{"id":3685,"date":"2018-03-13T19:03:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T14:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?p=3685"},"modified":"2023-08-16T06:01:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T13:01:47","slug":"2017-year-in-review-open-source-wpcouple-the-next-big-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/2017-year-in-review-open-source-wpcouple-the-next-big-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83e\udd81 2017 Year in Review: \u2014 Open Source, TheDevCouple, Leadership, &#038; What&#8217;s Next?!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2017 was an incredible year for me, both personally and professionally. If you&#8217;re a regular visitor to my blog you know that I write the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/years-in-review\/\">year in reviews<\/a> to fight with my imposter syndrome, to hold myself accountable, to keep a log of what I do, and to see how I improve myself as a developer over the years.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4127 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-1024x508.jpg\" alt=\"2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review\" width=\"1024\" height=\"508\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-1024x508.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-300x149.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-768x381.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-1680x833.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-860x427.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-680x337.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-400x198.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1-50x25.jpg 50w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2017-Ahmad-Awais-Year-In-Review-1.jpg 1917w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>This review, in particular, will help you understand the life of a full-time open source developer, the job market, and other cool stuff.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"alert gray\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"emoji\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/11\/svg\/1f44b.svg\" alt=\"\ud83d\udc4b\" \/> Well, hello there. Thanks for stopping by.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like you\u2019re interested in getting to know me better. Well, I\u2019m happy to oblige. You see, for the last couple of years, I publish these detailed and extensive \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/years-in-review\/\">Year-in-Review<\/a>\u2019 posts to keep track of my progress, changes, achievements, and more. Mostly to help fight that silly imposter syndrome \u2014 but hey it makes for a good read. If you\u2019d like to know who I am and what I stand for, then read the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83d\udc3a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/2018-year-in-review\/\">2018: Open Source, Node.js, &amp; Developer Relations<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83e\udd81 <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/2017-year-in-review-open-source-wpcouple-the-next-big-thing\/\">2017\u2026 (this post\u2014 scroll down to keep reading!)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83e\udd8a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/2016-year-review-wordpress-business-big-news\/\">2016: Open Source Business, &amp; Getting Married<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc3c <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/my-commitment-to-wordpress-and-epic-moments-of-2015\/\">2015: Commitment to Open Source &amp; Epic Moments<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>This time around I got late in publishing and writing this review for so many reasons. But hey, I am doing it now, it&#8217;s still the f\u0336i\u0336r\u0336s\u0336t\u0336, s\u0336e\u0336c\u0336o\u0336n\u0336d\u0336, third month of 2018 so, I hope it still counts \u2014 <em>note to the future self<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a long read, like over 6,000 words. Parts of this article were written in Dev, 2017, and then Jan\/Feb 2018. While instead of waiting more, I just hit the publish button (at the end you&#8217;ll know what I was waiting for and why I got late).<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h2 id=\"%f0%9f%a4%94-who-is-ahmad-awais\">\ud83e\udd14 Who is <em>Ahmad Awais<\/em>?<a href=\"#%f0%9f%a4%94-who-is-ahmad-awais\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>At the end of every year, I try to redefine to myself who I am. When I read my earlier reviews, it gives me perspective on a lot of things.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2192 So, let&#8217;s start there&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude4c I&#8217;m <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mrahmadawais\/\">Ahmad Awais<\/a>, I am a Full Stack Web Developer, a huge Open Source Advocate, and a WordPress evangelist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\udee0 DEVELOPER<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I started writing code when I was <strong>ten years old<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>In the last 12 years, I have worked ridiculously hard to build a <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/subscribe\/\">huge community of developers<\/a> around my work \u2014 as of now \u2014 over <strong>30,000 developers<\/strong> use <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\"><strong>100+ professional open source software packages<\/strong> that I created and maintain<\/a>. People use my software to write better software themselves or to improve their development workflows.<\/li>\n<li>The open source <a href=\"http:\/\/profiles.wordpress.org\/mrahmadawais\">free WordPress plugins and themes<\/a> that I have developed have been <strong>downloaded ~500,000+ times<\/strong> \u2014 <em>cool.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>I am a <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/tag\/wordpress-core-contributor\/\"><strong>Regular WordPress Core Contributing<\/strong><\/a> developer. I contribute to a lot of other WordPress projects like WP REST API, Gutenberg, Customizer, WooCommerce, EDD, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Web Contributions<\/strong>: My other web contributions are to improve code\/docs, fix bugs, and patch security in a variety of community software like Bootstrap, Oh My ZSH, Cobalt2 themes for Sublime Text\/Slack\/iTerm, Editus, CSS Grid Playground by MozillaDev, GatsbyJS, etc.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d be doing something right, coz the co-founder of WordPress, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4vS_jR5-nIo&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=45m24s\">Matt Mullenweg said amazing things about my contributions<\/a><\/strong> in the AWP Gutenberg Interview series. (\ud83c\udf52I cherish such moment like a little boy, who got the game night tickets sitting up close to the game).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><strong>But at the core of my heart, I am a teacher!<\/strong> I come from a family of teachers, both my grandparents and my parents teach higher education \u2014 I can&#8217;t help but think that&#8217;s genetic. The love for teaching others what I self-learned has helped me do wonderful things, that I am actually proud of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2705 <strong>COMMUNITY<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This has led me to create an<strong> entire <a href=\"https:\/\/wp-pakistan.com\">WordPress community in Pakistan<\/a> from scratch<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>When <strong>I started <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/\">blogging<\/a> about 15 years ago<\/strong>, there weren&#8217;t any conferences or meetups about WordPress for me to go to.<\/li>\n<li>So, I organized a number of workshops and <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/hacktoberfest-open-source-wordpress-meetup\/\">meetups<\/a> \u2014 now <strong>I represent both WordPress and DigitalOcean<\/strong> for their official local meetup groups, as a lead organizer.<\/li>\n<li>That and I have conducted about over <strong>50 <a href=\"https:\/\/wp-pakistan.com\/recollection-of-wp-week-2014\/\">events with thousands of participants<\/a><\/strong> on topics like open source, JavaScript, Web, WordPress, Design, Ethics, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\ud83d\udce3 <strong>SPEAKER<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I love to talk<\/strong>, I am what they call a social animal. Conferences, monthly meetups, brain dump, <em>yeah that&#8217;s me.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>It was a humble moment for me to get recognized as community influencer when <strong>I was asked to give a TED talk<\/strong> at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ted.com\/tedx\/events\/7254\">TEDx event in Lahore<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>I have fought with my stage fright<\/strong> to become an established speaker on the web, open source, and WordPress events, including international <strong>peer-reviewed presentations<\/strong> at IETEC Loop Conference, Brainiac Conference, ICOSST, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Published Author\/Writer<\/strong>: I&#8217;ve worked my ass off to get featured (it&#8217;s hard, I know) and published in several international blogs or magazines, E.g. SmashingMag, SitePoint, <a href=\"http:\/\/torquemag.io\/author\/aawais12\/\">TorqueMag<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tutsplus.com\/authors\/ahmad-awais\">Envato Tuts+ Code Instructor<\/a> (100+ Articles), and a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/hire-an-advanced-wordpress-content-writer\/\">number of other publications<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\udd30 TEACHER<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One thing I forgot to mention is that <strong>I am an Electrical Engineer<\/strong> (just like ten other engineers in my family, cousins, etc.) \u2014 so even though I did my <strong>majors in Computer Science<\/strong> \u2014 I learned a lot about web and development on my own. That&#8217;s why I teach and blog about it! That&#8217;s why most of us do it, I guess.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Web Community Influencer<\/strong>: I have taught over <strong>5,000 software engineering<\/strong> students and ran community outreach programs throughout my career.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\ud83e\udd81 <strong>ENTREPRENEUR<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<ul>\n<li>I have <strong>12+ years of Industrial\/Entrepreneurial experience.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Led one web-services based startup to <strong>more than a million dollar per anum revenue <\/strong>before it was acquired.<\/li>\n<li>I have successfully <strong>sold two of my companies<\/strong> and several products in different <strong>USD six-figure acquisitions.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>In the <strong>Y- Combinator&#8217;s Plan9 Ideas Battle<\/strong> I received the second best idea award and got incubated for a short while.