Here’s to the new year. May she be a damn sight better than the old one, and may we all be home before she’s over.

End of year is the perfect time to reflect on the past and to plan for the future.

2017 Highlights

• Became more public about my programming thru this blog and Github
• PyCon 2017 in Portland, OR
• Read Code Complete
• Gave my first talk -- Using the Hadoop Ecosystem to Drive Healthcare Innovation
• Became an open source contributor
• Got my first Software Engineering job
• First technical talk -- A Gentle Introduction to Context Managers
• Kenneth Reitz accepted my PR to Maya
• PR to pandas was merged
• First conference talk (at PyOhio) -- Data Science Workflows using Docker Containers
• Featured in PyCoders Weekly -- Interactive, Web-Based Dashboards in Python
• Ottawa Senators run to the Eastern Conference Finals; won't ever forget Game 1 in Pittsburgh
• Listened to the entire Stack Overflow podcast back catalogue
• Denver half marathon with minimal training; sprinted to an 8 minute final mile at altitude!

2018 Goals

• Become a mentor in the Chicago Python Mentorship Program
• Lead 3 hour conference tutorial + give 1 new conference talk OR give 2 new conference talks
• Speak at ChiPy 4 times (improve lightning talk skills)
• Finish Grad School
• Learn a functional programming language; here's looking at you Scala!
• Run a half marathon somewhere in the world
• Break into pandas' Top 100 contributors list
• Read 26 books
• Write 24 blog posts