At the beginning of 2015, I decided I should get more involved in the Android community. I’ve been working on Android apps since 2011, but I hadn’t gone to conferences, written a lot of blog posts, or made a lot of useful contributions on StackOverflow. Sure, I did a few small talks at DroidDevsDK in 2014, but that was it. So in 2015, I wanted to do better.

I wrote a book! Which, I think, is a pretty cool thing to have done. It was a lot of hard work, but I was very proud when Gradle for Android (also available on Amazon) hit the shelves, so to speak. I thought I would be able to use some parts of the book for my blog, but when I was writing, I did not really seem to find the time to rewrite some excerpts. So that did not happen, and I ended up neglecting my blog, once again. I did manage to contribute more on StackOverflow for the android and gradle tags, unsurprisingly. In fact, my score on SO more than quadrupled in 2015. I’ve had an account since 2011 but was not being very useful there. I’m happy I was finally able to get more involved there, and help some people out.

Besides doing a few more talks at DroidDevsDK, I was also asked to become part of the organizing team there. So I am actively looking for speakers in the Copenhagen area or people who can present via live stream!

The past year was also the year I did my very first talk at a real conference! I talked about Gradle for Android at Big Android BBQ in Amsterdam. It was a great experience to talk in front of a bunch of people, and it was nice hanging out with a few really good Android developers as well. I got inspired from listening to their talks and speaking to them in person afterwards, and realized I have a lot more to learn.

I also worked on a little side project together with a colleague, and managed to release Forward! As described in the Play store: Forward is an online community where you gather donations for your favorite charity by giving stuff away. So if you have something that you want to throw out, but is still in good shape, instead of throwing it out you put it on Forward. The person who wants to get the item, pays for it by donating to a charity you specify for a certain amount. I absolutely love the idea, and everyone I talk to seems to think it is amazing as well. So I really hope it will take off in 2016. We are working very hard on building a community in Copenhagen (Denmark) at the moment. It would be great if we can add more cities soon. We went into a partnership with Mødrehjælpen, which is an organization that supports families or pregnant women that ended up in a vulnerable situation. . Hopefully, we can make a big contribution, and I would love to add more charity organizations to our list of partners. (If you happen to work for a charity organization, or know someone who does, get in touch!)

On a personal level, I visited East Africa for the first time and got married. At the same time!

Plans for 2016

The next few months, I want to do some more experimenting with data binding on Android (and write about it here). I feel like I still need to spread the word about Gradle, because a lot of people are still clueless as to how much time it can save them. Hopefully, I will get another chance to speak at a conference (given I get myself together and submit some talk proposals). And of course, I want Forward to succeed. In short: I want to get even more involved.