# What was my 2012

I was close to writing my 2012 recollection post in December but the year
really did not end until the last minutes of the 31st.  It has undoubtedly
been the most exciting year for myself.

## Fireteam

Duplicate implicit target name: "fireteam".

In November of 2011 Steve Gaffney from Splash Damage sent me a mail out of
the blue if I was interested in a Skype call about their new venture.  A
month and a half later I was working for the [Splash Damage](http://splashdamage.com/) offspring [Fireteam](http://fireteam.net/).
The first two months from home, then I relocated to London.  I can't
stress how much fun that last year with Fireteam has been.

It all turned out massively differently than expected but that was half
the fun.  While we're technically a separate company but we work very
closely together with both Splash Damage and [WarChest](http://www.warchest.com/) and share the same office space.  Without
doubt I have learned more in the last year than in the last four combined
because of that.  Splash Damage / Fireteam / WarChest is a great
environment for that in general because there is such a diverse bunch of
people.  I think we have people from more than 20 countries (I definitely
counted 18) and due to the nature of the company there are different
professions working together which gives you a ton of insight into new
areas.  We're certainly not flawless but so far I am tremendously enjoying
the environment.

Splash Damage's first iOS game [RAD Soldiers](http://www.warchest.com/games/radsoldiers) launched properly in
December and also promptly got an Apple feature.  That definitely kept us
all busy during Christmas time since it's using our stuff for the network
infrastructure.

## Talks and Travelling

Last year I was fortunate to give seven talks in seven different countries
next to my work.  This also for the first time included a talk outside of
my comfort zone at GDC Online which I gave as a stand-in for our CEO Steve
Gaffney.  I hope to be able to continue doing that next year but I will
definitely not increase the number of conferences I'm going to attend —
after all I'm doing this next to my work and not as a professional thing.

## New Things Learned

The last year to a large degree was looking back at what I did before and
learning from mistakes.  It has not gone unnoticed that I contributed less
to my Open Source project over the course of the last year than I did
before.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that I based all of what I
did on Python and my own stuff and never really thought outside of the
box.  I'm still enjoying using Python and [Flask](http://flask.pocoo.org/) tremendously but I also being more in contact
with other things.

Fireteam has a very different approach to system architecture and I
believe it's a superior approach than what is currently available in the
Python community.  I would love to eventually open source that stuff or
reimplement a framework based on those principles but I think it's too
early for that to happen.

I did however plan on giving some presentations on how our internal
structure works so that other people could reimplement it if they like the
approach.

## Gratitude

I can't express how grateful I am for being in the position I am
currently.  It blows my mind that there are so many people out there that
use my libraries, read my blog and generally seem to be interested in what
I'm doing.  2012 marked the year where for the first time I was no longer
surprised if I read that some large website was built on Flask.  I still
can't believe how large that thing has become.

I was incredibly honored to be invited to give keynotes at both the
Japanese and South African PyCon.  The community we have here is amazing
and I hope it stays like that with all the changes it's currently going
through.

I know I did less than ideal maintenance for my project last year but that
I will improve upon that.  I definitely felt bad for being elected as PSF
member and not having done much for public Python work last year.

Thanks everybody!