2022 Retrospective 2022 and Goals/Predictions for 2023
There is no beating around the bush about 2022; it was damn hard! 2022 challenged me professionally, physically, and organizationally. But, at the same time, we had some great highlights to celebrate the small wins.
2022 will go down in history as unique that we finally came out of the Corona Lockdowns middle of February here in Switzerland, but at the same time, the Ukraine war started. Fast forward to December 2022, inflation started to skyrocket, interest was the highest in a long time, stock and crypto markets performed worse since 2008, and unfortunately, the war is still ongoing.
2022 Highlights
- I picked up two new hobbies; gravel biking and camping with a motorhome.
- I ended the year quite fit through intermittent fasting and riding a ton of kilometers on my gravel bike this year.
- Professionally, it was a challenge to reapply for our Casino License, which happens every 20 years, to launch a brand new design for our website with over 1000+ pages in 4 languages. Finally, we built our very own dedicated studio based in Madrid. Phew, it was a ton of work and many late nights, but I feel very proud of what we achieved.
- My son started to read this year. Such a fantastic gift to watch a child begin from zero to sounding out words to reading. It's incredible how quickly kids can pick things up.
- Finally, back on stage presenting again this year. Thanks to Corona, it has been a few years to be on stage presenting, but I picked up right where I left off.
- I started down the rabbit hole of AI & VR. AI & VR is something I love!
2022 Lowlights
- Crypto & Web3 was an absolute lowlight. Not only did the markets crash, but I only realized the tax implications of all the NFT flipping this year...Yikes.
- Hello Inflation!
- Ukraine War was unexpected, and living in Switzerland and seeing all the Ukrainian refugees arrive in the country is heartbreaking.
- I was riding my Gravel Bike less than I would like.
- I was drinking way too much coffee during the crunch times.
- I wanted to read more books and not just on holiday...didn't happen this year.
Overall, I wouldn't mark 2022 as my worst year on record, but I took away a lot of learning. On the other hand, I enjoyed discovering my new hobbies, gravel biking, and camping. Somehow after the crunch time of writing a ton of documents for work, the writing bug is back again for blogging.
2023 Predictions
AI, OpenAI, ChatGPT, generative art, and the 100 other AI programs sprung out of nowhere last year are here to stay. Therefore, I will dedicate a significant amount of time in 2023 to learning more about some of these AI tools and start building projects based on them.
What I predict for 2023 is the following:
- Crypto to make a small step up and be relatively flat for 2023
- NFTs will become more utility-based, and fewer JPEGs
- US Housing Crash & Recession (Unfortunately)
- AI will lead the way for new tech and startups for 2023
- Metaverse & VR will continue incrementing forward, and we will continue seeing more adoption from businesses in 2023
Conclusion
If I treat 2022 as a software release, we deployed with many bugs and had to make a lot of emergency patches along the way. However, 2022 is an excellent basis for 2023 and beyond! For many reasons, I am confident that 2023 will be better than 2022.
Let's Go!!