2020 Review

2020 was a very year particular year! Many things happened… 😳 I want to highlight some of the interesting achievements at a professional level.

I never get these reviews done at the end of year… Here’s a summary of some achievements (not in order):

• Made my first conference talk in Portuguese! This was at DevFest Portugal 🇵🇹 I was super happy, it was intimidating, as I am mostly used to do talks in English, so trying to speak about open source in Portuguese without speaking with too many “english” terms, was a challenge. I loved it, and after that, I did 2 more in Portuguese, and it’s such a pleasure 🤗
• Wrote my first post in Portuguese, about Open Source. It was a challenge just like the first Portuguese talk, but I really wanted to do it.
• Participated in a podcast for the first time! This was with Coding Black Females podcast. It was a super interesting experience that I especially loved because of the community it was for!
• Co-organized multiple meetups as part of my volunteer work as Community Leader at AnitaB.org London community. In particular, a meetup about public speaking was such an intense experience. I have GREAT respect for community organizers, not just for the meetups, but also all the logistics involved in keeping a community alive and engaged.
• Had first lightning talk and it was not related to open source! This is super important because I want to be able to articulate my non open source related knowledge and thoughts. With this, I was able to get out of my comfort zone, of talking about open source. I talked about a topic I am super interested in, documentation and transparency at work. This was at Ladies of Code London, an awesome community, I am super happy to be a part of 🤗
• I was made redundant and recovered from it. This was one of the toughest things that I experienced this year. I could never imagine it happening until it did. I am super grateful to be with my family at that time in Portugal and to have friends that supported me throughout this time. I went through the job hunting process, which can be extremely emotional and energy draining, and soon enough found another job 🙏🏾
• Became admin for AnitaB.org Open Source! So this year, I got to help the community at a more broad level, other than maintaining projects (which I also did) and I loved it. I learned a lot from doing admin work with my co-admins.
• As part of this, I also participated on GSoC as an admin on AnitaB.org Open Source, 2 years after participating on GSoC as a student. It was basically a full circle of these google open source programs, such an interesting and rewarding experience.
• Mentored at Black Codher bootcamp - 6-month Coding Bootcamp programme in the UK for black women. This was such an impactful and meaningful experience for me for the cause it stands for. I got to be a mentor I wanted to have in my early years, but to a newcomer to the tech industry. I learned a lot from this experience and met incredible people who care about the cause and are super knowledgeable. I even learned a little of React to help my mentee 😅