A Year About Community - Dev Retro 2024

I'm a bit late with my annual retrospective, but let's maintain good habits. It's always interesting to look back on the past year and make some plans for the next one.

Plans For 2024 Versus Reality

Last year, I set small, tangible goals for myself to have achievable objectives to work on. So how did that go?

• Organize 3 meetups for MTG:Bordeaux

✅ Together with the other community leaders, we organized 4 MTG:Bordeaux meetups, one more than planned.

• Obtain the official Vue.js certification

❌ I didn't take the time to prepare for and pass it, but I plan to do so in 2025.

• Create a small speaker website in Nuxt, listing my previous talks

🟧 This one is amusing. Instead of creating a small speaker website, I migrated my entire blog to Nuxt using the Nuxt UI Pro SaaS template. It turned into a personal website with a landing page and various sections, including a public speaking section. However, I still haven't taken the time to develop the page listing my previous talks in the speaking section 😏.

• Build a small application using Dapr and running in Azure Container Apps

❌ This is still something I want to accomplish.

• Write a blog post about Obsidian

❌ No longer one of my goals. Even though I'm still using Obsidian and interested in it, there are other topics I want to prioritize writing about.

• Write 2 articles for the Vue CI/CD series on Bordeaux Coders

❌ I think I will delay these articles until a future time when I am more involved with Vue.js and feel inspired to write about it. Blogging should be enjoyable, not a burden.

• Present at least 2 different talks at developer conferences

✅ This year, I had the opportunity to be a speaker at 1 meetup (MTG:Bordeaux) and 3 developer conferences (PulumiUp, Cloud Nord, and BDX I/O) . In the meetup and first conference, I talked about industrializing the configuration and creation of GitHub repositories using IaC. In the 2 other conferences, I led a hands-on training session about beginning with Pulumi.

• Reach 1K followers on LinkedIn

✅ I now have 1.1k followers on LinkedIn. More importantly, I stopped using Twitter and switched to Bluesky. Although I didn't delete my account to keep track of old tweets, I won't return to Twitter. I'm really happy with Bluesky and have even reached 500 followers there.

• Add missing sections to the Pulumi Azure Workshop

🟧 I made significant improvements to the workshop, but there are still some sections that need to be added.

• Develop a 1-day Pulumi training course

🟧 I did not, although my Pulumi Workshop could serve as a foundation for this training course. However, I did create a learning roadmap for Pulumi, which is published on roadmap.sh

• Create a YouTube video about a developer tool or technology

✅ I created my first YouTube video in September, focusing on the Azure Functions Flex Consumption Plan.

Even though I didn't achieve all my goals (which was never the plan), I'm pleased with what I accomplished this year. A big part of this was connected to the tech community, whether by directly creating tech content for the community or by taking part in the local community.

Microsoft Tech Group Bordeaux

With the support of MTG:France, a few others and I started the Microsoft Tech Group Bordeaux meetup group in early 2024. Seeing the time and energy required to organize small meetups makes me admire tech conference organizers even more for managing much larger events. It's all worth it, and I'm very happy with what we achieved.

• A new meetup group that went from 0 to 183 members

• 4 in-person meetups hosted but also live-streamed on YouTube

• 9 talks and 13 speakers

• More than 30 attendees for each meeting

• More that 500 views of the replays on YouTube

• 289 followers on the LinkedIn page of MTG:Bordeaux

This wouldn't have been possible without the help of the other organizers of this meetup (Christian Bonnaud, Xavier Noya, Lionel Lalande), the speakers, the companies that hosted these events, the people from MTG:France, Julien Bichon from Microsoft, and our video expert Enzo Rudy Sekkaï. Many thanks to all of them and to anyone else I might be forgetting.

Microsoft MVP Award

In December 2024, I was awarded the Microsoft MVP title in the Microsoft Azure category. I'm very grateful for this award which acknowledges my community contributions.

I enjoy creating technical content for the community and sharing what I learn, as it's only fair since I learn so much from others too. It feels great helping others grow their skills and learn from my expertise. I don't expect anything in return for writing these articles or giving talks, but it's nice to be encouraged by such an award. I’m sure it will also be a great opportunity for me to provide valuable feedback to Microsoft, meet other passionate people from around the world, and make a bigger impact.

What's Next For 2025?

For 2025, I will keep working on small achievable objectives of which I will probably only do a part:

• Organize 4 meetups for MTG:Bordeaux

• Create a website for MTG:Bordeaux

• Create a talk (for a meetup or developer conference) about devcontainers

• Present at least 2 different talks at developer conferences

• Create 4 YouTube videos about a developer tool or technology

• Obtain the official Vue.js certification

• Reach 2k followers on LinkedIn and 1k on Bluesky

• Migrate my personal website to Nuxt Content v3 and finalize the public speaking section

• Improve the Pulumi Azure Workshop with a section about using existing infrastructure

• Develop a 1-day Pulumi training course

• Build a small application using Dapr and running in Azure Container Apps

Creating MTG:Bordeaux was one of the highlights of my 2024, and I plan to continue building this community. Above all, I aim to keep learning new technologies, tools, and practices, and share them with the community.

To Conclude

Enjoy 2025 and keep learning.