2008 Retrospective, 2009 Outlook

Jens O. Meiert, January 5, 2009.

This entry is filed under Uncategorized.

As usual, a personal recap of last, a prognosis for this year.

2008

So much happened in 2008 that I might keep this part extraordinarily short. Professionally, it’s been a very intense year despite not having held any (public) talks or having attended many conferences, and that’s mostly due to my transfer to Google. Personally, joining Google meant another relocation and also a lot of traveling, something I see as a personal gain although many of 2008’s trips have been business trips. More importantly, joining Google was exactly the right step; Google is a fantastic employer, try it.

As for the English part of this site which grows two years old, let me present to you my personal favorites and very own Top 10 of 2008 (which is a bit different from both my server logs’ Top 10 as well as the “most popular” entries):

That’s not been easy, and two other kinds of contributions might even deserve special attention: On the one hand, 2008 has been the year in which I spent most for charity so far (1,000 dollars for homeless people, 100 francs per month for food programs since December); on the other hand, well, what’s about all the comics (on versioned style sheets and tables, for instance).

2009

Not quite being an expert for retrospectives it seems, let me show you the future instead. Following the tradition, 2009 might mean another relocation, and I’m actually, especially open to move to some country on the other side of the Atlantic. But apart from what my work at Google already means, there are at least three big endeavours for 2009: Updating my book for the third time and/or writing a new one, in English; consolidating all my projects to become more interactive (using Friend Connect, for instance) and to use a hot, fresh standard framework and design; focusing a lot more on conferences (it’s already clear that I’ll speak at two German conferences and attend at least two British conferences in Q1 and Q2).

When it comes to some fresh content for this site, yes, let’s do it again considering the great success that came with anticipation of last year:

Internationalization of CSS
CSS: The Maintenance Trap #1 and How You Can Avoid It
Why Novice Web Developers Shouldn’t Use Frameworks
QA Style Sheet
Hyperlinks and Hypertext
Improving Websites with Google Website Optimizer

Why are those New Year posts always that … gluey.

Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:

Comments

On January 5, 2009, 19:08 CET, Duluoz said:

Really looking forward to the English version of your book and new blog posts! Happy 2009!
On January 10, 2009, 13:55 CET, Jens Meiert said:

Thank you, David …! Happy New Year!
On January 14, 2009, 15:16 CET, Amber said:

obwohl ich fünf Jahre Deutsch-Klassen…I am excited for the english version as well. I have attempted to push my way through you book, however Google translator can only accept so many words before my head starts to hurt

Jens Meiert