Review of the Year 2019

[swatts]

What-ho lovelies,

Hope you are all winding down for the holidays if you celebrate this particular one.

This year has been a right slog, but it feels as if some of the things we've been putting in place are coming to fruition. Interesting times are a coming!

Work - SSDC

Seemed as if we were reaping the Brexit dividend this year, we were busy, but earnings we hard to come by. That said we put a fair bit of effort into our pet areas of Singleshot and Marine Alarm System. I expect we will get some payback in 2020.

Work - DSH Workshops

We also started a new collaboration with Delacor and Hampel Software Engineering - DSH Workshops. I'm quite hopeful this will take us into interesting new areas. It's certainly caused a bit of a stir.

What we are trying to do with these workshops is to get 3 experienced mentors in a room and discuss best practices. With the first one it was most useful to see how the 3 companies (and the participants) achieved deliverable projects. Where our methods converged made us think that the process was essential and should be adhered to. Where they diverged it showed that the process was important but dependent on use case.

Under this badge I also did a lecture at AGH University Krakow. Here's a slide from it. Advising a bit of engineering rigour when applied to CS.

Work - GDevCon

GDevCon#2 was another great success and reviewed here, it also was a huge effort. My gratitude goes out to all the hard working team members and presenters. Check out the vids on our youtube channel.

I think we really found our voice this year, the focus on pragmatic, useful content really showed in the presentations. I have some thoughts on the submission process to come.

Travel

Did a fair bit of travel this year. I've covered my trip to NIWeek here.

Other than that I did the following.....

Amsterdam on the train. <--- this is a great service, highly recommend it. 
Krakow - CLA Summit Start April
Dijon by train - July 

Brum GDevCon 20-22 Aug
NI Days Munich 19 Nov
Lecture AGH Krakow

Happiness

Been talking a lot about this in the last few months and I think a lot of the key to happiness is being assertive (with yourself and with others), more on this to follow.

How about this for a new years resolution for everyone.

Surround yourself with things that make you happy and reduce the things that don't.

Let's do positive things in January, rather than removing perceived excesses. I'd like to see a "self-pampering January" rather than diets and gym memberships. How about a starting 2020 full of art, music, laughter. dogs and treats.

Lot's of love

[Swinders]

 Here's to 2020 👍

[swatts]