Thank you, 2017!

Today is the last day of 2017 which marks the time when people tend to look back at their year to see what they have accomplished. Personally, I find it hard to do. Mainly because, in general, I tend to think that what I’ve achieved or done is not enough. But this year I decided to break this habit and celebrate my wins no matter how small or big they are.

TRAVELLING:

Travelling and exploring new places is important to me so I’ll start by listing 4 countries I’ve visited in 2017:

• My husband and I celebrated New Year 2017 in London, UK which was my dream for a while so I am happy to say that it came true:

• In March, my Team and I went to Lisbon, Portugal for our Team meetup:

• In June, my husband and I went to Russia to visit our families and friends. We’ve been to Moscow, Izhevsk and Kazan:

• In September, I’ve attended our company’s Grand Meetup in Whistler, Canada:

I’ve also travelled in the US and visited 6 cities:

• Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee (twice)
• Hopkinsville, Kentucky
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Miami, Florida
• Seattle, Washington

WORK ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

• Deepened my knowledge of WooCommerce and continued getting better at Happiness Engineering
• I was a part of the very first ever Woo Live Chat Squad
• I was a Woo Happiness Wrangler throughout the year managing support rotations of non-support teams
• I was a Trial Buddy to 2 new people who got hired at Automattic, an On-Boarding Buddy for one of my teammates and a support rotation Buddy for someone outside of my team
• I co-emceed WooConf (WooCommerce Developer’s Conference in Seattle). It was my first time emceeing ever. As challenging as it was I’ve learned a lot along the way. I’ll definitely do it again:

• I became a Testing Lead for our existing WooCommerce iOS App
• I became a part of WooCommerce Android Mobile development team. My role is to bring WooCommerce knowledge to the process as well as user’s perspective and feedback

CONFERENCES:

I’ve worked at 4 conferences during 2017:

• Women in Travel Summit 2017 (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) – staffed Automattic’s sponsor booth as WordPress.com:

• Accountex USA 2017 (Boston, Massachusetts) – staffed Automattic’s sponsor booth as WordPress.com. I gave my first work interview there talking about how WordPress.com can help accountant professionals in their business.
• WooConf 2017 (Seattle, Washington) – co-emceed the event.
• WordCamp US 2017 (Nashville, Tennessee) – staffed Automattic’s sponsor booth as WooCommerce.com. This was the first time I staffed the table at WordCamp US which is the biggest WordCamp event in the country. I had a great time there learning from our customers and my colleagues:

PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

My focus during this year was getting back to coding so I mostly celebrate my accomplishments in that area:

• I completed 10 weeks JavaScript Development Bootcamp at General Assembly in New York City
• I wrote a WooCommerce Quiz Slack Bot – a bot which displays the Quiz consisting of 15 questions with multiple answers. User has 60 seconds to answer each question otherwise the Quiz will time out. At the end of the Quiz, the bot displays the number of Correct and Wrong answers and a random message.

• I wrote a web app called Remote World – Single Page Application (SPA) that allows users to look for remote places to work on the Google map based on their location. The App filters map based on the following filters: cafe, co-working space and library. The user can click on the place on the map and see its details (name and address) and write a review for it. The user can then look for its own reviews.
• I submitted my first 2 PRs to Calypso (the new JavaScript- and API-powered WordPress.com).

One of my other personal goals for 2017 was to run a half-marathon which I did! I run my very first one in April:

FRIENDS & FAMILY:

Interestingly, 2017 marks a year of me reconnecting with my old friends. I also spent time with my parents in Miami and New York City as well as my sister and her husband:

• I’ve reconnected with Hannah, my good old friend from Miami. We haven’t seen each other for 10 years. It was amazing to finally get together again:

• I’ve also finally met with Masha in Moscow. Masha and I became friends on Instagram first about a year and a half ago and met for the first time this past summer:

• My husband and I celebrated our 4th Anniversary since we’ve met:

FUN RANDOM THINGS TO REMEMBER:

• We’ve heard Woody Allen playing on clarinet live:

• I got the coolest haircut of all:

• Was honoured to be featured in Wall Street Journal as a Happiness Engineer working at Automattic in the article on remote work:

2017 was a really good year and I am thankful for everything that happened in it and to all the people who were by my side. I am looking forward to more adventures in 2018.

Happy New Year, everyone!