2022 Wrapped

8 courses, 3 conferences, 2 trips to Europe, 1 product launch, and a child safely introduced to French Immersion. 2022 has been a year. Allow my indulgence of a quick recap:

Courses

It's difficult not to count my year by my course releases - especially because at LinkedIn Learning we count course releases by fiscal year, not calendar year, so my year counts are always off. Anyway. In 2022 I released 8 brand new courses on LinkedIn Learning (in order of recording):

• Level Up: CSS Layout (was "CSS Layout Code Challenges)
• Building a Headless WordPress Site with Gatsby
• What Is Web3?
• Git From Scratch
• Hands-On Instruction: JavaScript
• CSS for Programmers
• Ten Security Tips for Developers
• and ongoing updates to Tech Trends

Of these courses I want to specifically highlight four:

What is Web3 was created in response to all the chatter about this new so-called "next stage of the web" powered by the blockchain. I've been embedded in the web3 community for years and when the subject came up I stepped forward to take on the challenge. My goal: To decrypt the jargon-laden and intensely technical language surrounding crypto, blockchains, NFTs and other web3 technologies and give people explainers for each term so they can have meaningful conversations and make informed decisions about them. Being a well-known and very public critic of web3 there was some concern people wouldn't take an even-handed and impartial presentation of the subject from me seriously, but my team extended trust and autonomy my way to allow me to make the course the way I thought best. Some 10 months after its release we are in the midst of a crypto collapse and multiple web3 scandals and I can safely say the course stands the test of time. Whatever your stance is on web3, crypto, and the blockchain, I encourage you to watch the course:

Git from Scratch is the second iteration of a new teaching method I first explored in the 2021 course "Cutting Edge CSS:" Take a complex topic, break it down into its most basic parts, and figure out a way to explain them visually using drawings and props. In Git from Scratch I explain the basics of how version control with Git works, using time travel and other science fiction terminology alongside Lego and drawings to help make sense of it all. This idea originally came from a 10-minute conference talk on the same topic I did back in 2015 that you can watch on YouTube. Here's an example from the course (and before you ask: there's no trickery here. All the effects you see are done live and in-camera):

Here's a behind the scenes shot of the recording:

The last two courses, Hands-On Instruction: JavaScript and CSS for Programmers were the first two prototype courses for our new teaching modality using GitHub Codespaces as a hands-on coding environment for our learners. Read more about this in the next section.

Hands-On Practice with GitHub Codespaces

I spent a fair portion of 2022 working on a project I couldn't tell anyone about. It was exciting and frustrating because I really wanted to show people this amazing thing we were building and how they could use it to make their lives easier. Then, on November 9th, at GitHub Universe, we launched. Here's the official video I put together in my home office:

Short version: About 8 years ago my colleague Ray Villalobos started putting his course exercise files on GitHub. It was a great idea and over the next several years we built a process to put all relevant coding files on GitHub for easier access. Then when GitHub launched Codespaces - essentially VS Code in the cloud on a throwaway VM - we started exploring whether this service could be used as a learn-to-code environment.

In November 2022, GitHub made Codespaces publicly available and gave every user 60 hours of free compute time per month. In response, we released 50+ brand new courses and hundreds of updated courses using GitHub Codespaces. You can read all about it here. This was a humongous product launch requiring coordination across multiple teams in two major companies and it all culminated with an official announcement at the GitHub Universe conference where my colleagues Walt Ritscher, Scott Simpson, Ray Villalobos and I conducted two workshops on how to use GitHub Codespaces for education and onboarding.

This release was an enormous undertaking and I am super excited about the new opportunities this opens up for anyone who wants to learn to code.

Conferences

2022 was the first time since the Before Times I went out into the world and comingled with people outside my carefully preserved COVID-19 bubble. In August I got on a plane and travelled to Aarhus, Denmark to speak at the inaugural UX Nordic conference. It was wonderful to be back among likeminded professionals and a bit harrowing to share space with so many people when we've spent the past three years intentionally keeping ourselves apart. If you find yourself in the European region in August 2023 and you're professionally adjacent the UX space, I highly recommend this conference!

In November I went to San Francisco to attend and run two workshops at GitHub Universe with my colleagues. It was the first time in more than 3 years we'd all met in person and we got to reconnect and make new friends and connections which was all kinds of wonderful. I mean, look at this crew. Amazing people every one:

Finally, in December I got to speak in person at my all-time favourite conference An Event Apart. This has been a professional goal of mine for the past decade and though I've spoken at the conference three times virtually, this one felt like the Real Deal. Little did I know it would also be the last An Event Apart ever!

Again, it was great to be among likeminded professionals to build new friendships, professional connections, and expand my knowledge of the ever-evolving space that is the web. Farewell An Event Apart. You changed the world for the better. You will be missed!

Personal things

What is an end-of-year summary without some random personal stuff? Here goes, in no particular order:

Our son Leo entered First Grade, and being the parents we are we chose to put him in French Immersion where he (a Norwegian/Taiwanese Canadian boy who speaks English at home) learns everything in French. The school is a 10 minute walk from our house and he loves every minute of it.

We've also discovered to my endless gratitude Leo has not inherited my dyslexia. At all. He's already plowing through books at about the same reading speed as me so I am no longer allowed to read out loud to him because he reads ahead and complains about me being "too slow" and "not reading what it says" and insists on reading on his own. My heart, it aches, for many reasons.

Our first family trip outside the bounds of a 1 hour drive took place in June when we went to Florence, Italy to attend my cousin's long-delayed wedding at a real castle. This was also the first time we've seem my side of the family in more than 3 years, and all flat companionship batteries were recharged over a two week stay. It was everything. Did I mention the wedding was at a real bona fide castle?I mean:

Congratulations to Martine and Gorm, and my best wishes for all that is to come.

More to come in 2023

2022 was a year. Things happened in the world, much of it not good very bad which I've talked about elsewhere and won't mention here. Instead I'll say this: We've been granted an opportunity to start over. It's been rough, but all good things are challenging. Now we must take that opportunity and build something from it for ourselves, for those around us, and for those that come after us.

Hope is a catalyst and our opportunity space is infinite. Go build futures where we can all do and be what we have reason to value my friend. I'll be right there by your side as we create what comes next.

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a human person who makes video training about how to use technology to build better futures for ourselves and the people around us at LinkedIn Learning. When he's not making courses about how to build the web or writing things about how the internet shapes us, you'll probably find him building Lego with his son or dancing with his wife.