I like to pretend I have this tradition of doing a year-end blog on 31st December listing some of the best things happened in my life as a techie. This year, I’d just like to list a couple of highlights. Here you go:
- last February I re-launched, for the third year in a row, my Live Rugby app. Differently from the previous versions, it was without Opta data. As Opta data didn’t really help with user acquisition (I’m not blaming them – rather the way I packed the data) I decided to invest in my own time and delivered a free app with my live commentary to the matches. Results: over 10,000 downloads, once again some great coverage on the press, and at one point the app was more popular than the official one, reaching #13 on the App Store, and bringing some revenue via ads;
- meanwhile, I kept working on data.sgul.ac.uk, my “day job’s” Linked Open Data portal which I launched in the first half of 2013. A project that started last year with some lack of interest – if not open opposition – was finally welcomed as a way to deliver FOI requests and increase transparency;
- I took part to a research project investigating death rates in the Hospital Episodes Statistics dataset, helping with the geographical analysis, and co-authored a research paper which was published on PLOS One; I also co-authored a paper about geographical reporting tools for international cooperation, presented at FOSS4G;
- partially as a result of data.sgul.ac.uk and in recognition of my experience with data-related projects, I was appointed to Cabinet Office’s Open Data User Group in September;
- after some months of market research and trials, I helped Italian indie comic publisher develop and launch their digital books distribution platform, Digitail. I became CTO of Digitail last December;
- I was a judge at Young Rewired State and at the Big Bang Fair this year. Both experiences really got me enthusiastic about the future in tech and science, there are so many talented young people around!
Many of these projects will be continued in 2014. What I’d love to add to the table:
- cheese-making: despite some success making mozzarella, I’d still like to get more experience and share it; stay tuned!
- photography: I’m starting to find some assignments to take professional portraits. Let’s see how it goes.
- more apps: starting from Digitail, of course.
Hence, I’m really looking forward to the new year and its challenges 🙂