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#DieHimmels­traeumerin

iOS dev • sketchnoting • accessibility • pineapple on pizza • sports • she/her

Dec 30, 2020 ⋅ 14 min read

Thoughts about 2020

One year ago, I wrote down the most important things for me from 2019. I really liked it, because it helped me to process the year and to remember what happened. Obviously, 2020 is marked by the pandemic. I wish so badly that this will be over soon! A few days ago, I watched "Soul" and it reminded me not to wait for something but to enjoy the little things. So, I need to write this down to remember myself that not everything was bad and that I’ve learned and experienced a lot.

Adventurous Tenerife

In February, I made vacations on Tenerife on the Canary Islands! Life was still "normal". But strange things happened there nevertheless. One day it was so unbelievable windy and stormy, we were told to stay at the hotel. The next day the sand arrived with the wind and the air turned orange after some time! See this before and after picture on twitter. I’ve learned that it’s called a "Calima". Calimas are hot wind storms that carry sand towards the Canary Islands from the Sahara, capable of lifting dust thousands of meters above the Atlantic Ocean. The air smelled and felt dirty and sandy. Again, we were told to stay at the hotel, because you could have difficulties to breath. Definitely felt like a kind of apocalypse.

Welcome, Sketchnotes!

In March, I integrated my sketchnotes on this website. It was a lot of work, but I could learn much about layouts with CSS. I wrote a blog post about the idea, the process and the implementation (see the tweet).

It feels awesome to have my own little place in the big world of the internet, where everything which matters to me can be discovered. A place with things I’ve created and am proud of.

Home Office Time

Since the mid of March and the first lockdown in Germany, I’m working from home.

Lettering next to a keyboard which says it's home office time

To work from home from one day to the other was really hard for me, I missed the ride to the office with my bicycle to get awake in the morning and the ride back home to clear my head. I had to learn that I need to move more and differently than before. Now, nine months later, I love working from home, especially the flexibility, the silence and the comfort.

Sharing Knowledge

Since April, I had the chance to teach iOS development with one of my iOS colleagues to three other developers which mostly had no experience with mobile development and iOS in specific. It was really fun to think about what are the most important topics, to prepare different topics and to see how fast and how much they’ve learned. I’m super proud of them, because they can now implement iOS tasks mostly on their own and we’re now a bigger group of iOS developers - like a little community.

Conferences from the Living Room

In May, I took part in two online conferences which I’ve visited in person last year. It’s a different experience, but I wouldn’t miss it at any chance!

What I miss on online conferences

  • the random conversations between the talks
  • the food and the drinks
  • the partys, where you see some people you’ve already talked to earlier
  • traveling to beautiful cities, like Lugano

What I like about online conferences

  • possibility to pause the video, take a break and revisit later
  • watch talks from wherever you want
  • way cheaper!
  • use all the pencils you have for sketchnoting
  • use your own desk for sketchnoting
  • speakers could answer questions in chat during the talk

Read my opinion on why you should sketchnote on online conferences, if you are interested in it.

AppBuilders

AppBuilders was my very first online conference. They used Hopin as conference platform tool. You could actively talk in smaller groups or just listen to others. It made it especially easy for introverts.

I made sketchnotes of all talks and posted them after each talk on twitter. This got some attention and many people interacted with the tweets. I even got some shoutouts from people during the conference. It’s still a bit surreal for me, but it always makes me happy when others find my sketchnotes useful.

It was great to have the sketchnotes integrated on the conference memento page:

I think they are perfect next to the youtube video because you can get a quick overview what the talk is about and then decide to watch a talk or not.

If you’re interested in the talks, you can see all my sketchnotes from AppBuilders on this website or in this twitter thread.

For the first time in my life, I was mentioned in a newsletter and I was so surprised and honored! If you want, check out the specific issue, where I was mentioned in the SwiftLee newsletter by Antoine van der Lee (@twannl).

UIKonf

UIKonf took place just a week after AppBuilders. They also used Hopin. UIKonf is known for their social events the day before the conference. There were many online activities to choose from. I escaped from an "online escape room" with others and it was really fun and entertaining.

I also took sketchnotes of all the talks and that was really a lot for two days. I think next time I will include more breaks and not watch every talk. All the talks are online after the conference, so it’s easy to catch up. UIKonf even used a private Youtube livestream, so you could pause and resume whenever you wanted!

