2020 has been a challenging year for everyone and especially challenging for myself with the pandemic, work challenges, and personal struggles affecting much of my life this year. Despite the hardships, I've tried to stay steady with Sitecore Spark, speaking, and other community activities. Let's take a quick look back at a few highlights of my year on Sitecore Spark.
Blogging in 2020
These past twelve months have found me tripping over obscure Sitecore errors, learning a ton about Sitecore 10 (and the new developer experience), and doing new and exciting things with Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE).
Looking at traffic to Sitecore Spark, SPE continues to be the most popular and sought-after topic from developers all over the world.
Here's this year's most popular posts:
- Why Aren't My Sitecore Roles Syncing Via Unicorn?
- Sitecore ORM Comparison, Part 2: Sitecore API vs Glass Mapper vs Synthesis
- Read-Variable Validation with Sitecore PowerShell Extensions
- Creating and Customizing an RSS Feed in Sitecore
- Don't SPEAK: Consider SPE Instead
Speaking in 2020
Speaking in person means a lot to me. Preparing for a presentation, interacting with an audience, and meeting new people are the best parts of the experience. I spend a lot of time traveling for SUGs, so being locked down in 2020 has been a bummer. This year I spoke remotely a couple of times: once at the Jaipur, India SUG and again at my hometown Atlanta SUG.
Development in 2020
I made a few small contributions and corrections to the official SPE documentation this year and look forward to additional contributions in 2021.
Both of my Sitecore modules have been updated to support Sitecore 10: Sitecore Publish Reporting Kit (SPRK) and Content Author Tokens for Sitecore (CATS). I also worked on a new module this year (an SXA-style accelerator for MVC development), but didn't make enough progress to share with the world yet.
I released a (newish) module as well: SPRK: Simple. This is a simplified version of my SPRK module that drops the IoC/DI pieces. I did this for a couple of reasons: 1) integration simplicity and 2) as a learning tool for devs looking to compare the pros/cons of using IoC/DI with real world production-ready code.
Finally, I released SPE Starter Kits in the fall. This is a collection of SPE scripts to be used as a starting point or learning tool for developers wanting to learn SPE best practices.
Looking Ahead to 2021
With a long, difficult 2020 behind me, I'm looking to focus on three things in 2021:
Jamstack: While I'll be learning (and sharing) all about Sitecore Experience Edge, I'm getting into Jamstack in general this year with a focus on JavaScript-driven tooling and changes to Sitecore Spark itself to support Jamstack-based architecture.
In Person Speaking: If COVID continues to improve throughout 2021, I'll be returning to some regular cadence of traveling and speaking on Sitecore and .NET technology topics throughout the US (as always, I'm eyeing a few conferences in the Midwest).
All-In on Open Source: I'm shifting my personal development to an open source model, starting with my latest Sitecore module in spring of 2021. My GitHub already hosts a few Sitecore modules and other utilities, but it will grow significantly throughout next year as I open my existing repos to contributions and scrutiny.