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\ud83d\udd70<br \/>\n2017<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>So, every year you start with all that motivation to win over the world, break your own records, and who knows what else. This time it was different for me. I <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/2016-year-review-wordpress-business-big-news\/\">got married in Dec 2016<\/a> and took about three months off. A lot happened in that time. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">Maedah<\/a> and I were able to get settled in LHR and took care of a lot of pending chores related to our new house.<br \/>\n<em>Though, we didn&#8217;t get enough time to travel \u2014 that was a bummer. \u2620<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It was February already, and I had started working on a huge project of mine <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/vacation-rentals\">Vacation Rentals<\/a> \u2014 It&#8217;s like <strong>Airbnb for WordPress<\/strong>. A massive project that extends WordPress for Vacation Rentals booking, indexing, curating, etc. I recommend you take a look at its <a href=\"http:\/\/documentation.wpvacationrentals.com\/\">documentation<\/a> to understand it better.<\/p>\n<p>But the start of 2017, for me, was all about <strong>Writy.io<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%e2%9b%a9\">\u26e9<a href=\"#%e2%9b%a9\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Writy.io<\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #999999;\">A New WordPress Editor That Never Got Released!<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>At the same time, I had promised everyone to share a big news about what I have had been building for about four months at that time. It was a massive undertaking, I had started building a whole new WordPress Editor \u2014 based on JavaScript and it was 43% complete already.<\/p>\n<p>I actually spent about 5,000 USD on buying this awesome domain name for it, i.e. <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Writy.io<\/a>. And I wrote about that I am <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/new-wordpress-editor\/\">building a new WordPress Editor<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83d\udd25 Last year in Sep, I started working on a new <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WordPress?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WordPress<\/a> Editor. Glad <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/photomatt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@photomatt<\/a> announced core&#39;s editor focus! \ud83d\ude4c WP is getting better! \ud83d\udcaf <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qlwuhDPo1G\">pic.twitter.com\/qlwuhDPo1G<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ahmad Awais (@MrAhmadAwais) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/830728394253987840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 12, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83e\udd14 Writy&#8217;s Motivation<\/strong>: The idea was to innovate the writing experience for WordPress and build a SaaS platform on top of it. I actually posted a teaser in a post that&#8217;s linked below. Sadly, all of that time I didn&#8217;t know Matt Mullenweg was going to announce a new open source WordPress editor that now we know by the name of Gutenberg.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u26a1 Gutenberg Was Announced<\/strong>: As soon as I got to know about Gutenberg (WCUS 2016), I stopped developing Writy. By the end of March 2017, I was knee deep in the Gutenberg project, <a href=\"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/design\/2017\/02\/16\/core-editor-meeting-notes-2017-02-15\/\">attending the meetings and posting the notes at Make<\/a>. In a way, I had accepted that for whatever reason I am not going to compete this new editor Gutenberg, and actually improve upon it by giving back my time to as a full-time open sourcerer.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude29<strong>Loss of thousands of dollars<\/strong>: The idea of spending thousands of dollars in buying a <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">domain<\/a>, getting the designs ready, spending four months building 43% of <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Writy<\/a> \u2014 and now suspending this project took a toll on me. My <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">wife<\/a> would advise me what to do and what not to do, and honestly \u2014 she kept me sane through this phase of tough transition.<\/p>\n<div class=\"alert gray\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%f0%9f%a4%94\">\ud83e\udd14<a href=\"#%f0%9f%a4%94\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"what-happened-to-writy\">What Happened to <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Writy<\/a>?<a href=\"#what-happened-to-writy\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">After contributing to the Gutenberg project for about a year and understanding its true potential, I left my editor idea and moved on to making a <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">first-class Gutenberg compatible WordPress theme<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">This time, I am not doing it alone. I have partnered up with an awesome dev\/designer <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/richard_tabor\">Rich Tabor<\/a>, who runs ThemeBeans to create a blogging theme that&#8217;s truly amazing. We&#8217;re super excited.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Subscribe here to get updates about when we release Writy \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2705<strong>Building Gutenberg Boilerplate<\/strong>: Anywho, I dove right in. Started building Gutenberg blocks. Had lots of chats with the Gutenberg team, especially <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/altjoen?lang=en\">Joen<\/a>. I went ahead, studied the source code, received a lot of help from the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/wordpress\/gutenberg\">Gutenberg<\/a> team (Matias Ventura, James Nylen, Riad Benguella, Andrew Duthie, Joen, etc.) to finally build a boilerplate.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/gutenberg-boilerplate\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2608\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb.jpg\" alt=\"Gutenberg-boilerplate\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1086\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-768x434.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-1024x579.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-1680x950.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-860x486.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-680x385.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-400x226.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/gb-50x28.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>\ud83d\udee0 <strong>The Gutenberg Boilerplate <\/strong>was meant to get WordPress developers excited about the new editor. I released it to the public in July 2017. I think Gutenberg was at version 0.4.0 at that time. Yeah, way too early.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\ude80 STATS &amp; IMPACT: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/Gutenberg-Boilerplate\">~600 Stargazers at GitHub Repo<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>5 Contributors and hundreds of emails.<\/li>\n<li>Sarah wrote about it on WPTavern: <a href=\"https:\/\/wptavern.com\/gutenberg-boilerplate-demonstrates-how-to-build-custom-blocks\">Gutenberg Boilerplate Demonstrates How to Build Custom Blocks<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Many <a href=\"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/index.php\/0001\/12\/03\/how-to-create-custom-blocks-in-wordpress-using-the-gutenberg-boilerplate-project\/\">other<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/grantpalin.com\/blog\/introducing-gutenberg-boilerplate-for-third-party-custom-blocks\/\">blogs<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/gutenberg.news\/gutenberg-boilerplate-for-third-party-custom-blocks\/\">news<\/a> sites <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpblog.com\/wordpress-weekly-news-028\/\">shared<\/a> it and developers started building blocks with it \u2014 which was super nice.<\/li>\n<li>At WordCamp US 2017, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/937868448973164545\">Gutenberg Boilerplate went viral<\/a> \u2014 and everyone started taking Gutenberg more seriously.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span id=\"teaching\"><\/span><br \/>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%f0%9f%91%a8%f0%9f%8f%ab\"><span style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83c\udfeb<\/span><a href=\"#%f0%9f%91%a8%f0%9f%8f%ab\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">TEACHING<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #999999;\">Building A Course Platform \u2014 Never Launching It<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>If you have ever been to a conference where I gave a talk, or if you are one of my meetups attendees \u2014 then you know one thing about me. <em><strong>I love to teach.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I know it&#8217;s genetic and all that, but I can&#8217;t help it. Brain dumping has a nice effect on my mood. But that&#8217;s a story for another day.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc4c So, in 2017, I finally become serious about teaching online. I have been teaching via in-person workshops. But online there&#8217;s a huge audience.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd14 I knew I had to invest in a better mic, create videos, find a good learn management system (let&#8217;s call it a course building platform) and boom.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude80 So, here&#8217;s how I went about it, read it like you are sitting inside my brain and can actually hear what the brain is thinking and ordering me to do next <em>(\u2014FAIR WARNING: Do NOT try this at home)<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udd75\ufe0f\u200d\u2640\ufe0f STEP #1<\/strong>: Research everything, talk to my friends like Kent C Dodds, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mor10\">Morten<\/a>, etc. and figure out the best way to move forward. I spent an entire month (part-time) doing just that.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u23fa STEP#2<\/strong>: Settle for a recording software \u2192 I use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telestream.net\/screenflow\/\">ScreenFlow<\/a> to record and edit my screencasts on Mac.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udcf9 STEP #3<\/strong>: Get a nice DSLR camera (for no reason at all) \u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BIZNFIGA0H0\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">My camera<\/a> is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nikonusa.com\/en\/nikon-products\/product\/dslr-cameras\/d5300.html\">Nikon D5300<\/a> with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kenrockwell.com\/tamron\/17-50mm-f28-vc.htm\">Tamron 17-50mm f\/2.8 VC<\/a> and a Slik s304 tripo-pro professional tripod.