2022 - my year in recap

So, 2022 flew by. I wanted to write a little recap to look back on this amazing year. I had so many amazing opportunities, met so many new people and got to experience amazing meetups and conferences.

Graduated (27th January)

To kick the year of with a bang, I graduated from Odisee on 27th of January; Not much more to say here.

☝️ Me at graduation

Started working full-time @vBridge

After officialy graduating, I started working full-time at vBridge, still super happy about that! vBridge has given me a lot of opportunities this past year. Since is my first year as a working person, this was also the year I went to conferences and meetups.

☝️ Our awesome vBridge merch

First Guest lecture @Odisee (25 Jan)

In January, right after graduation, I was invited by my university Odisee, to give a session about working efficiently in teams as a student. This was a very fun thing to do! I think this was my first real in-person talk I ever gave. Maybe it was here that I caught the public speaking bug? 🐛

☝️ Me giving me lecture at Odisee

First public speaking at meetup (21 apr)

And then, the whole world of public speaking opened up to me. In April, I got the opportunity to give a lightning talk at Full Stack Ghent. This would be my first real in-person talk at a conference with people smarter then me! This was also my first talk ever about the magic of Astro.

☝️ Me at Full Stack Ghent, which was my first meetup (lightning) talk ever.

Moved offices (1 July)

After being in the works for a couple of years, our new officebuilding at Otterburcht was ready!

☝️ The beautiful Otterburcht offices.

Astro shipped v1 (09 Aug)

Finally, after a year of hard work, Astro’s version 1.0 was released on 9th of August 2022. It was amazing to see that a tool I started using at v0.15 grew so big and had such an awesome community. Astro v1 brought so many amazing things, like SSR and adapters.

Became Astro Ambassador

Still waiting on my Astro swag tho 🤷‍♂️.

React Brussels (13 Oct)

After speaking at multiple smaller meetups, this was my first talk in front of more than 100 people and man did that feel awesome! React Brussels was such a well organized and fun conference to be part of! I met so much new people, talked with so many experts in React, Preact and other frameworks.

☝️ Me at React Brussels, you can clearly see I was very excited to be there!

React Global Summit (13 Nov)

I got invited to speak at React Global Summit. One of the biggest (only) virtual React conferences. Here I turned my Astro lightning talk into a full 30 min keynote. It was a lot of fun to do, but in-person conferences are waaaaaayyyyy more fun! I kind of missed connecting with the audience and the casual chat’s afterwards.

What’s next

Ofcourse, that was 2022, I can’t wait for what’s about to happen in 2023. I allready have some dates marked on my calendar for 2023.

First international conference

I’m so excited for this one! I’ll be speaking in February at JSWorld. If you want to keep up with all events past and upcoming 👉 Check this page

☝️ My announcement post from JSWorld.

10 Mile of Antwerp

This is going to be a pain in the butt. I never ran more than 2km before, so 16km is going to be quite difficult. Although it’ll be hard, I’m looking forward to it! A little bit more sport & excercise was very welcome in my life, let’s hope I can keep it up!

☝ My first run ever!

Written by Elian Van Cutsem