In this year, I focus on writing more and more articles on this blog. In particular, I write an article every week; 52 articles should be published until the end of 2017. Each post probably describes what I have created, read, and experienced in a week. Note that the articles will be written both in Japanese and English depending on the contents.

Most importantly, taking full advantaged of a personal publishing tool is one of the best ways to enrich the quality and quantity of your portfolio. Since we cannot write anything without a certain result, learning and creating something (e.g., writing code, reading books, taking online courses) should be essential to write 52 articles. Your portfolio is definitely matured by the efforts made by yourself.

OK, I personally like to enhance my portfolio for the following reasons.

First of all, my career as a professional engineer starts from this April after graduation from the master's course. In fact, I have enjoyed programming and engaged in computer science for more than 5 years, but everything what I have experienced before was recognized as student's results. In contrast to the students' immature results, recognition for professional work is strict; I cannot be distinguished unless I demonstrate my skills in some way. Hence, I expect this blog to be a certificate of my professional skills.

Moreover, working (i.e., learning and creating) hard is a necessary step toward my career goal. I am actually going to work in Tokyo, Japan from this April, but my ultimate goal is to independently work and live in the foreign countries; a purpose in my life is in traveling and seeing the world! Therefore, as the first step, improving my skills with a lot of achievements is really important to be a mature professional engineer. Writing an article every week is a way to continuously enhance the skills throughout the year.

In addition to writing the 52 articles, I have several sub-goals which look like driving force behind the main goal. These can be stated as numerical goals as follows:

• 12 books
  • Read at least 1 book in a month.
  • Count a novel as 0.5 book; 2 novels = 1 book.
• 4 online courses
  • Single course generally takes 2-3 months.
  • Always to be taking at least 1 online course.
• 4 presentations
  • Make presentation at least once per 3 months.
  • Must be done outside of the university and company.
  • Lightning talks are okay.
• 365 GitHub commits
  • Write code (nearly) every day!
  • Very tiny commits (e.g., updating README) are acceptable in my case.
  • If it is impossible, a reason must be reasonable.

Note: Making a nest egg for later inaction is unacceptable; even if I read 2 books in a month, I should read at least 1 book in the later months.

Some of the articles might be progress reports of the above sub-goals, and otherwise the posts could depict something impressive in my daily life. Anyway, I certainly believe that a lot of knowledge from books and courses makes the products (i.e., presentation and code) better.

That's all of the first post in 2017, and I am highly excited about writing remaining 51 articles!

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  See also

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Last updated: 2022-09-02

  Author: Takuya Kitazawa

Takuya Kitazawa is a freelance software developer, previously working at a Big Tech and Silicon Valley-based start-up company where he wore multiple hats as a full-stack software developer, machine learning engineer, data scientist, and product manager. At the intersection of technological and social aspects of data-driven applications, he is passionate about promoting the ethical use of information technologies through his mentoring, business consultation, and public engagement activities. See CV for more information, or contact at [email protected].

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