Tag Archives: 2014

2014

Reflecting on 2014, a couple of themes:

  • Reclaim. In the past, I’ve written about taking back technologies from corporate entities. This year, I’ve found myself embarking on what I consider to be the natural extension of Project Reclaim: taking back my attention from technologies. In April I ditched my smartphone, and in September I stopped using Twitter. Each decision arose from a desire to devote more of my limited mental and emotional energies on things that matter most to me, like my family and my work. In each case, the pull of inertia was strong – the natural thing was to continue using the tools, just like everyone else around me was doing – but in each case, the rewards of letting go have been significant.
  • Ease. My wife and I decided over dinner tonight that 2014 felt easy. We didn’t move this year. We enjoyed satisfying jobs and financial stability. Our son transitioned from a toddler to a very nice little boy. In contrast, our family has a number of very large changes coming in 2015, changes that will be hard in many ways. So the relative and welcome easiness of 2014 is worth a moment’s pause.
  • ShippingDuring 2014, BuddyPress shipped a number of major versions. I put a huge amount of time into BP 2.0, as both a developer and a release manager, and I think it paid off – IMHO it’s one of the most important releases in BuddyPress history. BuddyPress 2.2 will come in the first weeks of 2015, and it too promises to be a really important release. In addition, I was invited to join the WordPress core team for the 4.1 release, an experience that’s been fulfilling in its own way. Considered alongside a number of successful client project launches, I’ve been involved in a happily large number of solid software releases this year.

A big year ahead, but for now, за ваше здоровье!

Blogging heroes, 2014 edition

The best bloggers publish so regularly that it’s easy to take their work for granted. So, as 2014 winds down, I thought I’d take a moment to salute my favorite blogs of the year.

The main quality that earns a blogger my respect is fearlessness. In order to blog frequently, you’ve got to be willing to write on a broad range of topics, and to publish what might sometimes less-than-fully-formed work. Most authors (myself included) are too chicken to do these things. The writers listed here are not.

  • Samir Chopra – Philosophy, cricket, politics, parenthood, New York, literature, you get the idea.
  • Alan Levine – Alan is fond of saying that his tireless chronicling makes his blog a supplement to his memory: he can easily look back to see what he was doing and thinking just about any day in the last decade. We should all be so bold.
  • Audrey Watters – Independent journalist covering education and technology. Support her work.
  • Alan Jacobs – I follow Alan’s blog and tumblr in part to remember that there’s a way to engage in public intellectualism without being pandering or smarmy.

Thanks to all for your work in 2014!