My first year, a personal review
Tags: devadvocacy, launchdarkly, life, anniversary
Published: 2018-08-01 22:54:04

---
title: My first year, a personal review
published: true
tags: Dev Advocacy,LaunchDarkly,Life,anniversary
canonical_url: http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/2018/07/31/my-first-year-a-personal-review/
---

I woke up to a cheery email today telling me that a quarter of my stock options had vested. That means I’ve been with LaunchDarkly a whole year! (there are worse anniversary notes to get).

And what a year it’s been. I thought about doing a photo essay of all the conferences I went to in the last year, but there have literally been 36 this year, and I had speaking slots at all but 5, and of those 5, I ran open spaces at 3. Too many pictures!

I went to 3 other countries – Australia, Santo Domingo, and Canada. I made platinum status on my airline, missed my kid’s 13th birthday and every single concert, and wore out a TravelPro suitcase. I made a bunch of new friends and acquaintances, and got to know others better, and worked my ass off to learn a new career.

When I started, I had exactly one day in the office to get my new laptop, meet my new co-workers, and have an enthusiastic and influential conversation about stickers. Then it was off to Kansas City Developer Conference, my first official conference as an official Developer Advocate.

Let’s just say I was glad for my thorough interview prep!

![](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20170803_094536-300x225.jpg)

You can see that my sticker conversation ended well. This is Velocity New York, I think.

![](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Snapchat-1757033784-300x169.jpg)

I made it back to Oakland for LISA and the office Halloween party

![](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20171030_163806-300x225.jpg)

I celebrated company milestones, even if I wasn’t always in the office for the official parties. I ate this bread pudding in New Orleans at RubyConf. It was _delicious_.

![](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Snapchat-1900099380-300x169.jpg)

I sewed a bag for the sticker collection I tote with me to conferences. The inside fabric was an in-office thank-you gift, and the fastener is one I got in the Garment District of New York

![Toggle the Space Explorer in a bag of stickers](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180107_005616-300x225.jpg)

I met this sleepy lion when I was in Sydney to visit Atlassian. It was my first customer on-site and it was kind of mind-boggling. They had so many great ideas for new features and ways to work with our product.

![Lion outside the Atlassian Sydney office](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180125_121137-e1533082559721-225x300.jpg)

There was a caricaturist at Index San Francisco. I’m pleased that I happened to be wearing this jacket that I made.

![Caricature drawing of a white woman with brown, pink-tipped hair and blue eyes](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180312_013834-e1533082727501-225x300.jpg)

This was a sketchy diagram I took a picture of and sent to our awesome product/graphic person, Melissa. She’s the one who does all our striking stickers and visual look and feel. This ended up as a slide in my Waffle House talk.

![Messy handwriting diagram of success/failure continuum.](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180312_154249-e1533082847658-225x300.jpg)

Here is my glamorous life. I took a nap in the office before a redeye flight home. This is the old office, which we have now outgrown, but the view was amazing. I am wearing technology socks, but I can’t remember right now whose.

![A person's socked feet, a view of the clocktower in Oakland](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180601_193738-e1533082937726-225x300.jpg)

The key to never feeling bad about putting stickers on your work laptop is to first cover said laptop with a clear case. It gives you a little bit of ablative impact resistance, and when you change computers, you can keep the case for your wall!

![](http://www.heidiwaterhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/20180707_222011-300x225.jpg)

I’m proud of the work I did, and in the next post, I’ll talk a little bit about what I think is happening.