Retrospective 2020 and Resolutions 2021

Time really flies faster as we always expect. I remember when I wrote a retrospective last year, but it’s about to look back what I’ve done this year.

Covid-19

Everyone knows, we have gotten through the spread of Covid-19 and seen that many infected case and casualties in the planet. WHO has already declared it as the pandemic, and it’s still ongoing.

It affects a lot to our life, with changing our lifestyle tremendously. With rise of almost all companies practising working from home, active use of virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco WebEx has also followed. And how to work wisely in remote way become serious.

Although vaccines manufactured by pharmaceutical companies started being shipped to several countries under agreements, but only God knows when the pandemic totally disappears. but, we can see that biology can expedite to create the better vaccine, so hopefully next year we can return to our normal life we had previously.

What has happened this year to me, other than that Covid-19?

Public Speech

Since this April, I’ve participated in all Android Events in Singapore.

From beginning giving a talk about CameraX and MLKit last year in Cebu, I’ve been interested and enthusiastic in tech talks. After given my talk about CameraX Beta at Android Night in April, total number of talks are up to 5, regardless of the location. (Others can do more and more!)
Due to the pandemic, everyone is not allowed to travel but only able to meet every participants in the monitor screen. Therefore, GDG chapters in the world set up its events in livestream, it helped me join those events. I missed some opportunities to talk, but I would love to do next year in other countries beyond Singapore and Korea. I consider Hong Kong as well as other SEA area.

1. Beyond Alpha, CameraX, April 2020, Android Night, GDG Singapore
2. The recent movement in Activity and Fragment, May 2020, La Kopi, Google Developers Space
3. Introduction to ConcatAdapter, July 2020, Android Night, GDG Singapore
4. Introduction to Jetpack Datastore, Sept 2020, DevFest Incheon, GDG Incheon, South Korea
5. Building an app with Google’s new suites, Oct 2020, DevFest SEA, GDG Singapore
6. Panel discussion about developer’s environment and culture, Dec 2020, Let’Swift, South Korea

Google has announced various features on Android, which helps developers create apps more easily. so luckily got a lot of topics to cover. Based on this information, I would like to summarise interesting topics (or compile into 1 or 2 series and translate in Korean).

And I was really delighted to help GDG SG arrange DevFest SEA 2020 as a co-organiser. Finally debuted as a MC! It’s short introductions of 3 panels, but unforgettable experience because it’s my first time.

Work, Burnout, and Work

Although Covid refrains everyone from travelling, but my work continues.

I still work as an Android developer, but this year my works were not so as fun as last year. Even I fell into burnout and needed to see a psychiatrist or mental therapist. Entrepreneurship or ownership can make us energetic to work conscientiously but once losing it, we would knock down.

How can we keep us happy and healthy? I found the solution, which is in us. The sense of accomplishment and deep conversation can help us get back to work. Sometimes, as everyone sees, only short dialog even really works to get out of the mental illness.

Sometimes I still feel like going seeing the therapist whenever something bad comes up. In my perspective, as working from home gets popular, the more mental sickness will increase. Be careful of it.

Hence how to deal with this burnout and metal health disorder, will be factored in our work and life, because our life is long and precious, still more to go.

Resolution 2021

It’s 30 December 2020, so we have only 1 more days.
What can I say about the resolution of next year?

1. Deep dive into Mobile technologies — Methodology under Android development converges towards one, Kotlin and new Android related features based on Kotlin language. (Coroutine and Flow) hence should consolidate the components. Different from 2010, or 2011 when Android version was at froyo or gingerbread, Google tries to mitigate the burden and the barrier to creating an app. That’s why I have to follow up the new trend.
2. More fluent at my work and language — It’s been 3+ years after leaving Korea. Communication Barrier always exists around me although I do my effort. There is a wrong belief around developers, saying they don’t need to be fluent at English, but it’s totally mistaken. Developers should be able to express their thought using codes, and persuade with verbal language.
   What could show the reason to be fluent so clearly?
3. Staying healthy physically and mentally — No need to elaborate. Once losing health, we will lose everything.

Every important things are always simple. Let’s keep it simple and try our best to make it happen.
Time to say good-bye to 2020, and be ready to welcome 2021 with full hope.