2020 and 2021 seemed to blend together for most folks, with the COVID-19 pandemic altering just about every aspect of normal life.
2021 was a year of change for me, as I left consulting to join The Mothership itself, Sitecore. My new role in sales engineering has kept me busy learning about all the new products Sitecore has acquired (it's been a rush, to say the least).
This is a big shift for me - I've mostly known consulting throughout my career, so getting into a product company has taken some adjustment.
I also spent the latter half of 2021 presenting my new tech topic: "A React Crash Course for Sitecore Dinosaus." This has been a great talk, being delivered remotely to several Sitecore User Groups. I'm taking the talk to several conferences in 2022 and hope to deliver them in person.
All in all, 2021 was a slower year than usual for Sitecore Spark. 2022 may end up being more of the same, especially as I focus on speaking opportunities both online and offline.
Coming Up in 2022
My new role at Sitecore means I spend less time focusing on technical topics, but I'll be occassionally writing about Sitecore products, especially Sitecore CDP (formerly Boxever) and XM on Experience Edge. I'll also be writing on general developer topics throughout 2022, especially theory, POC snippets, and .NET 5/6 features.
Since my day job is focused on sales activities, I get to spend my nightly free time working on other software development, which is incredibly refreshing after working on Sitecore development for ten years. I have several open-source projects that I'm releasing this year (both Sitecore and non-Sitecore), so if you need me, I'll be busy on GitHub for a while.