I don’t have much to update here. Well, other than my time at the city has come to an end. It’s bittersweet honestly. It was truly the best job I have ever had and I really enjoyed the work we did as a team. I was only supposed to be there for about six months, but getting to stay for a year and a half was awesome. We did work for Bloomberg, we collaborated with The University of Texas Austin on some projects, and the dashboard me and my coworker put together is gaining some recognition.
I’m very proud of the work he and I did. His part was the frontend dashboard and mine was the backend tool developer that creates the datasets used for the dashboard. We focused on neighborhood prosperity, bringing awareness to how each neighborhood in Austin. It just felt good to go to work every day knowing that we were doing some ethical work built to help people.
Although my time at the city is over, the project continues to evolve. I am excited to keep an eye on it and see where it goes from here. My coworker will be presenting it at the American Community Survey Data Users Conference on May 18! I’ll have some input and maybe even a small speaking role discussing the backend tools I created.
When I first started, I doubted my ability. Very quickly I got myself up to speed and got to the point where we demoed one of my applications to various city departments in the Open Data Meetup. I got to attend one data meetup in person which was also a fun experience. I can’t even begin to thank my coworker who picked me to work alongside him. He took a chance on a first-time professional programmer and I think we made something awesome together. I’ll always be grateful for the experience.
That said, I’m exhausted. I had a lot of work to finish my last few days and I’m so happy I got it all done. What’s next for me? I have no idea. I’m taking a week off to relax and enjoy the time off before jumping back into the fray.
It’ll be a tall order to find a job as good as this one.