Goals and Ambition for 2024 - JAPAN 🇯🇵 & GDE 🤓

I always make an annual plan. I think it's good to have a goal in mind, even if the path to it is the really important thing, to be active and consistent. And the outcome could be something completely different, and that makes it exciting 😄.

Professional Goals:

I want to talk about 1 specific goal for the first half of 2024 that would affect the whole year in general if everything goes as planned/desired 👇🏽!

Number 1 Goal: To give a talk in Japan 🤓

Goal

My main goal for the first half of the year is to give a talk on accessibility in Japan as a GDE, maybe even in Japanese if that is a requirement. 🇯🇵

I want this trip to be all about accessibility and learning from a country and culture with an ageing population about the steps they are taking to make everyday life accessible for all.

💡 Note: If this is the first article you're reading from me: I'm an accessibility specialist, so accessibility is always my main topic.

Action Steps

• I'm travelling to Japan this spring. I have started planning the trip since Christmas. I have been reaching out to Google Developer Groups across Japan asking if they are having an event during the time I will be there and if they are looking for someone to give a talk.
• I'm also reaching out to companies and people I'm interested in to talk about accessibility.
• I use Google tools to plan the whole trip.
• I want to write blog posts, give updates to my followers on Twitter and create videos (at least short ones) during the trip.

Timeline

🎄 December 2023: Start planning the trip with Google tools (Sheets, Docs, Calendar, Gmail, Tasks,...); start learning Japanese more intensively

❄️ January 2024: Start contacting people on Twitter and LinkedIn; start scheduling to make the stay as efficient as possible; start Japanese speaking lessons; create more/different content on topics to talk about at events

🙆🏾‍♀️ February 2024: Continue intensive Japanese speaking studies; update presentations for talks;

🌸 Spring 2024: travel to Japan, meet people, attend events; keep my followers updated, write occasional blog posts, shoot videos if possible;

🌻 Summer 2024: Recap; organize my newfound knowledge; turn it into something useful for my daily work; create a talk about the whole experience, from planning, goals, successes and more;

After this eventful journey, I want to focus on creating more content on Google tools and accessibility until the end of the year. I would like to give talks about this journey, my findings and more in the second half of the year.

Personal Aspirations:

1. Aspiration: Keeping mind and body as healthy as possible ☯️
2. Why it Matters: When I'm healthy and fit, I can give 100% to the things that are important to me: creating content about accessibility, GDE, tools and how to get into technology as a career switcher.
3. Support System: I've found some great people on tech Twitter who encourage and support me. Also in my personal life. Being surrounded by people who have the same goals helps to stay motivated and stay on track.

DEV Community Contributions:

Contribution Goal: As has been the case from the beginning of my dev career, I'll be writing blog posts about accessibility, tools and the like throughout the year.

Collaboration Plans: If time permits, I will become more active again in my community at Hacktoberfest to give beginners the chance to contribute to open source projects.

Measuring Impact: For the past few years, I've been receiving messages, comments and the like, in which readers are happy that they found my article, that they enjoyed reading it and much more. If I receive just one comment along these lines in 2024, I've already had an impact on at least one person's life, and that's all I need.