My 2023 in review
The review of my 2023, trying to remember all the things done in this year, in which more than anyone I met many fantastic people and visited new countries.
Preface
My 2023 is almost coming to an end and I find myself writing this review just a few hours from 2024, some things don’t change, even the tendency to procrastinate on important things, like the year review.
Despite everything, this year I managed to take some time to analyze my past year a bit and this has already been very useful, if only because at the end of the year I always arrive with the feeling that time has flown by and that I haven’t concluded so much, and so, as I have learned from reading other review, I will write these notes for my future self.
I made a mind map of my 2023 (a technique I’m using more and more often) and realized that my initial idea of making a list would be boring, so I’ll try to do one of the things I’m the least good at: synthesizing!
Community
This year I tried to continue my involvement in the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) community and in particular the Django and Python community, I ran for election as a member of the board of directors for DSF (Django Software Foundation) and PSF (Python Software Foundation) respectively , in neither case was I elected, but I am convinced that my candidacy was useful in bringing some diversification to the list of candidates, and I am convinced that the people elected (many of whom I know) will do a good job.
This year too I renewed my participation in the Python Italia community, I tried to help as much as I could in the organization of PyCon Italia 2023, and I am very happy with the success, but I want to thank the other organizers who do an exceptional job.
After organizing the first Django Girls workshop in 2022 in Pescara (my hometown) and after many good intentions, this year I created the local group Python Pescara, and with the great help of Moreno, Luca, and Daniel it seems that this experience is being successful, I would have liked to write more about it, we had many meetings based on beer and chat, a talk on Keras, a Python workshop for beginners, some dinners, and even a trek at almost 2500 meters.
Talks
This year too I managed to present talks on Django, Python and the Community in general in various conferences, with the difference compared to previous years that the exclusively online conferences were only the first two of the year (Python Web Conference 2023 and Citus Con 2023).
I was particularly happy to present a talk for the first time at PyCon US 2023 in Salt Lake City (US), but it was still great to return as a speaker in presence at other conferences, in cities already visited, such as PyCon DE 2023 in Berlin (DE) and PyCon Italia 2023 in Florence (IT), and also in new cities, such as DjangoCon Europe 2023 in Edinburgh (GB), EuroPython 2023 in Prague (CZ) and DjangoCon US 2023 in Durham (US).
This year I also participated in the organization and management of the Python beginners’ workshop, which took place during DevFest 2023 in Pescara Pescara (IT).
I also participated in the Python Community News with an interview for my candidacy in the PSF elections.
Trips
On my conference travels I have managed to stop back in London, where I have lived in the past, and say hello to old friends.
In addition to the cities of the conferences, I also managed to take trips with my wife to visit regions where we had never been, such as the north of Sardinia (Porto Cervo, Stintino, Sassari), Liguria (Genoa, San Remo, Portofino, Monterosso, Camogli), south-eastern France (Nice), Monaco (Monte Carlo), Slovenia (Lubjiana), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Trieste).
It was nice to return to visit cities already visited in Italy (Milan, Turin, Venice, Rome, L’Aquila).
Sport
Even though I wasn’t able to go skiing or snowshoeing in the snow because it snowed little in Abruzzo during the winter, I still managed to go hiking above 2000 meters on the Gran Sasso, I tried riding e-bikes for the first time in the mountains on the Voltigno Plateau and I tried SUP (Standup paddleboarding) in the Adriatic Sea this summer.
I also had the opportunity to take a nice walk on the Cox Mountain trail in North Carolina (US) after DjangoCon US 2023.
I swam a bit in the swimming pool until this summer, but then the pool near my house closed, and I had to stop (I hope to start again in 2024).
Even though I prefer playing sport rather than watching it, I watched tennis matches with my wife at the Italian Open in Rome (IT) and at the ATP Finals in Turin (IT).
Articles
I haven’t written as many articles as I would have liked, but in addition to those on my talks, I have written:
- two guides (Upgrade PostgreSQL from 14 to 15 on Ubuntu 23.04, Quickly resize a video with FFmpeg/Vaapi for Mastodon)
- two articles related to my nominations (2023 Python Software Foundation Board Nomination, 2024 Django Software Foundation board nomination)
- an article about my contributions (Pelican 4.9: classless Simple theme with semantic HTML)
- an article about an experimental project (μDjango (micro Django) 🧬)
- a series of 3 articles on “Database generated columns” in Django 5.0 (Django & SQLite, Django & PostgreSQL and GeoDjango & PostGIS)
I also updated my 2022 article on my Django active developers Sprints proposal 🌅.
Projects
On the personal projects front, I updated Django Queries (containing sample code for my talk on full-text search), I created generatedfields (with the code from my article on Generated Fields) and also uDjango, the repository of example which to my surprise received more interest.
Contributions
Even in terms of contributions (intended as code, issues, revisions) to FOSS projects, I would have liked to do more but seen all together it seems like a lot.
The project I contributed the most to is Django, but also other projects in its ecosystem (daphne, django-cache-url, django-configurations, django-debug-toolbar, django-localflavor, django-microframework, django-push, django-storages, djangoproject.com, takahe), but I managed to contribute to other Python ecosystem projects (calibre, pelican, pip-audit, python-markdown).
Social
From the point of view of my social media presence, I have mainly focused on Mastodon, where I have had the account @paulox@fosstodon.org on the Fosstodon server since 2019.
Environment
This year I continued my commitment on the environmental front, as much as I could, I used the train for long distance journeys and I continued to travel with my electric car (purchased last year) and I studied better the consumption of my photovoltaic system (it produced nearly 7.5 MWh this year) with storage batteries to increase self-consumption of energy to the maximum and reduce the use of energy from fossil sources.
Final notes
I’m sure I’ve made several mistakes in this article and I thank you if you point them out to me but I decided it was better to publish it like this than not to publish it at all.