2024 - What a Wild Ride

At the end of each year, I sit down to look back and take account of the past year in writing. I've made it my own tradition to help myself acknowledge all the things that happened during the year, especially any achievements of sorts.

I started the year with lots of hope of great things to happen (they did), lots of challenges to tackle (that sentiment nailed it), lots of joy on the way (not as much as hoped for), and lots of energy replenished (phew... nope). The year was an unexpectedly wild ride and it really drained my energy reserves. The good news is that I'm ending the year on a very positive note with a lot of hope for the future. The struggles paid off and I'm grateful for my past self that I've pulled through.

Dear future self, here are my accomplishments of 2024.

• My sixth personal challenge of courageous new community contributions really took off, took quite a toll, and was still so much worth it. I've helped bring lots of things to life: a whole new conference, a practice app, a card deck game, a leadership workshop series - and I've given conference sessions on security for the first time. It's been massive and I've dedicated a whole separate post on closing the challenge, so I won't repeat most things in detail here.
  
• One thing I will indeed repeat, as it was a true #AchievementUnlocked moment for me: I've spoken at my first security conference this year, BSides Munich! Super grateful for this opportunity, and it came at a perfect time right when I kicked off my job search, for which this specific speaking engagement paid off even more. One interviewer shared they watched the recording and liked it (phew, yay!). My future manager was sitting in the talk (I can't make this up)! When it comes to the community, this talk helped me make further connections. For example, I had a call with a new acquaintance to exchange inspiration and ideas to evolve a security champion program further. I got invited to participate in university research around DevSecOps. And you can imagine my surprise when I've discovered my very own talk been referenced in Katilyst's security champion newsletter that I had subscribed to earlier this year! Mind-blowing. By the way, in case you'd like to hear about how my work as security champion evolved over the last years, check out the recording.
• I've had 12 speaking engagements this year, which makes it overall 103 since I've started out in 2017. Crossing the threshold of over 100 gigs is definitely something to celebrate! Looking at conference sessions alone, I've given 8 sessions at 6 conferences in 3 countries this year. In all time, that makes it 48 sessions at 27 conferences in 12 countries. I really have to count and see these numbers for myself, I'm still in awe that I really did all this. My past self wouldn't have believed me one bit.
  
• Including this one, I've written 10 blog posts this year. This number still surprises me as I remember that next to everything else going on this year, there was little to no time left at all for writing. A pity, as I do think in writing, and I do write this blog for myself in the first place, for sharing in the second. Maybe there's more space for it in 2025, I'll see it when I'll do that year's review.
  
• My main social media platforms this year had turned out to be still Mastodon on first place, followed by Bluesky (especially after the recent wave of folks joining). Instagram surprisingly landed on third place (being a lot better than I ever expected it to be). My LinkedIn presence grew as well. It's by far not my favorite platform to consume content, yet it has its very own purpose for career networking endeavors. Overall, I'm grateful for everyone out there posting meaningful content over the course of the year that made me think, made me read, made me listen, made me learn. I'll continue curating my own feeds hoping to pay it forward.
  
• I've invested in a few other community endeavors over the year as well. Like continuing my accountability and learning partnership with Toyer Mamoojee, security pair testing sessions with Peter Kofler, joining a few code reading club sessions (unfortunately a lot less than I had hoped for). I've also had several calls and even on-site meetings with other dear community friends over the year, with us sharing on various topics ranging from learning cybersecurity, to startup ideas, to community dynamics, to anything and everything that moves us.
  
• At work, this year was a wild ride as well. My team and I had a tough time deciding on all the incoming requests and their actual priorities, and catered as best we could to those with highest importance given the circumstances. Compliance of all kinds was a big topic, too. We had several incidents which allowed us to learn how our system could fail in new and surprising ways and implement respective mitigations. Lots of tricky data migrations to get right. Quite some team fluctuation as well, people leaving and coming. In the end we were a smaller core team still doing our best to keep up with occurring demands from all sides, and getting our valued legacy product back in shape. Given the circumstances, we've mostly smashed it. Well, until things changed completely.
  
• Me, my team and lots of other colleagues had been laid off due to the company's business pivoting. I'm very proud of my team, on the sound culture we've built and fostered for us, how we showed up for each other over time, and how we even in the moment when everything came to an end celebrated what we had and gave each other feedback along on our ways. Kudos to everyone! We really had a good ride together. It's never nice to go through layoffs, and yet it's actually been surprisingly good to get laid off as a whole team, just having it end together at this moment in time. It's been like a band-aid being ripped off. Based on our talks, we all preferred this option over a slower and potentially more painful end, like getting chipped away at and dissolved over time.
  
• My amazing network really stepped up in words and action, spreading the news of my unexpected job search, sharing opportunities, making connections. This kind of invaluable sponsorship, plus me putting a lot of effort into a high intensity search, plus my personal challenge endeavors (again building on my network) this year, allowed me to find a new job within 6 weeks, contract signed within 8 weeks. I have to write these numbers down for my future self, and even for my present self as I still can't believe this happened so fast, especially given the current market. Closing everything just before the end of the year. And not just finding just any job but one that I really, really want. And on top of that, a role change that I hoped for in the next years to come. Now it's already here, and I'm so ready for it. I've witnessed the magic of "one door closes and many other doors open" before, yet this year this phrase became a whole new meaning for me.
• This year's personal challenge was all about new community contributions. Here's a new work-related contribution that I didn't foresee beginning of the year. From next year onward, I'll continue my path as a security engineer. When looking back at the kinds of contributions I've done this year and how many had security at their center, it does make a lot of sense, though. I just thought it wouldn't come to it that fast. There will be many more new challenges awaiting me on this next part of my journey, and I bet a few well-known ones as well. I honestly can't wait.
• It feels like a milestone in my career to get this new role and hence opportunity to explore next year. A dear community friend helped me put up a mirror for myself: she said all this is not coming suddenly for me. I've been building this up over many, many years, the knowledge, the network, the path for myself. Lots of little building blocks all over the place providing the foundation for this next step that now has a big meaning. It's been about persistence, continuously moving forward, little by little. About pushing myself also in times I didn't feel like it, like just right after the layoffs that came at a time when I just wanted to breathe and rest. She heard me saying how tired I was all over the year. She's been celebrating this huge step for me, it's all coming together. I'm very grateful for having such dear friends offering reflections in times I really need to see them. And she's been right: the compounding effect of all the little things I've done in my career is indeed real, and very impactful now for me. I'm grateful for my past self pushing through.
  

Here I am. It's the end of the year again. It's been once again helpful for me to look back and see all of the above. Now I'm already super curious what my review for 2025 will look like!