2024 Year in Review

From start to finish, 2024 was an absolute whirlwind of a year. So much happened that it was difficult to look back and remember important milestones and experiences that have shaped me over the last 12 months into who I am today. Honestly, it was one of those years where my wife and I have to ask each other "did we do that THIS YEAR?"

Overall, I'd call 2024 a very successful year! I've had a lot of success throughout the year and moved the needle on a lot of my personal and professional goals. There were the occasional areas where I fell short or ran out of time for some things, but nothing in that list bothers me too much and can't be pushed into 2025. I do want to talk about all of these areas, though, and hopefully you'll find something useful amongst all these words!

Successes

Professional

Started work at Zillow

Exactly one year ago (on the day that I'm writing this), I started a new job working for Zillow as a Senior Software Engineer. During this time, I have been working with the Aryeo team to deliver an end-to-end, full book-of-business experience for real-estate photographers. It's an absolute blast working on this product and being able to work alongside some of the best developers I've ever met (and some that I've admired for their work for a long time), and every day I learn something new.

It's been especially fun getting to work more closely with some folks who also came over from the company I worked for previously who I didn't ever overlap with much. Most of the year was spent with one of these developers working on a very large rework of a foundational component of the Aryeo application that we launched in late 2024.

And of course, I count myself incredibly lucky that I get to continue working with Laravel every day and see how it really is an incredible framework for building enterprise-level applications.

Championed for "Virtual Coworking"

Throughout 2024, I spent a lot of time digging more deeply into remote work and how remote teams can work effectively. Early into my time at Zillow, I worked with the Aryeo team to trial a Virtual Coworking channel in our Slack instance to test some of my hypotheses about remote working. Much to my enjoyment, a lot of folks on the development team really latched onto the idea of Virtual Coworking and we have continued to iterate on it since then.

It's been really interesting to learn so much about effective remote work from companies big and small, and I'm excited to continue to carry on my passion for remote work into 2025, but more on that in a bit.

Laid Foundations for Filament's DevRel Strategy

One of my major goals for 2024 was to help define and execute Filament's DevRel strategy for the next few years, and, while we didn't get as far on the execution as I was hoping, we made some major strides that put us in a great place to hit the ground running in 2025.

There was an unbelievable amount of behind-the-scenes DevRel work that was in front of us at the beginning of 2024, but thanks in large part to the hard work of Dan and the rest of the Filament core team, we put things in order and started to make externally-visible moves on the DevRel front.

One of my two personal favorite accomplishments from this year is the introduction of the Filament Ambassadors program. If you haven't heard about it, you can read all about it here. For the TL;DR version though, the program is our way to acknowledge and support specific people in the Filament community who go above and beyond to share knowledge, help others, and be a good steward of our project values. Even though we're only a few months in, I have already been completely impressed by these folks and feel so lucky to get to interact with them on a more personal level.

The other accomplishment I'm particularly proud of was the starting of the Bright Ideas podcast with Dan Harrin. Bright Ideas is a podcast about all things Filament, and even though we only managed a few episodes this year, we're poised and ready to continue bringing our listeners behind the curtain of Filament into 2025!

My First Laracon

Ever since I've been a Laravel developer, I've been trying with all my might to attend a Laracon event. Everyone I've ever talked to about them has had glowing reviews of them, but I've never quite been able to afford the ticket or make the dates. This year; however, I got to attend Laracon US in Dallas with the Aryeo team. Just going to Laracon alone was incredible enough, but I had a blast being there in person with the people I see through Slack and Zoom every day.

If you're reading this, you're probably already aware of this, but Laracon US this year was top-tier. I spent the better part of a decade helping run 600-800 person conferences, and I was very impressed by how well the conference was run. And of course the speakers were absolutely top-notch!

Spoke at PHPxNYC

Big, immense, massive, ginormous thank-you to Joe Tannenbaum for giving me this opportunity, but when I was in NYC for a work trip for Zillow, I also had the opportunity to speak at PHPxNYC about Filament. It was the first formal run of what has since come to be my lightning quick overview of what makes Filament ridiculously cool (name is still TBD), and the feedback that I got from the people there has been invaluable to shaping how I communicate the benefits and features of Filament as a whole. Not to mention that I got to meet a bunch of great folks from NYC and the surrounding area! And don't even get me started on the bagels, holy smokes. Can't get those down here in SC!

Attended & Spoke at UpstatePHP

I never quite was able to find a PHP meetup locally where I lived previously, but now that I'm in Greenville, I'm plenty close enough to show up to the UpstatePHP meetups (lovingly a partner of the PHPx meetup group). I've only been to two events so far, but I've loved every second of them–it's a great group of people and I've learned a ton from everyone there!

