2020: My Year in Review

Saying that the year 2020 has been very very crazy is an understatement. However, in the midst of all these, there are lots of things that happened to me personally which I love to share — we've taken in lots of bad stuff this year, so I am just going to focus on the positives.

My Year in Review is kinda a ritual I have done over the last three years, you can check out my 2018: Year in Review here and my 2019: Year in Review here. Welcome to this year's review, let’s get into it. Manage my bragging, LOL!!!

Some of The Many Faces of Ibukunoluwa in 2020. Baby boy in a Pandemic

Reading 📖

Even though there was more free time this year, I read fewer books than I did the previous year. In 2019, I read 11 books and made a to-do list to read 15 books in 2020, but I ended up reading just 9 books. My book tastes include and are limited to Memoirs and (Auto)Biographies — I love books where people tell tales about their life, work, or past experiences they are privy to.

1. Becoming Nigerian: A Guide — Elnathan John.
2. The Accidental Public Servant — Nasir El Rufai.
3. Becoming — Michelle Obama.
4. The Last Black Unicorn — Tiffany Haddish.
5. The last 100 days of Abacha— Olusegun Adeniyi.
6. Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President Was Defeated in Nigeria — Olusegun Adeniyi (Completed).
7. The Nigerian Constitution — National Assembly.
8. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days — Jake Knapp et al.
9. On a Platter of Gold — How Jonathan Won and Lost Nigeria — Bolaji Abdullahi (Reread).

Work & Side Projects 👩🏾‍💻

I pretty much worked my ass off this year, all thanks to a lot of free time. Literally became a jack of all trade (life of startup founder) and did so many kinds of stuff — customer support, technical support, digital marketing, onboarding specialist, software development, product management social media manager, content writing, cloud development, e.t.c. Below are some of the highlights for the year:

1. Completed my internship at First City Monument Bank. I wrote about the experience here.
2. Completed a 6 weeks remote internship working on cloud computing.
3. Joined a team of volunteers (medical doctors, project managers, software developers, and many more) to build a product called StopTheSpread. I didn’t do that much. My job was basically working on User Experience and finding bugs. Check it out here.
4. Volunteered as a virtual workshop assistant for CodeLand 2020.
5. Interviewed at Microsoft for the Nigerian Office. Didn't get the job but it was a Big flex.
6. Began working on Afriktrip, a more redefined version of Ontripp.com. This became full-time work at some point in the year. Made tremendous progress, amazing numbers, and hit our KPIs for the year.
7. Got into RoundtripAfrica Fellowship. Check it out here.
8. Got into the Wimbart PR Program for African Startups.
9. Afriktrip got featured on Benjamin Dada’s Blog. Check it out here.
10. Pioneer Accelerator Global Top50 and Finalist.
11. Y Combinator Startup School Certified. Check it out here.
12. Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certified. Check it out here.

L-R: My Workspace (at FCMB), My Workspace (home), The StopTheSpread.info Team (see me down there).

L-R: Codeland 2020, Afriktrip’s Homepage, My Workspace (home).

Travel✈️

A short holiday became a very long holiday resulting to me locking down in the UK because of the covid19 pandemic. It became a blessing in disguise. The major highlight was visiting Stamford Bridge, the home of the pride of London. This year I also got to try out all the possible means of transportation — Car, Airplane, Cable car, Ferry, and Train. On this note also, it was a really great year. According to my Google Timeline, my 2020 stats is — 3 Countries, 21 Cities and 144 places

View From the Amazing Stand

Welcome to Stamford Bridge

Educational

As for educational (school work), looooooooooooool we thank God. I completed zero academic work this year. In terms of educational (personal development), this year was my big introduction to Cloud Computing and lots of other things. An amazing year in this regard for me, below are some of the highlights:

1. How to Build Product — Product School
2. Oracle Infrastructure Associate Solutions Architect — Oracle Academy. (Wrote the exam, the pass mark was 65% and I got a 60% (failed))
3. AWS Solutions Architect 2020— Udemy
4. Microsoft Azure Fundamentals — Microsoft Docs. Wrote the exam, passed, and got my first certification.
5. Aviatrix Certified Cloud Engineer — Aviatrix (to be completed).
6. Associate Google Cloud Engineer Foundational — Pluralsight (uncompleted).
7. The Complete Web Developer 2020: Zero to Mastery — Udemy (i will finish one day, one day).

Music, Movies, Vlogs & Podcasts

This was my escape from the bad and very crazy times this year. I think I consumed a record amount of visual and audio content, at some point my monthly data usage was up to 100Gb.

1. Vlogs — Halfcast Podcast, Ubunifu Space, TBandistry, Denz & Renz, Top5 with JulieAdenuga, Filthy Fellas, Toolz & Gbemi, The Therapy — Falz & Toke Makinwa.
2. Podcast — ISWIS Podcast, Building the Future with Dotun, Halfcast Podcast, Y Combinator Podcast with Craig Canon.
3. Movies — lots of series this year, many of which I binged watched. Completed the whole of Suits in less than a month. Notable mentions — Suits, HTGAWM, Homeland, House of Cards, Umbrella Academy.
4. Music — listened to a lot of Afrobeats, Amapiano, and UK music (Grime, UK Pop) this year. My most listened to artists include Wizkid, Brymo, Burna Boy, Skepta, Jhus, Dave, Stormz, NSG, Kabza de Small.
   Top albums I listened to this year (doesn’t have to be released this year): Made in Lagos, Psychodrama, Big Conspiracy, Gangs Signs & Prayers, Insomnia, LTG (Laughter Tears, and Goosebumps, and many more.

Spotify Unwrapped

Writing ✍🏾

The main plan for writing this year was to work on my final year dissertation but I spent it doing more than that. I wrote for my dissertation, Afriktrip, and personal rants.

1. Knocking the Nigerian House Down: Getting More Youths and Women into Government.
2. Selective Efficiency: the Nigerian Setting.
3. What’s it like to intern at a Nigerian Bank.
4. Introducing Afriktrip — Taking the World to Africa
5. The Afriktrip Blog. I wrote more than 17 articles, mostly about travel across the African continent.

My Personal Take

A big shoutout to my Grandfather that passed on to greater glory this year, woke up to the news of his passing. The saddest news I received in 2020. He was one of my biggest cheerleaders.

To God be the glory, this year has been mostly amazing for me even though there were days, weeks, and months that things went sideways and my head was on a low level, I came out stronger because of God’s help, the amazing family members and friends that I have.

Comparing this year's review with previous years shows how far I have grown in all aspects of my life. I like to think of this year as my year of 10x growth. I was very very lucky this year that a lot of things fell into places for me and I was in a location where I had access to resources essential to my growth and for those things that didn’t fall into places, God gave me the strength to pull myself up.

Biggest Lessons:

1. There are solutions to most problems if we just look deeper and ask questions.
2. Expect anything.
3. For cloud computing, you really pay for the resources you don’t turn off.

2021

It is going to be an amazing year for me and for every one of us.
I am going places in 2021 and it is going to be my year of 100x growth.

Happy New Year