After A Year of Giving Back To The Development Community

• Visitors since launch : 78,032 (averaging ~239 per day)
• Views since Launch : 124,962 (averaging ~338 per day)
• Total Posts since Launch : 43

And here’s a graph as well:



The blog has been extremely popular and has received far more traffic than I would have imagined. Many of the articles that I have posted on the site have been published and spread across the web on sites like CodeProject, Reddit and have been used within several other areas such as resource guides and magazines.

Since many of these blog posts often contain practical code and examples, I have made an effort to upload them to sites like GitHub so that the open-source community can use them to help solve many of the problems that they have may have encountered in the past (or possibly in the future). Blogging has opened up many doors with regards to additional community involvement and I have been extended invitations for speaking events and presentations, online mentoring, guest authoring and beta testing new components and releases within the realm of .NET.

Thanks everyone that has stopped by and those of you that are reading this now, I want you to know that I appreciate you taking the time to do so.

Stack Overflow

I honestly thought when I dedicated this year to community contribution, the first site that came to mind would be Stack Overflow. It is without a doubt the largest development-oriented Q&A site on the web and it is usually where just about every question has an answer. But surprisingly, I haven’t really done much there this year apart from moderation duties as I have found the community there too often be quite aggressive and cutthroat when it comes to “rep”.

I’ve spent most of my time on the site doing this that help the community without actually posting answers. Since I currently have enough privileges there already, I tend to spend any idle time editing posts, approving edits, flagging posts and other related topics. I would encourage any users out there that have these abilities to use them as a site the magnitude of SO has a huge need for helping hands when it comes to these duties.

Real World Contributions

This year I have taken part in several personal development-related community projects. I was invited and currently serve on a Computer Science Advisory Board at a small public university to discuss the importance of many of Microsoft’s technologies and their practical uses outside of academia (with regards to future employment and usefulness).

I have also taken part in a variety of private mentoring sessions for younger / junior developers and recent graduates to learn the ins-and-outs of C# and the .NET environment in general. These sessions have included both one-on-one mentoring and tutoring as well as group presentations.

Previously Set Goals and Results

In late March, I threw together another blog post that detailed some goals that I had set for myself that I thought were fairly ambitious, so since the year is basically over. Let’s see how each of the goals compare to the actual results:

• Goal: 50,000 + Points and 7,500+ Posts on the ASP.NET Forums.
  
  Result: 61,056 Points and 9,117 Posts.
  
  
• Goal: 4,000+ Questions Answered on the ASP.NET Forums.
  
  Result: 4,223 Questions Answered.
  
  
• Goal: 20,000+ Reputation on Stack Overflow.
  
  Result: 18,830 Reputation **(I’m not too disappointed about this one).
  
  
• Goal: 40+ Blog Posts.
  
  Result: 43 Blog Posts.
  
  
• Goal: 15,000+ Blog Visits.
  
  Result: 124,962 Visits

Overall, 4 out of 5 isn’t too shabby.

What I've Learned

Since I have a News Year’s Eve party to get to, I’ll keep this succinct and leave you with a few of the major points that I'll be bringing into the New Year.

• Contribute even if you think you can't - Experience is unique and two people rarely share the same experience or tackle a problem the same way. If you find a situation that someone encounters and is having difficulty with, consider sharing how you tackled or solved the problem. It can work wonders.
  
  
• Teaching is a great way to learn - I can’t express how many things I have learned by helping others throughout this year. I know that I am a much stronger developer than I was at the beginning of this year and I would attribute much of that to the dedication that I have put into teaching others and learning along the way.
  
  
• Helping others helps you - Since contributing in all of these different ways, countless doors have been opened for me. Speaking engagements, interviews, guest contributions, job opportunities and much, much more. I would highly recommend taking the leap and giving back if you get a chance, I can just about promise that you’ll get a return on your investment in one way or another.
  
  
• Keep your e-mail Address private - Although I put this here in jest, I can’t tell you how many e-mails I get per day of folks asking questions outside of the forums and other areas. It’s not that I mind, but it was a little unexpected to see 20+ emails when I wake up and they are all from users asking for help.

Thanks again everyone for giving me something to strive for over the past year and thanks again for visiting.