I even got to give a little session on Filament to everyone at the last meetup of 2024. Even better, I got to talk with folks afterwards to see what they have been building with Filament, and let me tell you, there's a lot of incredible projects out there in the Upstate SC area using Filament right now!

Back to Twitch

This one barely counts since I only made it by a couple of weeks, but I'm officially back to streaming tech content on Twitch! With the birth of my youngest I had to step back from regular streaming, but I've always promised myself that I'd get back in the ring sometime soon. Thankfully, without streaming to give me the opportunity to work on some of my ridiculous side projects, I've been collecting a massive backlog of ideas, so there's no shortage of content coming in the next year!

Side note: I'm so thrilled to see the explosion of Laravel content on Twitch lately! It's an area of content that I've felt for a long time hasn't been fully saturated by folks in the PHP/Laravel communities, but lately there have been tons of high quality Laravel streams! If you're a Laravel developer in 2025, whether you're a streamer or a viewer, I think Twitch is the place to be!

Personal

New House

For years now, my wife and I have been trying desperately to figure out how we could permanently get back to upstate SC. And this year, an opportunity finally presented itself. We found a perfect house for our little family just outside of Greenville and managed to snag it before anyone else did. To say we're happy is a wild understatement–it's everything we have been hoping for and then some!

Internet Friends -> Real Friends

For whatever reason, 2024 was the year that a lot of my internet friends became real-life friends. It's great that I can be friends with people who live states and even countries away on the internet, but there really is something special about getting to meet these folks in person. And this year, that happened a lot. I'm so happy with the friendships that I've created and strengthened this year, and I'm looking forward to keeping those going into 2025!

Domestic Successes

Lots of little (but important) achievements here!

• Celebrated six years of marriage to my wonderful wife
• Learned to cook some really great meals on a Blackstone griddle
• Repainted & re-arranged my home office
• Surprised my (usually un-surprisable) wife with a trip to NYC to see some Broadway shows

Near Misses

Content Quantity

At the beginning of 2024, I had planned to create much more written and video content than I ended up putting out. Unfortunately for that goal (but fortunately for my life and well-being), a lot of other, more pressing things came up this year that pushed content creation onto the back-burner. Regardless, though, this means that I didn't create nearly as many blog posts or videos as I had hoped last January.

Only One Livestream

Even though I did technically achieve my goal of streaming again in 2024...it was only a single stream. I was hoping to spend a bit more time on streaming in 2024, but sadly, this year it just didn't happen.

Goals for 2025

Professional

More Content, Written and Video

In 2025, I want to prioritize making time to write and record more. This year I started taking more notes about what I do in my day-to-day work as a developer, specifically taking note about the things I wish someone had written down or recorded a video about for me. So many of the people who have helped me get to where I am as a developer did so by sharing their experiences, and now I want to try and do the same for others!

Increase Laravel Activity on Twitch

Towards the end of 2024, we saw a big uptick in the number of people streaming Laravel development on Twitch. In 2025, I want to continue to encourage the Laravel community to stream or engage with streamers (or both!) on Twitch! Forming a Laravel stream team and doing crossover events are both on my radar, so I'll be working towards those sorts of things as quickly as possible.

More Speaking Engagements

In 2025, I would love to speak at some more events! If you're looking for a speaker, hit me up–I'd love to see if I'm the right fit for you. Sharing knowledge is massively important to me, and I want to help support it however I can.

Personal

Encourage and Uplift

One of my favorite things to do on the internet is to encourage people and help push them towards achieving their goals. Being an encouraging and uplifting voice is something I want to continue to focus on in 2025.

Lower My Mortgage Payments

Moving into a new house has been an incredible blessing, but we did so at the cost of a much higher monthly payment. This year, I would love to lower my monthly house payments by anywhere from 20% - 30%. I don't know if that's an achievable goal, but I'm hopeful!

Thank Yous

As I sit here sipping on some day-old champagne (can't let it go to WASTE, now can I?), I'm intensely aware that there are some people that have helped make my 2024 the amazing, successful year that it was. Every single one of you has impacted me in a profound, personal way, and I have been shaped into the person that I am today in large part by knowing and being in community with you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

In a special way, I'd love to thank the following folks for being a pivotal part of my live in 2024.

• Rob Fonseca - for being the key player in getting me interested and finally interviewing for the gig at Zillow
• Dan Harrin - for allowing me to be a part of the incredible work that the Filament Team is doing and for being such a close friend
• Joe Tannenbaum - for trusting me with speaking at PHPxNYC and being an encouraging voice the entire way
• Bogdan Kharchenko - for welcoming me into the UpstatePHP community

And finally, I want to dedicate my entire 2024 to my family. I do this all for them, and because of them (specifically my amazing wife), I'm able to do the things I do. I love all of you so dearly.