2020:A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
2020 was a really eventful year,the world got hit by one of the biggest pandemics in history and life as we know it completely changed.I ll try to keep this review brief as compared to last year’s decade review and focus strictly on major events that happened to me personally this year.
The L’s
This year I got to build a lot of failed products that either failed to reach the target market, ahead of their time or managed to get users but clients failed to make any future commitments to using the products.
I messed my sleeping patterns.I remember at some point I was sleeping at 4pm and waking up at 8pm.It was sad but interesting point of the year for me.There was a moment where I slept in a Combi after days of no sleep.Hard lessons learnt there😂😂😂.
For the first time in my life I experienced burnout and anxiety from coding😩😩😩.For someone who writes code as a hobby, at school and work it was kind of weird.It got to a point where I got stressed every time I opened an IDE or I was supposed to get on a call to work on projects.I coded my way through this period because the only way I have known to solve problems is by writing some more code😎😴.This was a bad move🥲😩.There was just a start in stress which most of my friends didn’t take note of because I am someone who is not naturally emotional and often tackle problems head on by myself.There was noticeable drop in progress though and something I considered a hobby started to feel like homework.I hate homework😒.As someone who is generally driven by passion,I only take work I feel is interesting and would actually be fun for me.This is one of my weaknesses as an individual because instead of being motivated by economic or materialistic rewards,i am driven by problems.Problems are what motivate me and this makes it more difficult to motivate myself and for other people to try motivate me.The love for solving problems means i spend alot of time obssessing over the problem instead of applying the nearest solution i can think of.
SMALL WINS
The first major project of the year I worked on was a virtual assistant that registered students from two campuses of a tertiary institution in the SSA region.The project was not rewarding but the experience was thrilling and would shape how things would turn out during the year.I also got to explore a lot of Conversation AI tools,witnessed the growth of an NLP and research agency in XavierAfrica.Where i am currently based and worked on most projects.
In 2020,I won almost all hackathons I participated in.Most notably BothoHacks by AfricaHacks and the National STEM Festival Hackathon.Ranking first in Hackathons made me feel kind of invincible😎👀 but the experience was fun.I always had a great time, met new people,learnt a lot from the experiences on how I can improve and become a better software engineer in general.One of the projects I worked on with Tumo during a hackathon would later turn into a deep learning and computer vision startup in the Agriculture space.Project Anton will be fully launched in 2021 and it’s one of the projects that make me lowkey proud of my 2020.
During the country’s first lockdown, one of the projects I worked on was Project Ame, a covid-19 tracking WhatsApp bot which would later in collaboration with XavierAfrica would become a distributed Gender Based Violence alert System and information services agent that is now being used by Botswana Gender Based Violence organisations.
One major project I worked on 2020,is arguably Botswana’s biggest digital project.A social protection services system which is distributed across multiple clients(MmaB).I got to work in a large team of different domain experts and different backgrounds.People from different organisations coming together to build a solution with great national impact.The experience made me grow as an individual and a professional in the software development space.
Note:These aren’t the only projects I worked on or am currently involved in but due to contractual reasons and preferences I thought it was a good idea to just mention a few the major ones😊.
Lastly,As much as we would have liked to cancel 2020😂💀,i would say 2020 was not all gloom.2021 is the year I plan to focus on investing alot in my skills, becoming a better student and write some more code.It’s the year I start my Computer Systems Engineering degree final lap.Therefore it’s significant for me to work on things that would help me grow and become a better person.The dream has always been to become world class and I believe this is the year I start making proper moves that would get me there.Hopefully i get to meet alot of innovators,collaborate more on projects with alot of people.
Happy New Year💯🎉🎊🥳🥳