2021 – A Year In Review

Byjamie_maguire

It’s that time of year where we look back on the last 12 months.  It’s generally been a good year for me except for not being able to travel much.

Writing these annual blog posts helps me remember what I’ve done and if I’ve hit personal goals I’ve set.

I’ve tried to annotate certain parts with some tips that might help you. I hope you find them useful.

Headlines

Over the last 12 months, these are some of the main things that were going on:

  • Published 42 Blogs
  • Created 2 courses on Pluralsight
  • Became an author on Cloud Academy and created 1 course
  • Gained the Azure AI Engineer Associate accreditation
  • Maintained my Microsoft MVP in Artificial Intelligence status
  • Created the Tech Twitter Mega Directory to amplify community
  • Scheduled and sent 1,876 Tweets :-O
  • Launched new features in my Marketing SaaS (Social Opinion)
  • Secured partnerships for Social Opinion
  • Started getting the basics of a home gym
  • Participating in Twitter Spaces

 

The above kept me busy and by the time I got to the summer I took a month off from the extra community type activities. I was simply fried and wanted to enjoy more time with the kids outdoors.

 

Most Read Blogs

I wrote and published 42 blog posts over the last 12 months. The main topics were focused on:

  • Azure
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Cognitive Services
  • Chatbots
  • Microsoft Bot Framework
  • My marketing SaaS (Social Opinion)
  • My open-source SDK

 

Interestingly, the most read blog posts were a combination of content from the 2020 with the remainder being related to architecture and building chatbots using the Bot Framework SDK and Bot Framework Composer.

  1. Instagram Graph API – Part 2: Fetching data with the Insights API
  2. Instagram Graph API – Part 1: Introducing the Instagram Graph API and how do you connect to it?
  3. Simplify your architecture using the Orchestrator Pattern
  4. Software Architect / Microsoft MVP (AI) and Pluralsight Author
  5. Instagram Graph API – Part 3: How to write a C# API that extracts data using the Insights API
  6. Adding speech capability to your chatbot using Bot Framework and Azure Speech Services
  7. Integrating Bot Framework Composer and Adaptive Dialog to create dynamic, user-configurable chatbots
  8. Implementing Long running Tasks in Azure
  9. Using the Direct Line API to communicate with your Bot Framework Chatbot
  10. Exploring the LinkedIn Marketing Developer Platform

 

Some of the most read and engaged with content was my Instagram Graph API series. People seemed to really enjoy that, and it solved a lot of problems. I decided to package those up into a single resource and self-published it on Gumroad for sale.

I rarely check Google Analytics but logged in and seen there were 196k page views of the content in the blog over the last 12 months:

 

 

Most people arrived at my blog via organic channels:

 

 

My blogs were read all over the world:

Deeper dive into the top 10 visiting countries over the last 12 months:

Reader “demographic interests”:

Tip: Start your own blog in 2022.  I’ve met some great people through it, learned from others and found great opportunities.  You can do the same.

Most “Popular” Tweet

I schedule most of my tweets using Social Opinion. I get a lot of insights using the analytics features of the tool and  found out that my most “popular” tweet had nothing to do with blogs I’d published or “proper” content. It was this:

Being a bit of a data nerd, the bit that caught my eye was the number of impressions from a simple tweet – 221,310.

The replies to the tweet are hilarious. You can read them here.

Tip: Your content can educate, inspire, or entertain!

Tech Twitter Mega Directory

Most accounts on Twitter have less than 1,000 followers and don’t get the recognition they deserve.  My account isn’t massive either really, but I sent a tweet asking “Do you have a blog? Drop it down below and let’s raise awareness of all the great blogs out there.”

Quite a lot of people replied and got me thinking.

Why not do the same for YouTube and podcasts?

This resulted in the Tech Twitter Mega Directory. I hacked the site together by using the conversation_id parameter in each thread then exported every single tweet and hyperlink. I then imported and converted this data into some simple HTML.

Social Opinion

A lot of you will know that I designed and built my own SaaS. It’s been quite the journey and I’ve iterated many times on this. Throughout the year I added new features and applied for various programs to help me grow the product.

Some of this included:

 

It’s not easy doing this in your spare time but it’s rewarding seeing your product being used by people. With limited time I made the decision to outsource the development.

Tip: One thing I learned is that you don’t need to build something that has loads of features. Sometimes customers would cancel and tell me they found free alternatives as they weren’t using the AI/NLP or follower search features in the product. They just wanted to schedule content.

.NET Open-Source Developer SDK (Social Opinion API)

I maintained a decent cadence with new updates to the Twitter API v2 in my .NET open-source developer SDK. It’s been downloaded almost 5,000 times at the time of writing this blog.