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83c\udf99 STEP #4<\/strong>: Invest in a good quality Mic. I acted upon the advice of the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chriscoyier\">Chris Coyer<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/leftlane\">Shawn Hesketh<\/a> \u2192 My mic is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rode.com\/microphones\/podcaster\">Rode Podcaster<\/a> on a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rode.com\/accessories\/psa1\">Rode PSA1 Boom Arm<\/a> with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rode.com\/accessories\/psm1\">Rode PSM1 Shockmount<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rode.com\/accessories\/ws2\">Rode WS2 pop shield<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83c\udfa4 STEP #5<\/strong>: Have a portable mic for when I am traveling \u2192 I also bought a portable mic called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bluedesigns.com\/products\/snowflake\/\">Blue SnowFlake<\/a> here\u2019s a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/w6zbAVPSFR\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">picture<\/a> of it and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BBVO5nZvSBZ\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">silly custom boom arm<\/a> with it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\ude48 STEP #6<\/strong>: Get distracted and research about different mics, audio systems (learn Audacity again, and step it up a little \u2014 to learn Adobe Audition this time), get these new mics shipped here (since not available in the local market), fight with customs officials (they didn&#8217;t let me ship it), get my sister-in-law <a href=\"https:\/\/nidabatool.com\/\">Nida<\/a> to buy the Rode podcaster in London and get it shipped to Qatar, from where my brother-in-law <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/usman-sheikh-17302741\/\">Usman<\/a> brought it to Lahore. <em>There we go, another month spent.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udd78 STEP #7<\/strong>: Buy six domains for different courses I am going to record <em>because we are too excited aren&#8217;t we?<\/em> Set up two domains first \u2014 let&#8217;s do a free and a pro course.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udcb8 STEP #8<\/strong>: Since I am an open sourcerer \u2014 I thought, I should make my first course free \u2014 not sure why. Spent two weeks pinning down the details of a free + pro course and recorded 90% of the free course.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udcc3 STEP #9<\/strong>: Let&#8217;s build a landing page for signups \u2192 Which platform should I use? The framework? Started with WordPress, moved to Vue, then to React, and finally went with a static site built with JavaScript and bit of React. Confused. <em>Welcome to the internet today.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udee0 STEP #10<\/strong>: Build a custom course platform (nothing out there fit my bill) \u2014 Spent three weeks to build a course platform, designed it, a JavaScript SPA (single page app), that uses WordPress as a backend with WP REST API. Oh, I forgot to mention the course is also about WP REST API. <em>And now what?!<\/em><\/li>\n<li><b>\ud83d\ude29 REVIEW PROGRESS<\/b>: Now after all this, I was three and a half months into my next big endeavor (sold two of my commercial products and a share to my partners to support my time on this). I had all the equipment, all the details, domains, servers, frameworks, custom landing pages, heck even had built myself a custom course platform but instead of recording the last four videos I was left with, here&#8217;s what I chose to do. <em>Engineers!<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83c\udfd7 STEP #11<\/strong>: Over-engineer the course platform<br \/>\n\u2705 <strong>I should know who&#8217;s taking my course<\/strong>, their name is the least I could ask for, but not at the registration page (that would mean low conversion rates), but after they log in for the first time. Built another custom solution for this.<br \/>\n\u2705 <strong>The registration should happen with WP REST API<\/strong> and my users should get a login URL at the first time. <em>A custom solution was built again.<\/em><br \/>\n\u2705 <strong>Oops \u2014 WP REST API<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/core.trac.wordpress.org\/ticket\/40477\">Does NOT Trigger New User Notifications<\/a>! Create a core trac ticket to patch the WordPress core <a href=\"https:\/\/core.trac.wordpress.org\/ticket\/40477\">#40477<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u2705 How about the <strong>ability to know a user&#8217;s progress<\/strong>? How many videos a user has watched, and maybe send them an email if they left at 60% progress. \u2014 That&#8217;d be cool? But how do I do emails this time?<br \/>\n\u2705 Instead of embedding Vimeo Pro, <strong>let&#8217;s stream it via an HTML5<\/strong> player. Yet another custom HTML5 player was built, with custom speed controls and interaction with the playlist.<\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\ude43 STEP #12<\/strong>: Launch the course? \ud83e\udd14 hmm&#8230; \u2049<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>So, yes. I did actually do all that and spent about five months on this.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u2705 It was a hard thing to watch myself dwell in to the pool of over-engineering. I was selling some of my commercial projects and selling out my shares in couple others so, it was kind of a part-time thingy. I had no choice, couldn&#8217;t do much else.<\/p>\n<p>\u2705 I was also doing 10 to 15 hours per week of contract work and five hours of consultancy during this time. So, at least it was not all that bad.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But what bothers me most is I never got around releasing any of it, that&#8217;s the sucker here. <strong>BUT I hope to release my courses this year<\/strong>. \ud83d\udcaf<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a teaser of what I had built for my first course, which is about teaching you folks about WordPress REST API.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"WP REST API\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/7-year-in-review-2017.gif\" alt=\"WP REST API\" width=\"1401\" height=\"925\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>\ud83d\udd25 That&#8217;s not all. I am building more courses and I hope to actually launch this time. \u2014 <em>Hahaha. I know what you&#8217;re thinking. Stop it. \ud83d\ude0f<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udcfa<br \/>\nBecome A <a href=\"https:\/\/vscode.pro\/\">Visual Studio Code Power User<\/a>!<\/h2>\n<p>Before I launch the REST API course, I am building another course about how to become a power user of <a href=\"https:\/\/vscode.pro\/\">Visual Studio Code<\/a>. Already halfway there!<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfa9 While writing this post, I built a quick landing page to go with the announcement. I am moving at a slow pace here, but if I get ~200 signups in the first month, I&#8217;ll pick up the pace.<\/p>\n<p>This course will include:<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 col-md-6 cover__feature--18\">\n<h3 class=\"cover__feature_title\" class=\"cover__feature_title\" id=\"%f0%9f%94%a5-power-dev-essentials\">\ud83d\udd25 POWER DEV ESSENTIALS<a href=\"#%f0%9f%94%a5-power-dev-essentials\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 How to set up VSCode?!<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Switch from Sublime with Keymapping<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Debug JavaScript like a Pro #OpenSourcerer!<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Sync VSCode between diff devices like Chrome<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Be an awesome developer, get more done in less<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49Also bought a cool domain for this course \u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/vscode.pro\/\">VSCode.pro<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vscode.pro\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4085\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2.jpg\" alt=\"Become A Visual Studio Code Power User\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1059\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-300x165.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-768x424.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-1024x565.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-1680x927.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-860x474.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-680x375.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-400x221.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-50x28.jpg 50w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/VSCodepro2-600x331.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 col-md-6 cover__feature--18\">\n<h3 class=\"cover__feature_title\" class=\"cover__feature_title\" id=\"a-course-%f0%9f%92%af-for-every-developer\">A COURSE \ud83d\udcaf FOR EVERY DEVELOPER<a href=\"#a-course-%f0%9f%92%af-for-every-developer\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>I want this course to be useful for generally every developer and especially web developers, who code with HTML, CSS, <strong>JavaScript<\/strong>, and even PHP developers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83d\udcf9 Zero bull**** video lessons<\/li>\n<li>\u26a1 Save an hour daily or at least weekly<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc4d Save four-weeks for side projects every year<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udfa9 Build workflows, learn to write <b>custom snippets<\/b><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udee0 Learn to build <b>VSCode Extensions<\/b> <span class=\"and\">&amp;<\/span> publish &#8217;em<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wish me luck on this one. I hope to not run after <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/perfection-is-a-curse\/\">perfection again, it&#8217;s a curse<\/a>. <em>OK, so where were we again?<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%e2%9b%85\">\u26c5<a href=\"#%e2%9b%85\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-align: center;\">COMMUNITY<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Social Proof, Portfolio, Meetups, Talks, Oh My!<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>I love to write code, I do. That&#8217;s the highlight of my day almost four days a week. But I have this side of me where I try and reach out to the local community, do meetups, give talks, and all that.<\/p>\n<p>2017 was no different. I did lots of stuff to improve my social presence, be more involved with the community, and generally be a better human.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcfa BTW I watch a lot I mean a lot of TV. 2017 was no different. I have started tracking my TV seasons via Watched.li, here <a href=\"https:\/\/watched.li\/profile\/ahmadawais\">check out my profile<\/a> \u2014 it says<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\ud83d\ude32 <a href=\"https:\/\/watched.li\/profile\/ahmadawais\">Ahmad Awais is currently tracking 77 shows and has seen 4571 episodes.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udcbb<br \/>\n<strong>Software Apprentice!<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I actually took on another software apprentice <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrSaqibAmeen\">Saqib Ameen<\/a> this last year \u2014 he&#8217;s now part of our <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/team\/\">TheDevCouple Team<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An intelligent young man, studying Computer Science at UET Lahore.