It is good to sit back and reflect sometimes and with today being New Year’s Eve, I thought it would be good to look back on what I have been doing this past year in 2015.
My wife Monica and I had our seventh son, Mario! He is super cute and huggable. He and the other boys keep me grounded and humble. Bonus: the company I work for is pretty family-friendly, I got to take a few weeks of Paternity Leave.
Back at work after spending a few weeks with our new baby. Thanks to @CapitalOne for the paid paternity leave!
— Luis de la Rosa (@louielouie) February 12, 2015
At work, I transitioned from leading a single Android team to leading several iOS teams. We shipped brand new, redesigned and modernized versions of our Capital One Mobile for iPhone and Capital One for iPad apps plus several monthly updates afterwards. I’ve now become what Lara Hogan from Etsy calls a “meta-manager” and I hope to find some time to write about that more in 2016.
We shipped the second generation of the Capital One for iPad app today! Check it out at https://t.co/UOWNc1IQpO
— Luis de la Rosa (@louielouie) October 7, 2015
I also helped to find ways for Capital One to invest back into the developer community. I think the Mac and iOS developer community was already strong but I want to make it even better. So we sponsored:
- CocoaPods
- Women Who Code
- James Dempsey and the Breakpoints Live at WWDC
- WWDCGirls
- Swift Summit San Francisco 2015
The show is starting! @jamesdempsey and The Breakpoints!!!!!!!!!!1!!! pic.twitter.com/p0nUhnGYqQ
— Luis de la Rosa (@louielouie) June 11, 2015
I also organized the seventh annual iOSDevCampDC, along with Natasha (the Robot) Murashev, Jimmy Sambuo and Toria Dacus. We had some awesome speakers, but probably the most unique thing about this year’s is that the majority of speakers were female. I’ll have to revisit this in a future blog post as it deserves more time and attention. Plus I promised Cate Huston that I’d write about it sometime.
These cookies are awesome! #AppleWatch @iosdevcampdc pic.twitter.com/Nc2dVwoPtM
— Chris aka Atticus (@Attichris) September 4, 2015
I also had a lot of fun with my hobbies, mainly playing video games with my kids (aka father-son bonding time) and watching eSports. I participated in the Alpha and Beta of Heroes of the Storm (currently our favorite multiplayer game in the house) and attended the action-packed and eSports celebrity-filled StarCraft II archon mode championship held at Red Bull Battlegrounds DC with my oldest son Diego, Jimmy and another coworker Cary.
Prepping for @redbullDC #Battlegrounds on a comfy couch at work with @jsambuo and Diego. KSL shirt via @nathaniastv pic.twitter.com/auifmtT0oS
— Luis de la Rosa (@louielouie) September 19, 2015
I also spoke at a few events, including iOSDevCampDC, ModevCon, Android+Glass Meetup, Modev Coders Only and some internal events. I presented on a variety of topics including Swift, Frameworks and Kotlin. I’m working to encourage others to present as well. I’m organizing Modev Coders Only now and and it’ll meet monthly in 2016.
.@louielouie dropping some swift knowledge at CodersOnly pic.twitter.com/YVXSgjfPQa
— Pat Zearfoss ?? (@patzearfoss) December 2, 2015
Before I go, I thought I should mark some stats for the end of 2015:
- StackOverflow rep: 8,055
- Twitter followers: 1,588
Well that’s it. I had much more to say in my unabridged blog post, but I think I’ll spread out that content over several posts. Hope that everyone else had a good year and hopefully 2016 is even better! Happy New Year everyone!
