:

• Open Source: I want to do a lot more JavaScript, write more dev tools that will make the developer’s life blissful.
• Writing: I want to write more technical articles and take my writing to the next level. I’ll endeavour to write and publish 3 books. This is a very herculean task but as they say; if your dreams don’t scare you, then you haven’t started.

• Speaking: I want to speak in major conferences, give more powerful & highly entertaining talks in several meetups and conferences.
• I want to travel to at least 7 new countries!

I met so many amazing people this year that I didn’t mention here. I’m thankful and grateful for how you all have helped me grow. Cheers to an amazing 2017. #BeastMode 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