Happy New Year 2024
It’s hard to believe that another year has passed and we have made it to 2024. If you missed my last post I did a year in review on what my 2023 looked like. In this post I want to focus on in the new year. I use this posts to reassess during the year to make sure I stay on track.
Spring Developer Advocate
I’m entering my 3rd year as a Spring Developer Advocate now with Broadcom. As I mentioned in my previous post I’m excited to see what the year ahead looks like. With that I am going to be heads down doing what I love to do. That is connecting with you, talking about Java & Spring. I still can’t believe this is what I get to do every single day. I don’t take it for granted and I appreciate all of your support. These are the different areas that I want to focus on when it comes to learning and presenting on this year:
- Java
- Java 21 & 22 New Features
- Kotlin
- Language Basics
- Kotlin vs Java
- Building Spring Applications with Kotlin
- Spring
- Spring Academy
- Spring AI (AI in general)
- GraphQL
- Spring Boot Migrator / OpenRewrite
- Spring Security - Authorization Server
I would love to hear from you on what you’re interested in learning in the new year.
Writing
I enjoy writing, and in 2023, I remained consistent with my newsletter and personal blog. However, I now want to expand my reach and audience. I have always had the goal of writing my own book, and I plan to start researching this area in the hopes of beginning the process later this year or early next year.
In the meantime, I would like to write for publications other than my personal blog. I already have a few opportunities lined up that I am really excited about, but if you know of any additional opportunities, please feel free to share them with me.
As for my goals, I aim to write 34 blog posts, with 5-10 of them being for publications other than my blog. I believe this is a reasonable number that will allow me to focus on my top priority, YouTube.
YouTube
I mentioned in my 2023 year in review that I am fully committed to YouTube this year. In the first 9 years of my YouTube channel, I gained 20,000 subscribers, and in 2023 alone, I gained 25,000 subscribers. If I can double that in 2024, I will reach a significant milestone of 100,000 subscribers and earn the coveted Silver Play Button.
This is my ultimate goal for the year, so much of what I do will revolve around it. I want to continue improving my video-making process and create content that helps people learn new things alongside me. This includes everything from the equipment I use and my studio setup to how I plan, edit, and publish my videos. There are numerous areas I can enhance, and I will focus on those in 2024.
Additionally, I have received many inquiries for sponsorships, and I hope to partner with some exceptional companies this year. If you are interested in sponsoring a video, please feel free to reach out to me.
Conferences / Events
The only thing I love more than attending conferences is speaking at them. I enjoy being around developers and hearing about the things they are working on and the problems they are trying to solve.
I feel very fortunate to have traveled to so many awesome places last year. I hope to continue doing that this year, and I already have the following conferences scheduled:
- CodeMash - Sandusky, OH
- ConFoo - Montreal, CA
- Great International Developer Summit (GIDS) - Bengaluru, India
I also hope to visit new places this year and speak at conferences I haven't been to before. I have submitted proposals to several new conferences for the first half of the year, so I will keep my fingers crossed and hopefully see you there.
In addition, I am making an effort to attend more Java User Groups this year. I have some plans in progress, and I will share them with you as soon as they are confirmed. If you want to stay updated on where I will be, you can check out my speaking page or subscribe to my free newsletter.
Spring Office Hours
I'm entering Season 3 of Spring Office Hours with more excitement than ever before. It's a lot of work, but it's incredibly gratifying to see all that hard work pay off.
While we have been aware of the numbers in terms of downloads, live stream views, and YouTube replays, they haven't been our main focus. However, that will change in Season 3. I plan to pay closer attention to the numbers early in the new year and determine our goals for the show. Once we establish those goals, we can work on implementing new strategies to support them.
In the new year, one of our priorities is to create a dedicated website for Spring Office Hours. This will give us more control over certain aspects and allow us to incorporate features that have been on our list.
Another goal for this year is to improve our ability to record podcasts while on the road. We conducted a few road shows last year, and although they were enjoyable, there is definitely room for improvement in this area. The first step is to understand the necessary equipment and determine how to obtain it. If you have experience in this area, we would greatly appreciate your input.
My Website (danvega.dev)
I’m really happy that I was able to get my website moved over to Nuxt 3 with a new theme towards the end of 2023. What I really want to focus on next is working on the SEO for my blog posts. I have already started working on this for previous posts and will continue to do this throughout the year.
When I sit down to write a new post I want to figure out what people are searching for on a particular topic and cater my articles to those searches. My thought process here is if I am going to sit down and spend the time to write a blog post It would be nice to get some traffic to my website.
Conclusion
As I enter 2024, I'm grateful for the experiences and opportunities that came my way as a Spring Developer Advocate. This year, I'll explore new features in Java 21 and 22, dive into Kotlin, and deepen my understanding of the Spring ecosystem. I aim to expand my reach by writing for publications, grow my YouTube channel to 100,000 subscribers, and collaborate with exceptional companies through sponsorships. Attending conferences, improving Spring Office Hours, optimizing SEO for my blog posts, and sharing my experiences with the community are also on my agenda for this exciting year.