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m sure in a year or two, he&#8217;ll be contributing a lot to open source.<\/li>\n<li>Currently, he heads the <a href=\"https:\/\/make.wordpress.org\/polyglots\/teams\/?locale=ur\">WordPress Urdu Translation Team<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Along with me, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">Maedah<\/a> he arranged the local <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/meetup-global-wordpress-translation-day-3\/\">WordPress Translation Day #3<\/a> which <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/global-wordpress-translation-day-3\/\">went quite well<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\ud83d\udd30 Whereas my previous apprentice, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mrasharirfan\">Ashar Irfan<\/a> is also doing great, leading the software development behind one of my <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/partners\/\">open source partner<\/a> companies, called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpsecurityauditlog.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\">WP Security Audit Log<\/a>. Check them out.<\/p>\n<p>\u2705 Moreover, he became a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAsharIrfan\/status\/931013213285740545\">WordPress Core Contributor<\/a> last year, which is amazing. Everyone in my team is a contributor now.<\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;m happy with this approach of helping others make a difference.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udc26<br \/>\nTwitter Verified Profile<\/h2>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 2\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>Not many people know this but I used to be head of marketing at a local agency. It was my first job which had a short lifespan.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2705 I once crafted and executed a mega marketing campaign for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1821700\/\">WAAR the movie<\/a> \u2014 led it to <strong>25,000+ IMDb votes<\/strong>, where WAAR ranked as <strong>#1 in Highest Rated Feature Films Released In 2013<\/strong> on IMDb. Also, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/search\/title?countries=pk&amp;explore=user_rating&amp;sort=num_votes&amp;title_type=feature\">most voted movie in the history of Lollywood<\/a> (PK version of Hollywood).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This goes to state the fact that I am into marketing as well. I think no developer can ever be successful if they can&#8217;t market themselves better. So, it was an incredible milestone for me when I got verified on Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mrahmadawais\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2108\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2.png\" alt=\"@MrAhmadAwais Twitter Verified\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2.png 1920w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-1680x945.png 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-860x484.png 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-680x383.png 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-400x225.png 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/verfied2-50x28.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>\u2192 I wrote more about it \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/mrahmadawais-verified-twitter\/\">\ud83c\udf89 Got Verified on Twitter! @MrAhmadAwais<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udc50<br \/>\nMeetups, Talks, Networking!<\/h2>\n<p>In 2017, I did more meetups and talks than I could count. I think it was two to three meetups every single month except for December. The following three meetups were the best.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/meetup-learn-host-wordpress-site-digitalocean-easyengine\/\"><strong>MEETUP: \ud83d\udce6 Learn to Host Your WordPress Site With DigitalOcean!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/meetup-learn-host-wordpress-site-digitalocean-easyengine\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3987\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1587\" height=\"803\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM.jpg 1587w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-300x152.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-768x389.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-1024x518.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-860x435.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-680x344.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-400x202.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-09-at-5.54.06-PM-50x25.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1587px) 100vw, 1587px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u2705 Teaching people how I host some of my WordPress sites by myself using DigitalOcean was fun. Especially when we had discussions about scaling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>\u2192 I actually made a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zXwIh4nrFsU\">small video tutorial on YouTube<\/a> for this one.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/hacktoberfest-open-source-wordpress-meetup\/\"><strong>TheDevCouple\u2019s #Hacktoberfest Open Source with WordPress Meetup<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/hacktoberfest-open-source-wordpress-meetup\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3991\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover.jpg\" alt=\"HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover\" width=\"1706\" height=\"960\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover.jpg 1706w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-1680x945.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-860x484.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-680x383.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-400x225.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/HacktoberFest-Meetup-Cover-50x28.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1706px) 100vw, 1706px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/hacktoberfest-open-source-wordpress-meetup\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3989\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup.jpg\" alt=\"Meetup Hacktoberfest Lahore\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-860x573.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-680x453.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-400x266.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Meetup-50x33.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" style=\"text-align: left;\" title=\"Page 2\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>\u2705 On this meetup, we gathered a bunch of software engineering students and I taught them why Open Source &amp; Git is so important. We had great sponsors i.e. DigitalOcean + GitHub \u2014 they also sponsored our pizza. \ud83c\udf55<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-title\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/wordpress-javascript-meetup-lahore-2018\/\"><strong>TheDevCouple\u2019s WordPress &amp; JavaScript Meetup Lahore 2018<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/wordpress-javascript-meetup-lahore-2018\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4074\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018.jpg\" alt=\"TheDevCouple\u2019s WordPress &amp; JavaScript Meetup Lahore 2018\" width=\"1280\" height=\"403\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-300x94.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-768x242.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1024x322.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-860x271.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-680x214.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-400x126.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-50x16.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/wordpress-javascript-meetup-lahore-2018\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4075 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-1024x506.jpg\" alt=\"TheDevCouple\u2019s WordPress &amp; JavaScript Meetup Lahore 2018\" width=\"1024\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-1024x506.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-300x148.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-768x380.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-1680x831.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-860x425.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-680x336.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-400x198.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1-50x25.jpg 50w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/TheDevCouple\u2019s-WordPress-JavaScript-Meetup-Lahore-2018-1.jpg 1905w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a> \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\uddedThe fun part of this meetup was that we had Ulrich Pogson attend this meetup all the way from Switzerland. I talked about WordPress &amp; JavaScript and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/949887909703843840\">tweeted<\/a> the link to my slides used in the talk \u2014 Zoom-out to make the slides fit your screen, it\u2019s made for 1920px.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\ude80 STATS &amp; IMPACT: <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>As the earliest organizer of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/WordPress-Lahore\/\">WordPress Meetups Lahore<\/a><\/strong> \u2014 when I first joined, it had fewer than 30 people as members. With the help of the local community, co-organizers, <a href=\"https:\/\/TheDevCouple.com\/team\">TheDevCouple team<\/a> \u2014 I have been able to grow this meetup to the 8th largest meetup group worldwide (at the time of writing) with following stats:<br \/>\n\u2705 Over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/WordPress-Lahore\/members\/\">3,250 WordPress Lahore Meetup members<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u2705 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/topics\/wordpress\/\">8th Largest WordPress Meetup worldwide<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u2705 Laser focus on Engineers and developers.<br \/>\n\u2705 Meetups with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BdrQfKPhrIW\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">international attendees<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/DigitalOceanLahore\/\">DigitalOcean Meetup Lahore<\/a><\/strong> that I started in 2017 grew to <strong>over 500 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/DigitalOceanLahore\/members\/\">members<\/a><\/strong> in less than a year. We had most incredible meetups with the help of awesome sponsors like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalocean.com\/\">DigitalOcean<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/TheDevCouple.com\/partners\">TheDevCouple partners<\/a>. \ud83d\udc4b<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83c\udf99<br \/>\nInterviews, Press Mentions, &amp; Podcasts!