See all my sketchnotes from UIKonf on this website or in this twitter thread.

Meetups

Although it’s different to meet other people remotely and attend a conference in person, I loved that so many events and meetups were virtual. I was able to attend some meetups that I never would have been able to attend because they are far away from where I live. This is a great advantage!

SNConnect

This year I also participated in my first sketchnoting conference in September - SNConnect. It was mostly about interaction and having fun. The conference was self-organized, meaning there was no agenda in advance. Every morning we came together and anyone could submit a topic or ask a question if they just wanted some advice. The sketchnoting community is very open, friendly and the best part, they all love sketchnoting. Who would’ve thought? 😉

I learned one of my favorite quotes at SNConnect:

"There’s no failing! FAIL is only your First Attempt In Learning"

– Someone at SNConnect

See all my sketchnotes from SNConnect on this website or in this twitter thread.

Discover new Sports

Since January, I have had an Apple Watch. It was one of the best decisions to buy it. It really keeps me moving! Especially when I started working from home, I stopped exercising and moving. I had to find activities other than playing soccer. Activities that I could do by myself or with a few others.

My sister invited me to go rock climbing with her in May. I had some bouldering experience before, but I love climbing more because you’re outside in the nature and it’s so fun to spend time with my sister. We go almost every weekend!

In August, I started going swimming two to three times a week. During the summer, the outdoor pools were still open and I could go there after work. I could get my mind off work by riding my bike and going to swim. I was immediately hooked on it. I could do it by myself and enjoy the weather in the summer. I really enjoyed the 50m swim lane. I tried to crawl for a bit, but it just didn’t work for me and I panicked after a few strokes, because I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. So, I just stuck to breaststroke and I was happy (when the swim lane was long enough and the lane was clear). On my vacation in September, the AirBnB had access to a spa at a hotel next door. They had a pool, but the swim lane was only ~13m long. So annoying, but hey, there was water and it was free 😉 One day, we went to a spa that had a loooong sports pool that was totally empty (of course) instead of the other hot tub and fun areas. I beat my highscore and swam 1km in under 20min! I was so happy the whole day.

In October, I started a swimming course to learn crawl swimming. I was lucky, that the course was held in spite of Corona. They limited the number of participants from 10 to 5 and instead of 13 there were only 5 sessions. Training with so few others was a total win, our swim coach was able to give a lot more individual feedback. After each session I was so proud to do a little better than last time. In the very last session, I even got the nicest compliment from my swim coach, see my tweet.

All in all, the swim was a complete success. I learned so much and I was able to overcome my fears with the front crawl.

Since November, all the pools have been closed due to lockdown. I really miss swimming and hope I don’t have to relearn everything when they eventually reopen.

Since I can’t go swimming right now, I bought a balance board. It’s like a skateboard without wheels and you can do balance exercises with it in the living room in front of the TV. It’s so simple but also really fun!

A collage of different pictures with a balance board from the top, an outdoor swimming pool, me climbing in between two rocks, me climbing in front of a rock, the view into tree tops and my feet from the top next to a swimming pool.
Balance Board, Swimming and Rock Climbing - my new sport activities this year

iPad and Apple Pencil

In August, I gave myself a birthday present: I ordered the iPad Pro 12.9" with the Apple Pencil. I wanted to use it for sketchnoting. A few weeks later, the Apple Pencil arrived. Nice! I had to stay patient because the iPad took another two weeks to arrive. If you want to know why I bought it, what I was hoping for and how I liked it, I recommend reading my blog post "Me, my new iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil".

Vacation Mode On

We were lucky with our vacation planning this year, so we managed to make a road trip to Austria in September without risking too much. It was great to explore the many lakes and hike in the mountains! We were able to go stand up paddling (I LOVE IT), canoeing, hiking and exploring. The pictures speak for themselves.

