# Written by Claudio on Saturday 31 December 2016 19:42, read 9084 times.

Here I am at the end of another year. It's time for a review of the last twelve months, unexpectedly quick and packed of events.

Work

Last year's job search was overwhelmingly good. I got the privilege of having conversations with amazing people from large corporations as well as startup companies, and I had the opportunity to join great teams of professionals on awesome projects with a generous compensation. In the end, I chose Amazon and CloudWatch because I felt it was the right choice to grow professionally and gain first-hand experience working on the strongest PaaS and SaaS cloud provider. Working at Amazon has been so great it's impossible to summarize here, and I'll surely spend more words in a dedicated post. I met so many interesting people and strong developers that inspired and motivated me to become better.

Community

I didn't speak this year, but I regularly attended meetups of DublinJS, Node Dublin, and React Dublin. I also volunteered to teach special needs children Scratch at Amazon for two Coder Dojo events across four weeks. The highlight was my participation to View Source in Berlin. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to London for Halfstack or Amsterdam for Fronteers. Boo, being ill is lame. Be healthier in 2017 :-P

Photography

This year was one of my most productive as a photographer with my analog gear, in that I shot something like ten or so film rolls, most of them being black and white. As usual, I published the best shots on Flickr and Instagram. I admit that I ought to curate my photos a bit more, and organize my photostream better. Point taken, I'll do that better in 2017.

Travel

Surprisingly, I didn't travel to any new country. I've been back to places I had visited in the past already: London, Madrid, Valencia, Bergamo, Berlin. But I'm not complaining. Returning meant I could meet and spend time with good friends I hadn't seen in a while. My friends Alicia, Luís, Erica in Madrid, the wedding of Ana and Javi in Valencia. In Ireland, I also had the privilege to travel with my friends Paola and Panpan. I visited Galway in April, the Midlands in May: Kells, Cashel, and Kilkenny on a steam train trip in August. Maybe 2017 will bring me somewhere new, I don't know. I'm open to possibilities.

Art

The highlight of 2016 was probably a return to experiencing, producing, and participating into arts. I went to a few plays: Aeneid by Collapsing Horse at the Smock Alley, Betroffenheit by Kidd Pivot & the Electric Company. I attended Marcus Du Sautoy's presentation of What We Cannot Know at the Smock Alley for the International Literature Festival. I had fun with my friends at the Icon Factory for the Culture & Arts Festival, and even stumbled upon a Googler visiting from Mountain View. And Culture Night, with a packed night with plays at Wood Quay, choirs in Christchurch, and screenings at the Irish Film Board. There's probably something more I'm forgetting. Oh and I also made a few watercolors, filled my sketchbook with portraits and other scribbles. Oh yes, the street art walk in Berlin offered by View Source Conf :-)

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