<\/h2>\n<p>Every now and then I get on a podcast and talk about stuff I work on. This time around it was about <strong>Open Source as a Life Style<\/strong>. I did this podcast with the good folks at PressThis Podcast \u2014 run by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/davidvogelpohl\">David Vogelpohl<\/a> &#8211; Vice President of Web Strategy &#8211; WP Engine.<\/p>\n<p>Since we are talking about WPEngine, I&#8217;d like to shout out to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/heatherjbrunner\">Heather J. Brunner<\/a>, one of the best female CEO&#8217;s I know off. She&#8217;s led WPEngine to a great deal of success and her passion for open source has helped me complete several open source projects, with WPEngine as a backer.<\/p>\n<p><em>\ud83c\udfa4Listen here \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/open-source-as-a-lifestyle\/\">Ahmad Awais \u2014 <strong>Open Source as a Lifestyle<\/strong> \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"PRESSTHIS - Ahmad Awais \u2014 Open Source as a Lifestyle by Ahmad Awais\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F365095316&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This year, I got interviewed at several other places like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advancedwp.org\/awp-gutenberg-interview-series\/\">AWP Gutenberg Interview Series<\/a>, where I talked about Gutenberg development.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\udcfa WATCH THE INTERVIEW<\/strong>: You can listen to the interview on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AwyUm4DafZc\">YouTube<\/a> \ud83d\udca5, <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.tv\/2018\/02\/18\/awp-gutenberg-interview-series-with-ahmad-awais\/\">WordPress.tv<\/a>, or on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mathetos\/videos\/g.168889943173228\/10213519047269033\/?type=2&amp;theater&amp;ifg=1\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udcd6 <strong>READ THE REVIEW<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/richard_tabor\">Rich Tabor<\/a>, wrote an incredible review of my interview here <a href=\"http:\/\/www.advancedwp.org\/rich-tabor-awp-interview-response\/\">Rich Tabor Responds to the AWP Gutenberg Interview with Ahmad Awais<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>I got a lot of press and media mentions<\/strong> throughout 2017, in the form of quotes from different articles that I had written and my comments on the current state of WordPress, Gutenberg, or the reason behind giving back to the community, as well as advice on becoming an open sourcerer, etc.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udf1f One of the mentions that I felt really proud of; was when the co-founder of WordPress \u2014 <strong>Matt Mullenweg said amazing things about one of my recent projects<\/strong> called the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/create-guten-block-toolkit\/\">create-guten-block<\/a> toolkit \u2014 which I&#8217;ll talk more about at the end.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a good chance to thank you, Ahmad, for putting together the <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/create-guten-block-toolkit\/\">create-guten-block<\/a> toolkit. It&#8217;s really cool, and I have seen it to be the intro for a lot of people and to kindov learn what Gutenberg is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So, it&#8217;s an awesome awesome contribution to the community.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 said by Matt Mullenweg (Co-founder of WordPress).<br \/>\nSRC: <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/4vS_jR5-nIo?t=45m24s\">Matt M. AWP Gutenberg Interview<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Apart from this, I got featured in WPTavern, Inc, SMB, Entrepreneur, Tuts+ by Envato, TorqueMag, Inc, Yahoo for Small Business, CodePen, Dev.to, and CreativeMarket blog, SitePoint, and a good deal of other online publications.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udee1<br \/>\nNewsletter &amp; Blogs!<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"page\" style=\"text-align: left;\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<p>\u2705 I was able to publish 28 posts in 2017 on <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/\">AhmadAwais.com<\/a>. Happy to report that I&#8217;ve managed to <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/1-year-in-review-2017.png\">increase the traffic and users of my sites by over 50%<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/awais.dev\/kinsta\">Kinsta<\/a> gets a huge shoutout here for being the best host. And I also wrote about 80 posts on other blogs like <a href=\"https:\/\/TheDevCouple.com\/\">TheDevCouple<\/a>, and the publications mentioned above.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udce8 Along with my <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">wife<\/a>, I started a premium newsletter called <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/subscribe\/\">The WordPress Takeaway<\/a> \u2014 it&#8217;s free to access and read but costs us money and time \u2014 you can <a href=\"https:\/\/pay.paddle.com\/checkout\/515991\">support it by subscribing<\/a> to a $49.99 per year subscription.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/subscribe\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4048\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway.jpg\" alt=\"WPTakeaway\" width=\"1902\" height=\"980\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway.jpg 1902w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-300x155.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-768x396.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-1024x528.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-1680x866.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-860x443.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-680x350.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-400x206.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/WPTakeaway-50x26.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1902px) 100vw, 1902px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83e\udd14 I never actually launched it properly. It has suffered three months of delay due to more reasons than I could write here. But I have recently asked Saqib and Maedah to help me be more consistent.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udfd7 While it&#8217;s based on <a href=\"https:\/\/awais.dev\/sendy\">Sendy<\/a> (as you can check on <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/uses\">what I use page<\/a>) but I have customized the setup, built a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/sendy-php-api-wrapper\/\">custom API which I open sourced<\/a> and several other workflows around it, like using <a href=\"https:\/\/foundation.zurb.com\/emails.html\">Foundation for Emails 2<\/a> to build newsletters, using IFTTT workflows, etc. Though, it&#8217;s still far from perfect at the moment.<em>\u26a0<\/em><em> Perfectionist talking. <\/em><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udcda I have combined all the newsletters Maedah and I used to send from different sites like from AhmadAwais.com. MaedahBatool.com, TheDevCouple.com, WPMetaList.com, WP-Pakistan.com, etc. into one single newsletter which <strong>now has over 23,000 developers, designers, C Level Business folks as subscribers<\/strong> and is continuously growing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83c\udf96<br \/>\nHelping Developers!<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a full-time open source developer for about two years now. It&#8217;s been a huge undertaking. But like many of you out there, I have learned a lot by myself.<\/p>\n<p>So, as much as my father is proud of me for completing my Electrical Engineering degree with good grades (and not for dropping out of Executive MBA) \u2014 I credit all of my accomplishments to a trait of self-learning. Yay! \ud83d\ude4c<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcaf When you learn tech stuff by yourself \u2014 you realize how hard it is for others. That&#8217;s the reason why I write, talk, arrange meetups, and do a lot of teaching. Meanwhile, to help developers online, I have chosen to open source a lot of my code at GitHub and I spend time on StackOverflow as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"1-%e2%9a%a1-github-for-open-source\"><strong>#1\u2014 \u26a1 <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\">GitHub<\/a> \u2014 for Open Source<\/strong><a href=\"#1-%e2%9a%a1-github-for-open-source\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4006\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017.jpg\" alt=\" Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017\" width=\"1297\" height=\"953\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017.jpg 1297w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-300x220.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-768x564.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-1024x752.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-860x632.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-680x500.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-400x294.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-GitHub-2017-50x37.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1297px) 100vw, 1297px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>I&#8217;m very happy with my progress of sharing open source code and helping the FOSS community at GitHub. In 2017:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 I&#8217;ve got <strong>600 followers, <\/strong>open sourced <strong>100 source repos<\/strong> that received <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/1000-stargazers-github\/\"><strong>2,760 stargazers<\/strong><\/a>, and shared <strong>239 Gists<\/strong>. That&#8217;s about over <strong>400% growth<\/strong> from 2016. <em>Crazy dance \ud83d\udd7a<\/em><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\ude80 The most exciting time was when my projects got featured on the GitHub trending page, under <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/2-year-in-review-2017.png\">the JavaScript category<\/a>, then under <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/2-year-in-review-2017.png\">all languages<\/a>, and finally <strong>I got listed among the <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/3-year-in-review-2017.png\">trending developers worldwide<\/a><\/strong> which was one of the most humbling moments for me.<\/li>\n<li>One fun fact has been that in 2016 most of my repos were PHP repos and now <strong>the number of my JavaScript repositories have almost doubled in number as compared to PHP<\/strong>. Which&#8217;s true. I have moved to full stack JavaScript development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"2-%e2%9a%a1-stackoverflow-for-devrels-help\">#2\u2014 \u26a1 StackOverflow \u2014 for DevRels &amp; Help<a href=\"#2-%e2%9a%a1-stackoverflow-for-devrels-help\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/users\/950111\/ahmad-awais?tab=profile\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4007\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017.jpg\" alt=\"Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017\" width=\"1152\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-300x93.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-768x239.