2016 In Review: The Year of Exploits

Celestine, Segun, Bruce, Mukoshy and I in the process of overflowing the stack!!!

For some unexplainable reasons, I already told myself that I won’t write any post related to my “2016 in review”, but then I saw excellent article. Immediately, I was fired up!!! But then, me to me, I was like, NO!!!

The next day, after consuming large portions of beef and vegetable from my mama, I came online. Guess what I saw? inspiring article. Me to me, again, I was like:

Be Calm!!!

I would be the Special Adviser to the Devil on Lying Affairs if i said 2016 was ordinary for me. It was incredibly amazing, outstanding, and super-lit, OMG!

Open Source Projects

This year I had the privilege of working on a lot of open source projects. At different times last year, some of these projects surprisingly got massive attention. 😱😱😱😱

• : A comprehensive hackathon/MVP boilerplate for Laravel web applications.
• Guard your users against entering dumb passwords in your Laravel 5 apps.
• : Curated list of awesome open source crafted web & mobile applications for developers to learn from.
• : Laravel 5 Lite Package for .
• : Motor Vehicle Registration Information Search Portal Library.
• : PHP Client Library for Jusibe SMS REST API Service  . Also created a and for it.
• : Atom package: Aurelia snippets using ES6 syntax.
• : A CLI tool for Hackers, HR Associates, HR Managers and Lazy People to read . 💻 💁 🙋
• : Laravel 5 Package to Detect Users Browsers, Devices, Languages and Operating Systems. 📦 📱

Me inflicting the community with PHP & Laravel Community with Dev tools. Photo Credit: Mohini Ufelli

• : Laravel 5 Package that provides a fluent API for states and cities in Nigeria. 📦 🍀
• Laravel Quotes: Laravel 5 Package that provides all kinds of quotes from success to programming to life to DJKHALED for your Laravel app! 🔑 🙏
• Laravel Emoji: Laravel 5 Package that harnesses the power of PHP 7 unicode features to provide emojis in your laravel app. 😋
• A Vue.js directive for sharing page items to twitter.
• : PHP Package to Show beautiful cool ascii faces like ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ in your terminal.
• : A Laravel exam project with questions from beginner to expert curated by the community and I.

You can check for a lot more I created and worked on this year on my .

Writing

This year I wrote a lot. I had the opportunity of writing over 80 articles, technical and non-technical.

These were amongst my most popular articles —

1. .
2. .
3. .
4. .
5. .
6. .
7. .
8. .
9. .
10. Human beings are Open Source Projects.

Speaking

This year also, I had the opportunity to give talks and offer mentorship at local and international meetups and conferences. I remember the following:

• In February, I gave a talk on at the .
• In April, I gave a crazy talk on at the .
• In May, I gave a webinar talk on You can listen to it and check out the .

In September, and I gave a talk on at conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

( Left: During my session. Right: Segun, I & a Kenyan developer)

• In October, Celestine Omin(Senior Technical Assistant at Andela) and I gave on How to become a better developer, Scaling your applications and Developer War Stories in Accra, Ghana. of did a .

Prosper & Ghanian Developers. A few Nigerians too!

• In October, I was invited to inspire the graduating students at Valley View University, Ghana. Who am I to refuse? Went in there & fired them up!!!

Graduating Computer Students of Valley View University

• On November 4, I was in Jos, Plateau State. I gave a talk on User Identity Management in Your Apps with Auth0 at . Check out the .

(Left: Giving the talk in Jos, Right: Initiated Developers in Jos into the Auth0 Army)

• On November 18, I gave an inspiring talk(So, I heard) about becoming a World Class Developer at , PortHarcourt, Nigeria.

Giving the World Class Developer Talk in Port-Harcourt

• On November 19, I gave a talk about How to become a World Class Developer at the debut GDG Asaba event, in Delta State, Nigeria.

(Left: Developers in Asaba, Right: Me giving the talk)

• was the title of my talk at , Lagos, Nigeria on November 25**.**

Giving the talk on Firebase at GDG DevFest Lagos

• I magically appeared in Abuja, Nigeria on November 26 to give another talk on at . .

(Left: Giving the talk in Abuja, Right: Discussing with Musti and a techy)

GDG North Central DevFest 2016 In 6 Minutes — Recap

• I was in Nairobi, Kenya from November 28 — December 2 to mentor startups at the week long event.

(Left: The Hotel room was nice, so my mouth couldn’t close, Right: Me at iHub during the event)

Work ,Travel & Adventure

I worked as a Technical Trainer at until around mid-year 2016. I spent the later part of the year consulting for & . This gave me the opportunity to travel to the United States of America for the first time to attend Auth0’s Offsite Annual Event in Washington.

Left: Prosper & Auth0-ians chilling, Right: Prosper and Jared Hanson(Creator of PassportJs)

I had the opportunity to travel again to the U.S.A for and Google Developer Expert Summit in San-Francisco.

(Left: The Great Addy Osmani & I at ChromeDevSummit, San-Franciso) I also visited Kenya, Ethiopia, Germany and Ghana.

Recognition

My first in 2016 got me trending for almost 3 weeks on Github top PHP developers. So this happened:

I got featured on .

I was nominated for the JavaScript Legend Award along side great developers like Eric Elliot, Addy Osmani(Googler), James Kyle(Babel), Dan Abramov(Redux & React), Rob Eisenberg(Aurelia), Wes Bos and Sindre Sorhus. Unfortunately it later got cancelled. Still, the nomination really got me fired up. Thanks to all of you that encourage and support me daily.

I got featured on .

I got featured on

I got featured on

I got featured on .

I became a Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies, the third & youngest in Nigeria.

Life

• My Family: Dad, Mum and Siblings were all in good health in this year.
• I turned 24 in October this year & it was a very memorable experience.
• I registered my tiny company.
• I bought my first car this year. 💪✌️
• I lost an IPhone 6 and a MacBook this year. 😢 Well, I upgraded to an IPhone 7 and a better Machine, sorry Macbook! 🚀🚀🚀🚀
• I did not read any non-technical book this year. 😢

Finally, I met the goddess of sarcasm, an amazing young Architect & most importantly an Edo geh. I mean, what could be better than having someone constantly poking you to do better & supporting you all the way. Thank you, Elsie!!!

What about 2017?

I’m excited for 2017. In short, I already tagged it the year of excellence. As Uncle already stated, I’ve activated the #beastMode for 2017. These are just a few of my world domination plan in the coming year:

• Open Source: I want to do a lot more JavaScript, write more dev tools that will make the developer’s life blissful.
• Writing: I want to write more technical articles and take my writing to the next level. I’ll endeavour to write and publish 3 books. This is a very herculean task but as they say; if your dreams don’t scare you, then you haven’t started.

• Speaking: I want to speak in major conferences, give more powerful & highly entertaining talks in several meetups and conferences.
• I want to travel to at least 7 new countries!

I met so many amazing people this year that I didn’t mention here. I’m thankful and grateful for how you all have helped me grow. Cheers to an amazing 2017. #BeastMode 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