Making friends

The year is going to the end and I’m stumbling with some thoughts of the last year.There was a lot i learned for myself. A lot i learned from the community.But there’s also some new contacts and friendships i made. For example i met my new girlfriend Sarah who makes me smile every single morning when i wake up.

PHPMap

I started a new project called PHPMap. It’s kinda like my old project Laramap (which isn’t online anymore). It is an interactive map for PHP-Developers around the world. I got a lot of feedback over twitter, slack, email and in person. One day I walked down a street in Hamburg (Germany) on my way to a meeting. I got touched on my shoulder and I got asked if I were “fwartner”, the creator of PHPMap. I said “yes” and got invited later this day to a beer. It was really funny because I never thought that my projects would make this ever happen. But it happened.

PHPMap is built on Laravel 5.3 with it’s latest features such as notifications, mailables and the oauth2 server. I started working on PHPMap when Laravel 5.3 was in development. When it officially came out, I made some changes to the codebase of PHPMap to have it exactly like I would have any other project built on L5.3.

It was a huge learning process for me. Every new version brings new features. But this one was special. I got mentioned in a lot of tweets regarding to Laravel 5.3 because of my project and was able to help a lot of people with the latest features when they had any questions.

Canceling my job

But there were also some frustrating parts of the year. I canceled my job as a freelancer. Freelancing was cool. It probably is still cool. But for me it was the right time to breakthrough. I needed a new adventure! I was trying to get a new one. I had so many interviews this year. Nothing. The words I ever heard were “We’re sorry but the position is already taken…” But nevermind. One day I will find a new job!

A new journey with SaaS

While looking for a new job, I’m also looking for ideas to run a SaaS-Business. SaaS is becoming more and more popular and grows every single day. So why not get my own pieceof the SaaS-Cake and start a new business?! Well.. I have no idea what I should start with.. I have no idea, what kind of product I should work on. There are so many great tools on the internet.. So many ideas I also have.. But I don’t want to have this companies as my competitors.

But then one of my friends came along with an idea! Let’s create a tool for social-mediamarketers.. (More will follow very soon on Twitter.. ^^)

Conclusion

This was just a small part of my year in review.. The most important lane is still in front of me.. The Family on christmas. I wish you all the best for christmas and a happy new year!