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-1024x319.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-860x268.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-680x212.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-400x125.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-StackOverflow-2017-50x16.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1152px) 100vw, 1152px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>StackOverflow has helped me a lot. So many folks give back their time to teach and to help other developers on this network that it&#8217;s mere impact on the software community is nothing short of being historic.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017 my StackOverflow profile grew over 300%:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83d\ude32 ~<strong>3,500,000 million developers<\/strong> received helped by reading the answers to technical questions I posted. <em>It&#8217;s huge.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><strong>\ud83d\ude48 My profile reputation grew 340% <\/strong>from ~1,400 to ~6,000 putting it in top 0.75% StackOverflow members and 77th in PK.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udf96 I became a <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/became-moderator-stackoverflow\/\"><strong>moderator at StackOverflow<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 woot-woot!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"3-%e2%9a%a1-dev-to-for-developers\">#3\u2014 \u26a1 Dev.to() \u2014 for Developers<a href=\"#3-%e2%9a%a1-dev-to-for-developers\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/mrahmadawais\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4009\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017.jpg\" alt=\"Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017\" width=\"1410\" height=\"711\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017.jpg 1410w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-300x151.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-768x387.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-1024x516.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-860x434.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-680x343.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-400x202.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Ahmad-Awais-Dev-to-2017-50x25.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1410px) 100vw, 1410px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>I think <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/mrahmadawais\">Dev.to()<\/a> platform by my friends <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/ben\">Ben<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/jess\">Jess<\/a> deserves a special mention. It&#8217;s like Medium but for developers only. And I think it&#8217;s destined for great things in the next couple of years.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 I started writing and sharing few things <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/mrahmadawais\">at Dev.to()<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udff9 Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.to\/ben\/what-to-expect-from-devto-in-2018-22ia\">What to Expect from Dev.to() in 2018?<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc55 Dev.to() sponsored <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BccvzHzhwmA\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">lots<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BaZIaArhjVQ\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">stickers<\/a> for the audience and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/922520284233699333\">T-Shirts for the organizers<\/a> last year on my meetups. I love <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BXdbtothfsN\/?taken-by=mrahmadawais\">that T-Shirt<\/a>. TQ Peter.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udecd Definitely, <a href=\"https:\/\/shop.dev.to\/\">shop Dev.to() swag<\/a>, it&#8217;s \ud83d\udcaf worth it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full dark\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%f0%9f%93%88\">\ud83d\udcc8<a href=\"#%f0%9f%93%88\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-align: center;\">CAREER GROWTH<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Open Source,TheDevCouple, Google&#8217;s Job Offer!<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<\/div>\n<p>I care about my career growth a lot. I believe <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/951141482932600832\"><strong>turning Pro is a mindset<\/strong><\/a>. That&#8217;s how I progressed from an Electrical Engineer to a Computer Science Engineer, from frontend to backend, PHP to JavaScript, and then to Full Stack development. <strong>Where I go after two years of nearly full-time open source development is also very important!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd10 I&#8217;ll let you in on a secret. I&#8217;m getting more serious about JavaScript than ever. I&#8217;ve spent last 12 years with WordPress, most of it doing PHP. But back in 2013 \u2014 I started Node.js development, one thing led to another and the rest is history.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>Today, I am going to discuss several things here, how I chose to go full-time open source, several private crowdfunding campaigns I ran with my wife, and how did I end up interviewing at the big G i.e. Google.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">So, here goes nothing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udcd6<br \/>\nOpen Source &amp; TheDevCouple Campaign!<\/h2>\n<p>I was giving back 30% to 50% of my productive time to open source back in 2015. Stepped it up in 2016 a lot and I finally started getting the feeling that I&#8217;ll be using my rainy day money sooner than I had planned for.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd14 With an added expenses of <a href=\"https:\/\/awais.dev\/2016\">getting married at the end of 2016<\/a> and working full-time on open source + <a href=\"https:\/\/writy.io\/\">Writy<\/a> going down as a suspended side project\u2014 I knew I had to reach out to the community for supporting my work or find a new job.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udd30 So, I did just that. First of all, it was a decision between starting with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/danielbachhuber\/a-more-restful-wp-cli\">Kickstarter like Daniel<\/a> or an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiegogo.com\/projects\/buddypress-bbpress-glotpress-development\">Indiegogo campaign like JJJ<\/a>, but then I got cold feet. <strong>What if nobody cared?<\/strong> That would be insulting \u2014 my mind starting playing games with me \u2014 imposter syndrome took control.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude48 But before all that, I didn&#8217;t have one thing that I could promise. I do a lot of stuff. Contribute to the core, different WP components, Gutenberg, and I also maintain <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\">hundreds of my own open source projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude43 So, I decided why not try GiveWP or build a custom donation Patreon page for my campaign. I actually went ahead and bought <a href=\"http:\/\/yearwithwp.com\/\">YearWithWP.com<\/a>. Started setting it up and then gave up on it. I thought I&#8217;m wasting my time on stuff that mattered less. I should be doing FOSS and not this.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude80 While all of this was happening I had already reached out to a couple of WordPress businesses and told them about what I was thinking of doing. In about a month I had 11 businesses on-board ready to support my open source work. <em>I never saw that coming. AH.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcaf I have to give credit to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/robertabela\">Robert Abela<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpsecurityauditlog.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\">WP Security Audit Log<\/a> he was not only my first sponsor in this campaign but he also encouraged me to move forward with my plan. BTW check out his plugin, it&#8217;s a good one. I use it myself. One of my apprentices, Ashar, builds it.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd14 So, within three months of this whole campaign, I was able to find over 20 WordPress businesses which either directly benefited from my open source software packages or generally wanted to support my work.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udee0 That&#8217;s how I ran my first several private funding campaigns that led me to not only support and maintain my <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\">open source software packages<\/a> but also helped me build exciting new ones like <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\">create-guten-block<\/a> (discussed below).<\/p>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\ud83d\udc4b TheDevCouple Backers &amp; Partners<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>What\/How? <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/partners\" rel=\"nofollow\">Read more about it \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n<p>Following are the set of awesome companies that sponsored my time on open source, helped me and my wife rebootTheDevCouple in many different ways, like building a team and taking on a new apprentice and contributing back to WordPress. <em>Definitely, check them out or <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/partners\" rel=\"nofollow\">read more about it \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gravityforms.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_gravity.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kinsta.com\/?kaid=WMDAKYHJLNJX&amp;utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_kisnta.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/awais.dev\/wpengine?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_wpe.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sitelock.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_sitelock.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_wpr.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogvault.net\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_bv.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cridio.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_cwp.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wecobble.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_wpcbl.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudways.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_cwys.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cozmoslabs.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_czmz.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wpgeodirectory.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_geodir.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpsecurityauditlog.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wp_sal.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mythemeshop.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_mts.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_lw.png\" \/><\/td>\n<td width=\"333.33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/TheDevCouple.com\/contact?