2012, A look back

A brief look back over what I’ve been up to in 2012. (2011)

I started at GitHub in February which has been life-changing in several ways. GitHub works differently and I can’t imagine working any other way. I’ll elaborate on this more in another post.

Learning

• Marketing: Not just marketing, but GitHub marketing, which is much more about taste, product improvements and customers than anything else.
• Growth: We had a big year for growth at GitHub. I’m still learning the ropes of growing a business at this pace, and it’s been incredible.
• Public Relations: I ran PR for just long enough to know that we needed someone amazing to focus on it full-time. Liz started in October and is already off to an amazing start.
• Speaking: I only gave three talks this year, but I felt like these were my best yet. I’m looking forward to more story telling in 2013.
• Passion: Witnessing what is possible when 140 passionate people do the best work of their life is inspiring and addicting.

Doing

• Shipped lots of awesome stuff at GitHub, and schemed more awesomeness for 2013
• Traveled to Portland, Sweden, New York City and Bulgaria for conferences
• Shipped influencer.tweets - What are ‘influencers’ on twitter saying right now about X?
• Presented Marketing for Geeks - Web Visions, Portland Oregon and Nordic Ruby, Sweden
• Presented Analyzing Millions of GitHub Commits: What Makes Developers Happy, Angry, and Everything in Between? - Strata, New York City, NY
• Presented GitHub, an egalitarian love story - OpenFest, Sofia Bulgaria

Personal changelog

I made some changes to my digital and computing life in 2012:

• No monitor w/ 13” MacBook Air - Fullscreen apps when possible, focus focus focus
• iPad - I’ve been digging the iPad 2 for reading and catching up on things in the evenings
• Things.app - I’m back to Things.app after years away, getting my GTD on
• Pocket - After trying tons of “read it later” apps, Pocket for Mac, iPad and iPhone are perfect
• GitHub.com - Using GitHub fulltime has been amazing and keeps getting better
• Concentrate - Great app to curtail distractions and get down to business
• Instagram - Love my instagram feed and love sharing good snaps
• Prismatic - A smart news discovery service that gets better the more you use it
• Stitcher - On-demand podcasts, perfect for the commute

2012 was pretty great. 2013 is going to be even better.