A collage of different vacation pictures in Austria
A collage of different vacation pictures in Austria

Widget, Widget, Widget

In September, the best @xavierLowmiller and me decided to experiment with the new iOS 14 feature - Widgets! We did some awesome pair programming sessions and after a while we were able to solve all the code signing issues. Widgets in Cineaste App allow you to create a release countdown for your favorite movie that you would like to see. Unfortunately the cinemas were mostly closed this year, so only a few movies were released, but hopefully they will open again soon and it makes even more sense to use the widgets 🤞

Workshop for hundreds of People

I knew that in November the NSSpain would take place. The schedule was announced day by day. I bought a ticket. At UIKonf, some people told me, that they would like a workshop on sketchnoting. But it was on such short notice that there was no way I could do it at UIKonf. But maybe I could do it now at NSSpain? Sometimes I’m in a yolo mood. So I just spontaneously messaged the organizer, Luis (@Lascorbe), on twitter. And he thought it was a great idea and managed to schedule me in, even though the schedule was already set. I’m still surprised that it worked out. Thanks again for the possibility, Luis!

I’ve already held a few workshops in my company last year. But they were always on-site workshops and in German, my native language. This time it would be virtual and in English! I was a bit freaked out. Two weeks later I managed to achieve a setup so that others could see the things I was drawing on my desk and also see me while I was speaking.

On the left, you see a woman in with bunny ears and on the right you see hands on a desk, a keyboard, a cup of tea and some other stuff from the top
Professional video conference setup with my Macbook’s video camera enabled (left) and screensharing the video from my iPhone held by a smartphone mount thingy (right).

This time the conference lasted 36 hours, so you could watch talks from all over the world and from every time zone. The conference would start on Thursday morning and end on Friday evening. My workshop would take place during the lunch break on Friday. I guessed that some people would see a few of my sketchnotes and maybe they would get interested and join my workshop. So it was the perfect time for the workshop.

Again, I made sketchnotes of every talk I saw, so about half of the talks. I was really nervous about the workshop because I had to speak English and I didn’t know how many people would even be there. But after two or three minutes of the workshop, I became more relaxed and gladly everything went well.

I’ve received only positive feedback about the workshop! I can’t believe it! I’m sooooo proud that I was brave enough to do this.

See all my sketchnotes from NSSpain on this website or in this twitter thread.

Annual Commit History

It’s a tradition that I analyze my annual commit history at the end of December. The report is a mix of professional and personal work. Credits for the script go to @markusfisch

In 2020 Feli made 894 commits in 19 projects.
The average length of a commit message was 46 characters.

Commits per weekday
    Monday     139 ****************************************************
   Tuesday     132 **************************************************
 Wednesday     113 *******************************************
  Thursday      97 ************************************
    Friday     112 ******************************************
  Saturday     120 *********************************************
    Sunday     181 *********************************************************************

Commits per month
       Jan     123 *********************************************************************
       Feb      52 *****************************
       Mar      94 ****************************************************
       Apr      78 *******************************************
       May      61 **********************************
       Jun      71 ***************************************
       Jul      61 **********************************
       Aug      87 ************************************************
       Sep      41 ***********************
       Oct      69 **************************************
       Nov      67 *************************************
       Dec      90 **************************************************

Lines added (+) and removed (-) per weekday
    Monday  -34649                                      ------------------
   Tuesday -102812 -------------------------------------------------------
 Wednesday   25563                                                        +++++++++++++
  Thursday   -7686                                                    ----
    Friday   -4933                                                      --
  Saturday    8265                                                        ++++
    Sunday   16258                                                        ++++++++

Lines added (+) and removed (-) per month
       Jan -107727 ----------------------------------------------------------
       Feb    -656                                                           
       Mar   19875                                                           ++++++++++
       Apr    6478                                                           +++
       May   10818                                                           +++++
       Jun    7354                                                           +++
       Jul    3659                                                           +
       Aug    1157                                                           
       Sep  -11236                                                     ------
       Oct    5263                                                           ++
       Nov  -43929                                    -----------------------
       Dec    8950                                                           ++++

Top 3 words in commit messages (ignoring words up to three letters)
    Update     213 *********************************************************************
      from      91 *****************************
    Remove      71 ***********************

My Highlights

My highlights from this year are definitely that I discovered new sports activities. Climbing is really fun, you’re out in the nature and #frankenjura has so much to offer. I also love that I get to spend time with my sister. Swimming in the summer was great, especially after work to clear my head. After a few weeks, I could see that I was gaining speed and endurance. I miss swimming a lot.

Definitely the workshop at NSSpain! I am so proud and happy that so many people participated and enjoyed it.

Most days this year, cooking was the highlight of the day for me. I started taking a picture of each lunch. Enjoy the video and I hope you don’t get hungry watching it 😉🍽.

Stay safe and a happy new year!

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