2023-12-31 Sunday - 2023 Reflections

[image credit: Markéta Klimešová (MAKY_OREL) on Pixabay.com]

 

 Stats:

• [376] commits to my personal knowledge management GitHub repositories
  
  
  

 

 

 

 

• [2] long-term client engagements completed 
• Client #1: ~$100B AUM, financial services sector
  
• Enterprise Architecture consulting services
  
• Client #2: ~$7B annual revenue, financial services sector
  
• Enterprise Architecture consulting services

• [1] Pro Bono consulting engagement, advising a SaaS startup  
  

• [19] detailed resume reviews conducted

• [30+] career coaching/mentoring sessions
  

• [44] technology blog posts written 
  

• [7] book reviews completed (3 in my queue to complete)
• The Age of AI
  
• Getting Started with Enterprise Architecture
• Learn Microsoft Office 2021
• Salesforce Platform Enterprise Architecture 4e
• Machine Learning in Microservices
• Azure Data and AI Architect Handbook
  
• Causal Inference and Discovery with Python
• ***** - the best book I read this year

• [7] new LinkedIn recommendations
  

• [6,000+] miles traveled 
• [13] cities visited
  

• [5,844] LinkedIn connections (143 pending invitations to connect to review) 
  

• [32,659] lines recorded in my 2023 Technology Reading List notes
  

The highlight of 2023, was this feedback from a startup founder:

"Following your code audit we started asking a ton of questions and ended up firing our tech team.  Thank goodness!  We would never have known if it weren't for you!"

(Key Findings: Hard-coded unauthorized user id and password, as well as unauthorized data exfiltration embedded in the business application source code, and highly sensitive data encryption keys committed into the source code repository. Significant software design and solution architecture concerns identified - related to reliability, performance, scalability, maintenance, cloud infrastructure costs, etc.)

Noteworthy 2023 LinkedIn Engagement