The SDK has support for all endpoints in the new Twitter API v2 and is written in C#. It makes it easy for you to connect to the Twitter API and do loads of cool things such as search for tweets, find accounts, surface detailed analytics, followers of even information about Twitter Spaces.

Shout out to people from the community raising and fixing issues in the GitHub repo!

You can find it on NuGet or GitHub.

Twitter

Twitter launched a Developer Insiders Program.  The program aims to recognize and celebrate passionate technologists who demonstrated outstanding leadership in advancing the Twitter community.

Members of the Program bring the Twitter Developer community forward by demonstrating:

  • Leadership and Influence: They demonstrated an extraordinary ability to share knowledge in a way that resonated with their community.
  • Technical prowess: They showed exceptional technical skills and combined with their creativity, delivered outstanding apps and integrations
  • Force for good: They reinvest their skills and time into their community or contributing to the social good.

 

I happily signed an agreement with Twitter as one of the inaugural members (Thank you!). The Program comes with a bunch of benefits for developers and solo founders. If you’re thinking of building on the Twitter API then check it out.

 

YouTube

I’m not massively active on YouTube but did create a few videos to supplement some blog posts that I had written. You can find these videos here:

The Custom Question Answering Cognitive Service has loads of use cases and is worth checking out.

Tip:  After you’ve written a blog, record a quick clip that shows what you’ve just written about. It will be fresh in your head and gets your content on another platform. YouTube is the second largest search engine. I should have done more of this.

Cloud Academy

Which brings me onto Cloud Academy. Someone at Cloud Academy found a few of my earlier YouTube clips and blogs and I was asked if I would be interested in creating courses and content on topics like Microsoft Bot Framework.

I’m deep in this space so naturally agreed. It was a good match, and my first course went live this month.  The course “Creating Chatbots using Microsoft Bot Framework SDK”.  In this course you’ll learn:

  • Overview of Chatbots and the Bot Framework SDK
  • Creating a Bot with Visual Studio
  • Working with Turn Context and State
  • Capturing User Information with Dialogs
  • Publishing your chatbot to Azure

 

The course will help you pass the Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solutions exam and you can find it at Cloud Academy here.

Pluralsight

I continued to work together with Pluralsight and in 2021 created 2 new courses.

Twitter API v2: First Look

After learning so much about the new Twitter API v2 through my open-source SDK and rebuilding my SaaS to use it, it made sense to package up this knowledge into a course.  I pitched the idea to Pluralsight and was happy when they agreed that we could create this. The course Twitter API v2: First Look teaches you about the biggest release to the Twitter API since 2012.

Build a Form Recognizer with Microsoft Azure Computer Vision

A few months later I created another course with Pluralsight titled – Build a Form Recognizer With Microsoft Azure Computer Vision.  This course provides you with the required knowledge to help you prepare for the Microsoft Exam AI-102: “Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution”.

I had fun building these courses. They are a good way to ensure I can condense what I know into a digestible resource for others to learn from.

Talks / Shows / Community

Community friends invited me onto some of their shows and streams. The topics were varied and included, AI, entrepreneurship, people behind the tech, should you start a blog and more.  You can find each of these here:

Thank-you for letting me be part of your shows and channel and I look forward to doing more of that next year.

Volunteering at Northumbria University

After a certain level of time in the industry you’re sitting on a load of experience and it’s good to give that back and help others level up. My old university sent an email asking for volunteers and I registered my interest in this.

The main activities will involve sharing tips, mentoring, and delivering workshop to help prepare people for employment.

Health and Fitness

I focused in on health and fitness over the last 12 months. When the pandemic hit, and gyms were opening / closing I started to get the basics of a home gym. I only had a few kettlebells to start with then over the months got myself a bench, squat rack, barbell and 200KG of plates.

I recently built a gym shed and will be insulating it soon so can start to get some more equipment in there.

I was making good progress until I picked up COVID at the end of the year and that took me out of action for a few weeks but I’m getting back into it and training 3-4 times a week and looking to increase this.

I use the 5×5 Strong lift app on my Android phone and pay for the annual sub scription. It’s only £18 a year and keeps me on track.

Looking out to 2022

I’m not one for resolutions but have few changes coming my way in 2022.

I want to spend more time in nature, explore more of the Highlands in my van and increase weight training.  I find I’m enjoying creating technical content just as much as building software these days so will continue with that.

I also have a partnership with a SaaS marketplace and Social Opinion to finalise.

I’m looking forward to seeing what 2022 brings.

Massive thanks to everyone this year for checking out and supporting my work. It’s much appreciated.

Have a great New Year!

Jamie.

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