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/shades-of-purple-vscode\/master\/images\/wpc_cby.png\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>\ud83d\udc4f A huge thank you to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gravityforms.com\/?utm_source=TheDevCouple&amp;utm_medium=Partner\">Gravity Form<\/a> for being the ultimate sponsor and <a href=\"https:\/\/awais.dev\/kinsta\">Kinsta<\/a> for offering to host all of our sites with about 3,000,000 visitors a year. Over <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/4-year-in-review-2017.png\">50% of my traffic increased when I moved to Kinsta in October<\/a>. And every other partner who made it possible.<\/p>\n<p>\u26e9 All the partners who supported and paid for at least a week of my time on open source were a big deal to me. So, my wife and I rebooted the <a href=\"https:\/\/TheDevCouple.com\/\">TheDevCouple<\/a> blog and started writing <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/category\/wordpress-reviews\/\">long-form-reviews<\/a> with extensive details on our sponsors&#8217; products as a way to thank them in return.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udf1f I only partnered with the businesses I believed in. It was not a blind decision to reach out to any of these businesses and we had long sessions of discussions before jumping into this sort of sponsor\/partner relation. As a thank you to all of my partners, we did the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 Listed each partner (with a sophisticated algorithm) under ~600 posts throughout five blogs\/sites we had, to increase word-of-mouth.<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Listed each partner on partner pages, their deals, and on 100&#8217;s of GitHub repositories as project backers. This was huge. <strong>Second most clicked resources as per GitHub traffic are developers checking out these awesome backers<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Shared products, reviews, and updates about our partners through 20+ social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts we handle. Each partner and their reviews also made it to our <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/subscribe\/\">newsletter<\/a> of 23k+ subscribers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u26fd This sponsorship was meant to support my time on open source but rather my wife&#8217;s management turned it into something completely different. She was able to bring in Saqib as our apprentice, we were able to increase the local meetups, and last but not the least I got time to release three times as many open source packages as I did back in 2016.<\/p>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udc9cI couldn&#8217;t have done it with her, so, huge props to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">Maedah<\/a> on being the best technical manager I&#8217;d ever hoped for. BTW <a href=\"https:\/\/maedahbatool.com\/2017-year-in-review-wpcouple-core-contribution-open-source-google\/\">Maedah also published here 2017 year in review at her blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u2192 We did lots of open source work last year including:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83d\ude4c <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wordpress-4-8-wpcouple-core-contributor\/\">WordPress Couple (Maedah and I) become Core Contributors of WordPress 4.8<\/a> \u2014 which was absolutely amazing, <strong><em>the first couple?<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udee1 In <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wordpress-4-9-core-contribution\/\">WordPress 4.9 <strong>everyone in the TheDevCouple Team contributed to the WordPress Core<\/strong><\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaedahBatool\/\">Maedah<\/a> and I, along with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mrasharirfan\">Ashar<\/a> (first time \ud83c\udf89) contributed to the WordPress Core whereas <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrSaqibAmeen\">Saqib<\/a> led the WordPress 4.9 Urdu translation to 100% completion the third time.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udee0 <strong>I also contributed to a number of other projects<\/strong>, minor contributions here and there in <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/chrisjpatty\/create-react-redux-router-app\">Create React Redux Router App<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/WordPress\/gutenberg\">Gutenberg project<\/a>, improved <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/wp-cli\/handbook\/commit\/37b1c451660d6269332634054f464db9bd16b31c\">WP-CLI Handbook<\/a><\/strong>,<strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/gutenberg\/handbook\/\">Gutenberg Handbook<\/a><\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/MovingToHTTPS\/movingtohttps.com\">MovingToHttps<\/a>, and also the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/avajs\/ava\">JavaScript tester Ava<\/a>, WooCommerce-custom-orders-table by LiquidWeb, improved <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/MozillaDevelopers\/playground\/\"><strong>CSS Grid playground by Mozilla<\/strong><\/a> and listed it on <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/gatsbyjs\/gatsby\/\">Gatsby.js<\/a>, <strong>improved the official <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/twbs\/bootstrap\">Bootstrap&#8217;s site<\/a><\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/mbeaudru\/modern-js-cheatsheet\">Modern JSCheatsheet<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/TheDevCouple\/ES6-Guide\">ES6 Guide<\/a>, Ryan&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/rmccue\/not-trac\">not-trac<\/a>, Cobalt2 theme, and WordPress <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/WordPress\/servehappy\">ServerHappy<\/a> page among other things.<br \/>\n<nav class=\"reponav js-repo-nav js-sidenav-container-pjax container\" role=\"navigation\" data-pjax=\"#js-repo-pjax-container\"><\/nav>\n<\/li>\n<li>\u26f1 Got listed as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudways.com\/blog\/top-wordpress-influencers\/\">WordPress Influencer<\/a> and it looks like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mattcromwell.com\/who-what-ill-follow-in-2018\/#attachment_4052\"><strong>Matt Cromwell will be following my work in 2018<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 which&#8217;s incredible coming from him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udce6<br \/>\nHighlight Open Source Project <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\">create-guten-block<\/a> \u2192<\/h2>\n<p>I know I released this project in Jan 2018 but I have had been working on it for about the last three months of 2017. So, yes this is the open source project I want to highlight here.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"postcontents full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4049\" src=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper.jpg\" alt=\"create-guten-block\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-1680x945.jpg 1680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-860x484.jpg 860w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-680x383.jpg 680w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-400x225.jpg 400w, https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/logo-text-wallpaper-50x28.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<section class=\"postcontents wrapper\">\n<p>This project is what I am most excited about this year. It has helped thousands of developers get started with the block development for the new WordPress editor called Gutenberg.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfa1 Bit of a backstory for this project is that I had already created <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/Gutenberg-Boilerplate\">Gutenberg Boilerplate<\/a> but it went stale with every new major release of Gutenberg. It was really hard to update that as well. Also, I wanted to create a webpack starter for WordPress. But not just that, I was creating an ESLint + Prettier configuration starter for WordPress as well.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfaf All of that became one single huge <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/babel\/babel\/blob\/master\/doc\/design\/monorepo.md\">monorepo<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/danluu.com\/monorepo\/\">project<\/a> built with JavaScript especially Node.js. Here&#8217;re are a few highlights of this project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83c\udf1f Make sure you star the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\"><code>create-guten-block<\/code><\/a> repo for updates.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udfac I wrote a blog on it: <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/create-guten-block-toolkit\/\"><strong>Create Guten Block Toolkit: Launch, Introduction, Philosophy, &amp; More!<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udf96 <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\"><code>create-guten-block<\/code><\/a> is my most viral project to date. It has been featured as a <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/5-year-in-review-2017.png\">GitHub trending project<\/a> and got <a href=\"https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/ahmadawais\/stuff\/master\/cloudapp\/6-year-in-review-2017.png\">me listed under the trending developers<\/a> as well.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udcbb More than <strong>15,000 developers<\/strong> have downloaded this project for about <strong>~40,000 times<\/strong> in about 1.5 months of its lifespan.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\ude48 The <strong>Matt Mullenweg<\/strong>, co-founder of WordPress, <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/think-like-a-block\/\">said amazing things about this project in the AWP Gutenberg Interview Series<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>\u2708 <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\/issues\/11\"><strong>Call for contributors<\/strong><\/a> to build create-guten-block 2.0 is up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>\u2014 there&#8217;s a lot more than what I could fit in the confines of a single post here. But this should give you an idea of what I am up to. <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/create-guten-block-toolkit\/\">For more read here \u2192<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\udc40<br \/>\nLooking For The Next Big Opportunity!<\/h2>\n<p>So, without further ado, let me share this with you that I am in the job market looking for the next big opportunity for me. I&#8217;m humbled and honored to be at the receiving end of <strong>multiple job offers and proposals to apply<\/strong> from incredible companies like <strong><em>Google, Facebook, eBay, DigitalOcean, Intel, Amazon, 10up,<\/em><\/strong> etc.<\/p>\n<p>\u23f0 This has been the biggest reason behind delay on publishing this post. I wanted to publish it after joining a company but&#8230; <strong><em>in short, I am currently interviewing and have not settled for a single company yet.