Career, Personal

2019 in Review

adoranwodo / January 1, 2020

I honestly didn’t want to write this initially because I didn’t think it was anything, but reiterating over the year 2019 made me realize what a year I’ve had.

I’ve laughed, cried, grown (A LOT) and learned a bunch of things.

Career 👩🏽‍💻

I started the year as an Associate Software Developer at Neukleos (my job from the previous year). I was already making plans to resign mid-year after my NYSC and I had a lead for a job abroad which I was unable to get because of visa & external factors beyond my control. It hurt and I moved on concluding the job wasn’t for me. A few months later after I got an offer from Microsoft, I quit my job at Neukleos and they threw a party for me. I vlogged about it and you can watch the video here.

They also made me a magazine cover girl. Haha.

After I resigned, I took a month off to travel and also rest before starting at my new job. August 5th was my first day at Microsoft. I currently work in Cognition, meaning I’m a Software Engineer that builds Cloud Services related to Artificial Intelligence & Mixed Reality. It’s been an amazing experience so far.

Microsoft ADC founding Cognition team

Writing 📝

In 2019, I wrote 19 articles on my blog and co-wrote an article about non-coding tech jobs with Akintunde Sultan on Scotch.io. You can read it here.

I also cross posted some of my Kotlin articles on this blog on Edpresso.

My 5 most popular articles in 2019 were:

  1. Upload Image in Gallery to Firebase from Android app (Kotlin)

  2. Kotlin Coroutines. Make it make sense.

  3. Be productive with your productivity by doing these

  4. Unique Web & Mobile Project Portfolio Ideas

  5. Zero to Kotlin Hero: An introduction to the Anko library

Other Projects ✅

I wrote a bunch of code for the different talks I gave and the different articles I wrote but there were two projects that I worked on this year that people actually used and loved.

  • IStandWithYou – Before the 2019 presidential elections, I worked with Funsho Okubanjo to build this website where people could go and choose who they’d vote for when it was time and say why they stand with that candidate. The aim was to get a bunch of young people to think and talk about the 2019 elections. We built this with Laravel + Vue.js.
  • Game of Thrones Trivia Android App – I enjoyed working on this mostly because I built this with my favorite programming language (Kotlin) and the subject was one of my favorite series (GOT). A bunch of people played it and loved it at the time and I was really excited about it because I didn’t think it would get as far as it actually did.

Community 👫

Well, 2019 was my first year being a “public” tech person. I had been very lowkey for the first few years of my tech career until then but a major reason for helping grow communities was because I really wanted to give back and add value to the lives of new developers. I helped Co-Organize GDG Ajah, Unstack, Android Ngr & FSD Lagos. I attended 20+ tech events this year and helped organize 8 of them which made me really proud.

In April, I Co-Organized my first event which was IWD for Women TechMakers Ajah and I wrote about it here. It was my first event and that made me really nervous. I’m glad it worked out :).

In October, I got to attend Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando, Florida and it was an amazing experience. I vlogged about it here.

 

Speaking 🎙

I spoke at 18 tech events which was something I did not expect to do. I also noticed that as the year progressed, the more talks I did, the better my delivery. My last 5 talks for the year:

  • At the Microsoft Women in Cognition Summit San Francisco, I gave a talk about Women in Tech in Africa
  • At Cedar Hive Lagos, I spoke to some University students about My Journey into Tech and how my experience has been so far
  • At DevFest Ajah, I gave a “lecture” on Writing Testable Code 
  • At DevFest Lagos, I was on panel session with some other amazing ladies and the topic was Women owning our voices
  • At Concatenate Conference Lagos, I gave a talk about Productive Debugging

 

YouTube 🎥

In June 2019, I created my YouTube channel where I talk about Tech & Life. I’ve been thinking about this channel since 2018 but I was scared to do it for some reason. In 2019, that changed. I started posting videos on YouTube and I’ve been able to post 22 videos and get 600 subscribers in 6 months 💃🏻💃🏻.

My top 3 most viewed videos are:

Features 🎀

  • In January 2019, I got featured in a Hackernoon list as one of the top tech people to follow on Twitter.
  • In May 2019, I was on NigeriaInfo FM talking about Women in Tech in Africa and how my tech journey has been so far.
  • In July 2019, I was on episode 15 of Forloop pod talking about the concept of a 10x developer.
  • In September 2019, Lorna, Gift & I did a collab on YouTube where we talked about our perspective on some things in the Nigeria dev ecosystem. You can watch the video here.
  • In November 2019, I was featured in Hashnode’s #SheInspires series. You can read my interview here.
My interview at 99.3 Nigeria Info FM

Mentoring 👩‍👧‍👦

  • I was a mentor for ALCwithForloop and I helped the candidates by giving advice about Software Engineering and unblocking them as they tried to build their app in React and Node.js. I remember a few times where it got overwhelming and I’d schedule calls with 3 or 4 mentees at a time because they had similar issues so that I don’t do it multiple times. I like to think that they were not the only ones who got something out of the experience. I learned too. I learned to be a better teacher, better communicator and I sort of learned to also manage people.
  • At the first cohort of the Microsoft LEAP program in Nigeria, I volunteered to mentor two lovely ladies as well.

Life ❤️

  • In February, I finally changed my car. I mean, it was high time. I used the previous one to learn to drive and I had dealt with it so much that it needed to rest.
  • I finished NYSC. My NYSC year wasn’t a year that I was excited about so I was very eager to wrap it up. However, I made sure that regardless of NYSC, I wouldn’t waste the year and I didn’t let NYSC stop me from making productive career moves/decisions.
  • Towards the end of the year, I started a weight loss program. I’ve been consistent and that makes me proud. I’ve lost a few kilograms but I haven’t reached my goal yet. I hope I do in 2020.
  • I met people. Like I can say I’ve met & had conversations with Alex Kipman (Technical Fellow at Microsoft), Phil Spencer (EVP of Gaming at Microsoft), Nat Friedman (CEO of GitHub), Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) and more (Yes. More), which makes me feel I’m doing something right because these were productive conversations.
  • I made some new friends this year from tech twitter lol. I’m excited to see where these relationships go.
  • I learned patience.
  • I turned 23. As usual, I had a party with my close friends and we had an amazing time.
  • I finally had the courage to put out two DJ mixes that I created in December 2019.

NYSC POP

Travel ✈️

I made a few trips in 2019 (not as much as I wanted) but I like to think they count. The plan in 2020 is to cover more continents hopefully.

Adora in Benin Republic

2020? ⏰

I’ve created a list of goals for the year and I plan to work towards achieving these goals. I’m excited about 2020 and can’t wait to see how the year unfolds :).

 

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