# ✨ 2022 - my year in recap **Author:** Elian Van Cutsem **Published:** 2022-12-31 **Tags:** JavaScript, Recap, Programming **Description:** 2022 was a year that flew by so fast, I've gotten amazing opportunities and a lot of lessons learned. In this post, I put them all in a list. --- # 2022 - my year in recap So, 2022 flew by. I wanted to write a little recap to look back on this amazing year. I had so many amazing opportunities, met so many new people and got to experience amazing meetups and conferences. ## Graduated (27th January) To kick the year of with a bang, I graduated from Odisee on 27th of January; Not much more to say here. ![Me at graduation](https://i.imgur.com/iEB1YQk.jpg) ☝️ Me at graduation ## Started working full-time @vBridge After officialy graduating, I started working full-time at vBridge, still super happy about that! vBridge has given me a lot of opportunities this past year. Since is my first year as a working person, this was also the year I went to conferences and meetups. ![Our vBridge merch](https://i.imgur.com/i2RWI1F.jpg) ☝️ Our awesome vBridge merch ## First Guest lecture @Odisee (25 Jan) In January, right after graduation, I was invited by my university [Odisee](https://www.odisee.be/en), to give a session about working efficiently in teams as a student. This was a very fun thing to do! I think this was my first real in-person talk I ever gave. Maybe it was here that I caught the public speaking bug? 🐛 ![Giving my lecture @Odisee](https://i.imgur.com/yqHfWOA.jpg) ☝️ Me giving me lecture at Odisee ## First public speaking at meetup (21 apr) And then, the whole world of public speaking opened up to me. In April, I got the opportunity to give a lightning talk at [Full Stack Ghent](https://fullstackbelgium.be/). This would be my first real in-person talk at a conference with people smarter then me! This was also my first talk ever about the magic of [Astro](https://www.astro.build). ![Me at Full Stack Ghent, first public speaking ever](https://i.imgur.com/5QP6RUe.jpg) ☝️ Me at Full Stack Ghent, which was my first meetup (lightning) talk ever. ## Moved offices (1 July) After being in the works for a couple of years, our new officebuilding at [Otterburcht](https://www.otterburcht.eu) was ready! ![The beautiful Otterburcht site](https://i.imgur.com/OUxvOgj.jpg) ☝️ The beautiful [Otterburcht](https://www.otterburcht.eu) offices. ## Astro shipped v1 (09 Aug) Finally, after a year of hard work, Astro's version 1.0 was released on 9th of August 2022. It was amazing to see that a tool I started using at v0.15 grew so big and had such an awesome community. Astro v1 brought so many amazing things, like SSR and adapters. ### Became Astro Ambassador Still waiting on my Astro swag tho 🤷‍♂️. ## React Brussels (13 Oct) After speaking at multiple smaller meetups, this was my first talk in front of more than 100 people and man did that feel awesome! [React Brussels](https://bejs.io) was such a well organized and fun conference to be part of! I met so much new people, talked with so many experts in React, Preact and other frameworks. ![Me at React Brussels](https://i.imgur.com/GVyOZ5r.jpg) ☝️ Me at React Brussels, you can clearly see I was very excited to be there! ## React Global Summit (13 Nov) I got invited to speak at React Global Summit. One of the biggest (only) virtual React conferences. Here I turned my Astro lightning talk into a full 30 min keynote. It was a lot of fun to do, but in-person conferences are waaaaaayyyyy more fun! I kind of missed connecting with the audience and the casual chat's afterwards. ## What's next Ofcourse, that was 2022, I can't wait for what's about to happen in 2023. I allready have some dates marked on my calendar for 2023. ### First international conference I'm so excited for this one! I'll be speaking in February at [JSWorld](https://jsworldconference.com/). If you want to keep up with all events past and upcoming 👉 [Check this page](https://www.elian.codes/events) ![My JSWorld announcement](https://i.imgur.com/rhQy292.jpg) ☝️ My announcement post from JSWorld. ### 10 Mile of Antwerp This is going to be a pain in the butt. I never ran more than 2km before, so 16km is going to be quite difficult. Although it'll be hard, I'm looking forward to it! A little bit more sport & excercise was very welcome in my life, let's hope I can keep it up! ![My Fancy Running](https://i.imgur.com/r8w22tA.jpg) ☝ My first run ever!