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I had made up my mind of getting a job at the start of 2017. Here&#8217;s what I wrote in a blog post that I never published&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"alert blue\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\ud83d\ude4c<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">If your company wants a full stack web developer with a proven track record of open source leadership. One who should care deeply about your next-gen web project and get other developers excited about it as well. All of that while leading a team of engineers that would go on to make a DENT\u2122 in JS and web-standards, then <a href=\"https:\/\/AhmadAwais.com\/contact\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">do reach out<\/span><\/span><\/a>. I want to do all that and humbly feel like the best candidate for such a position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\ud83d\udc33 For about five years now, I have had been doing my own thing. Created several startups and led them to diff acquisitions + a services-based company, created and sold products, did lots of open source work.<\/p>\n<p>\u269b WordPress Gutenberg project adopted React JavaScript framework and then dropped it due to the licensing issues. I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wordpress-react-vue-preact-development\/\">my views on this whole subject<\/a> and I created an issue that later turned into a sort of a campaign for <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/wordpress\/gutenberg\/issues\/2733\"><strong>choosing the next JavaScript framework for WordPress<\/strong><\/a>. A lot happened there, which I should mention here for context:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\ud83d\udc4b I reached out to different JavaScript communities and asked them to start a discussion about this.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc49 WordPress is <a href=\"https:\/\/w3techs.com\/technologies\/details\/cm-wordpress\/all\/all\">30% of the web<\/a>, so it attracted a huge amount of attention (more than anyone of us had expected) and the issue became one of those <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/wordpress\/gutenberg\/issues\/2733\">unicorn GitHub issues<\/a>, with lots of discussion happening and people ranting.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83e\udd81 <strong>I had long discussions and chats with folks like <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dan_abramov\">Dan Abramov<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/acdlite\">Andrew Clark<\/a> from the Core React team, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/youyuxi\">Evan You<\/a> creator of Vue.js, Dan who built Inferno.js, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/psteeleidem\">Patrick<\/a> creator of Marko.js from eBay, and more Googlers than I could count <\/strong>\u2014 who work on projects like Angular, AMP, Chrome, etc. \u2014 That was awesome.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udcfa Later that week, I presented fine folks at Facebook why we need a GPL compatible license for WordPress, the push from Matt Mullenweg and the open source community led to Facebook relicensing React and its sister projects under the MIT license.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udcaf I wrote about that in: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/wordpress-facebook-relicense-react-mit-license\/\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Did WordPress Just Influence Facebook to Relicense React Under MIT License<\/a><\/strong>. I couldn&#8217;t help but think I had something to do with this. That was a great achievement in itself!<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udf99 We even <a href=\"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/interview-react-team-facebook-wordpress-gutenberg\/\">interviewed the Core React Team<\/a> at Facebook.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>\u2014 All of this brought the open source community together and many major tech companies started looking at WordPress as a very serious player in the open web. Rightly so. Many discovered that it now has a REST API.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\ude32 To my surprise<\/strong>, I found out that engineers and developers at giant tech companies like Google, Facebook, Intel, etc. were using some of the software packages that I had open sourced like <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/Gutenberg-Boilerplate\">Gutenberg Boilerplate<\/a> and then <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ahmadawais\/create-guten-block\"><code>create-guten-block<\/code><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\ud83d\udcaf It was a proud moment for me as an open source developer<\/strong>. #AH. Many wanted to discuss this and consulted with me about Gutenberg and what&#8217;s next with WordPress in the release of 5.0. I did contract consultation work and also pitched a project at Google.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc68\u200d\ud83d\udcbb Soon after that, I started receiving emails from engineers (not recruiters) at Google, Intel, DO, 10up, Amazon, etc. asking me to either apply for a particular job they had in mind or direct job offers to lead a team.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\ude48 I&#8217;ve been at the receiving end of many recruiters&#8217; emails like these before but this time it was different, it was engineers actually using my code. I had discussions with Googlers about the future of WordPress and how they wanted to improve the web by improving WordPress.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc3c So, I did what any engineer in my position would do. I said <strong>NO! <\/strong> Haha, that&#8217;s true. But then after a few more calls from different devs\/engineers, long and hard discussions with my wife (and later our families), we decided to give it a go. Yes, both <a href=\"https:\/\/MaedahBatool.com\/\">Maedah<\/a> and I are interviewing at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd8a So, my wife and I took Dec\/Jan\/Feb off, to interview at a few companies, including the ones I shared above. <strong>Both our interviews at Google went quite well<\/strong>, our recruiter came back with good-news-feedback from our interviewers and moved us to the HC stage. Then we had lots of issues related to all the relocation to the HQ and US immigration, etc. and at the time of writing this is where we are. <em>I&#8217;ll update this when we both make a decision.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u26d1 There are companies and job offers that would relocate us to a new country, which is a huge undertaking, and there are companies equally as good that are interested in hiring us as remote employees. This is one of the most overwhelming (in a good way) and confusing (decision paralysis) time of my life. #TrueStory.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\" style=\"text-align: center;\" id=\"%e2%86%92-whats-next\">\u2192 What&#8217;s Next?<a href=\"#%e2%86%92-whats-next\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s a million dollar question ain&#8217;t it. The thing is, after doing my own thing for so long and finally accepting the fact that I am going to work for an awesome tech company in a month or two from now \u2014 I am still going through the interviews at a few companies. Here&#8217;s what my state of mind looks like at the moment:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 I have 12 years of WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, Open source experience. I do want to bet on that but want to move into a Dev Relations role at a good company.<\/li>\n<li>\u269b I don&#8217;t want to completely give up development any time soon, but I am growing as a JavaScript Engineer and that&#8217;s what I want to do next. Maybe ML and neural networks in a near future too, but not on my own. <em>Not leaving the open source eco-system either<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83c\udfa9 I want to get involved in the JavaScript and web specs drafting and leading the next generation of open web (and believe me it says JS all over it). That means having a huge company to support this vision, help me get to present on this and bring consistencies throughout the JS eco-system.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\udc5e Don&#8217;t want to be the guy with red-shoes i.e. this next decision means a lot to me. I am not a change my employer every year kindov guy. While I am ready to relocate, it a decision that favors loyalty.<\/li>\n<li>\ud83d\uddfcSo, it&#8217;s JavaScript, web, and leading the open web platform in the next five to ten years is what my plan looks like. Is it a bad thing that I crave leadership?! <em>I wish it was one of those things you could ask your parents about.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For all of that, I am trying to make the best choice right now. I suppose I&#8217;ll be interviewing at four more companies before <strong>I hibernate and come back with a decision to where I want to work next.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u270a I shared all of this not for any other purpose but to hold myself accountable (there were so many days when I wanted to not write a review that had no proper ending), share my journey as a software engineer, and to help new developers understand the landscape, life, and workflows of a <em>for-now<\/em> full-time open source developer.<\/p>\n<p><em>I spent a lot of time writing, compiling, and publishing this post. It would mean the world to me <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%F0%9F%94%A5%20%40MrAhmadAwais%20wrote%20his%202017%20Year%20In%20Review%20%E2%80%94%20this%20late,%20to%20share%20different%20aspects%20of%20full-time%20open%20source%20development.%20%0A%0A%F0%9F%91%89%20Must%20read%20%E2%80%94%20https%3A\/\/awais.dev\/2017%0A%0A%0A%23WordPress%20%23JavaScript%20%23OpenSource%20%23React%20%23Google\">if you Tweet this post<\/a><\/strong> or share it on your preferred social channel \u2014 Facebook, LinkedIn, or your company Slack channel (I am on the job hunt, of course, that&#8217;d be great).<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mrahmadawais\/\">Finally. Don&#8217;t forget to say \ud83d\udc4b on Twitter @MrAhmadAwais \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I made lots of friends this last year. Which was the best part of it really! Lost and gained weight with my irregular jogging routine, and relatively recently I have joined a gym to be more serious about my health. All in all, it was a great year \u2014 lots of memories.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Peace! \u270c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ud83d\udd70 2017 was an incredible year for me both personally and professionally. I just published my year in review discussing everything from going full-time open source and receiving job offers from giant companies like Google, Intel, Fb, 10up, etc. I also made the announcement of an online course I am going to launch soon. Check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,218],"tags":[183,145],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-talks","tag-google","tag-year-in-review"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\ud83e\udd81 2017 Year in Review: \u2014 Open Source, TheDevCouple, Leadership, &amp; What&#039;s Next?!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\ud83d\udd70 2017 was an incredible year for me both personally and professionally. 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