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Looking Back on 2010
2011.01.08

Since reading this post by Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby, I've been hesitant to blog about upcoming projects, plans, and schemes. According to a study that Derek cites: "Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you're less motivated to do the hard work needed." Wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

Everybody's self-identity needs a bit of satisfaction, however, and mine is no exception. To get it, I'm not going to talk about what I'm going to do, instead I'm going to talk about what I've done. In other words, this post is me giving myself a congratulatory high-five.

Here's a quick recap of what kept me busy in 2010:

Basho Technologies

2010 marked the beginning of my second year at Basho Technologies. Basho makes cloud software for distributed data storage, processing, and retrieval.

For me, the year was dominated by a single project - Riak Search. I took over the reins as lead engineer for Riak Search, our distributed index and full-text search engine, and guided the project from prototype through public release, which involved a complete rewrite of the initial Java-base proof-of-concept into Erlang.

Hacker News Readers of DC

The DC technology scene is growing and I'm proud to be a part of it. My biggest contribution is that I organize a Hacker News meetup group for DC and the surrounding metro area.

Here's what happened in 2010:

  • Expanded the group to over 320 members.
  • Average one meetup every 1.5 months after re-launching the group in June.
  • Averaged over 35 attendees per meetup.
  • Launched the Hacker News Readers website to augment our presence on Meetup.com.
  • Signup up our first group sponsors.

Conferences

I never viewed myself as much of a public speaker, and that's something I decided to change in 2010. I made a deal with myself that I would submit a proposal to every conference I found, and accept every speaking opportunity that was offered to me.

This deal turned out to be quite ambitious:

By the way, I wrote a blog post on practicing technology talks.

Nitrogen Web Framework

The web has always fascinated me because of its simplicity and flexibility. There are so many opportunities for leveraging tools to build things more efficiently. My personal contribution to the toolset is a framework for building interactive web applications in Erlang (think Web 2.0, Ajax, Comet, Drag-and-Drop, etc.).

Here's what happened to in 2010:

  • Released version 2.0 of Nitrogen in April, after almost a year in development (and almost a complete rewrite). Added many new concepts like Comet pools and wiring events against JQuery-based selectors. Added the ability to create starter projects. Formalized a way for developers to extend core parts of the system using handlers. The list goes on.

  • Released four more minor updates throughout the second half of the year, adding many great features and addressing bugs.

  • Refreshed the look, feel, and layout of the Nitrogen Project website.

Read the changelog for more details.

Blogging

Finally, here's what I wrote in 2010:

Habitat

My wife and I bought our first home in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. It was stressful, but I'm very, very glad we did it.

Conclusion

That's it. Want to know what I'm working on now? I'll tell you in 2012.