2019

Published on December 29, 2019 (↻ June 8, 2024), filed under Everything Else (RSS feed for all categories).

Time for the next personal retrospective. I’m going to play with the format.

2019 was a rather quiet and uneventful year.

Travels

It’s not a priority anymore but I traveled internationally.

• Malta
• The (breathtaking) Faroe Islands
• The United States (2×)
• Sweden
• Romania
• Spain
• France
• Austria

I traveled both nationally and internationally for Round Table, not necessarily all in my function as President (until February) and Past-President (from March on) of my table, RT 233:

• the Funta in Crailsheim,
• the RT Sweden AGM in Linköping,
• the RTI World Meeting in Brasov (Romania),
• the x33 Euro Meeting around Valenciennes (France), as well as
• several local and regional gatherings like district meetings and charity events.

I’m proud and happy that my ideas and work contributed to several thousand euros in donations for Round Table charity. “On fire for tabling.”

Some of the journeys I made with my girlfriend, Beatriz, with whom I moved in together in August, right into the heart of Hamburg. That was an important step for us, I look forward to the next one, and I love you, Beatriz.

Trainings

I made trainings and activities a bigger priority again. (If you just get to know me, I love trying things, and I try everything.)

• I went through bloodborne pathogens training,
• I acquired an Internet surf certificate 😂,
• I made my sea/ocean boating license (Sportbootführerschein See),
• I made my lake/river boating license (Sportbootführerschein Binnen),
• I made a license to operate and own emergency signals (Fachkundenachweis/FKN or “Pyroschein”),
• I went through a semi-professional beer tasting run by a colleague (cheers Franzi),
• for the first time I joined public protests (Fridays for Future and, spontaneously, a march against the LPT animal testing labs),
• I became a certified Professional Scrum Master, and
• I made my forklift license (Flurfördermittelschein or “Staplerschein”).

I do love trying things and have a few plans for 2020.

Writings

I wrote.

• 3 books: 199 Love Haiku, Das kleine Buch der HTML-/CSS-Frameworks, and Upgrade Your HTML,
• 37 posts for meiert.com (29 in English, 8 in German),
• 4 articles for heise.de,
• 12 drafts that I discarded.

Statistics

I did other things:

• I wrote 1,688 emails (3,900 if I count notes-to-self, which are an important tool for me).
• I read 109 books. (I log them and rate the best on Goodreads.)
• I watched 144 films. (Too many. Star Wars IX was one of the worst.)
• Of the photos I took, I kept 2,867. Of videos, 36.
• I made 947 contributions on public and private GitHub, and (exactly) 1,000 commits to private Bitbucket.

This may do.

❧ It was a good year. I extend cordial wishes to you and your loved ones for the brief remainder of 2019, and wish you all the best for 2020. Be in touch.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you’d like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback for me to fix issues, learn, and improve. Thank you!