Our new year's resolutions for 2016
Diario del capitán, fecha estelar d480.y36/AB
Some days ago we published what had been keeping us busy in 2015. Lots of projects, events, growing the team, getting clients from abroad, new learnings and heaps of experiences.
With all that in mind, we've written the New Year's Resolutions for this 2016, just like we did last year. Here's the post with our 2015 Resolutions. Continue reading to find out what we'll be up to on 2016.
In no particular order, here's what the Martians pledged to achieve in 2016.
Funnily enough, last year I introduced him with this sentence, which is also valid this year: "This past year has seen Xavi working hard to cope with all the projects we've gotten at MarsBased, therefore his resolutions are":
Xavier Redó Fundador & CTOSince we've grown our team, we need to reduce the team's dependence on me so they can be more autonomous and I won't be a bottleneck.
We will most likely meet this goal if I design a continuous training program. Every month we'll be learning something new.
On a personal side, I'll become a father soon, so I am planning to find better life-work balance to enjoy both at their fullest. This will allocate more time to do sport and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Finally, I'd like to commit to learning mobile development during 2016.
Fran joined us in September 2015 as a Rails developer. He's permanently based in Murcia, thus becoming the first 100% remote employee of the company. We fly him to Barcelona for the Martian Days.
Francisco Javier LópezAlthough I have been working with Rails for quite some time, I would like to consolidate my skills by trying to improve every project I work on.
I want to also contribute to open source by creating a couple of gems this year, and also some pull requests on popular repositories.
While I am fairly skilled with Ruby on Rails, I need to get hands on with Angular, as it's totally unknown to me.
Also, I usually retweet interesting stuff about coding, which gives ideas to Àlex for the MarsBased twitter handle, so I will keep doing that.
Other things that I feel I need to work on during 2016 are my English skills and practising sport on a daily basis.
Javi is the first hire at MarsBased. He's been a year and a half with us already. Time flies!
Javier PérezI feel like I have learnt a lot in a year and a half coding in Rails, and I have started building projects from the ground up. I have also mastered Angular, so I will be defining and helping to adopt style guides within the company to standardise our projects.
My weakest skill is the server provisioning and stage setup. I want to dedicate a lot of time this year to improve these skills in order to be more helpful in our different projects when it's time to set up the different stages.
This will also help ease Xavi's daily workload, as he will be delegating more stuff onto me.
On a personal side, I want to become the world champion of paddle tennis, beat my teammates in every conceivable PS4 game there is, improve my spoken English, become a morning person and last, but not least, I'll try hard to not become single again!
This past year has seen me become Regional Director at Startup Grind, which I have to balance with my business development responsibilities at MarsBased. Now I look forward to taking MarsBased to the next level!
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit Fundador & CEOI am happy to say that I am fully devoted now to what I like to do: sales and marketing. Throughout 2015, I had to help here and there, mostly on operational tasks and some project management, but I am happy to leave that behind.
I haven't learnt graphic editing, as intended, but I don't regret it. Instead, I've learnt other useful stuff and I've definitely honed my blogging and public speaking skills.
In 2016, I want to bring MarsBased to the next level: focus on getting new clients from outside Spain. I might have to grow this part of the team, but it'll pay off.
As for Startup Grind, I want to have at least 100 people in every event and become THE event for startups and entrepreneurs in Barcelona. I also want to find more opportunities for our team to talk at big events.
Jordi has combined his first year full-time at MarsBased with having co-founded his first child, Roger. He's the one that best embodies the quality aspect of MarsBased.
Jordi Vendrell Fundador & COOI am happy to say that I am fully devoted now to what I like to do: sales and marketing. Throughout 2015, I had to help here and there, mostly on operational tasks and some project management, but I am happy to leave that behind.
I haven't learnt graphic editing, as intended, but I don't regret it. Instead, I've learnt other useful stuff and I've definitely honed my blogging and public speaking skills.
In 2016, I want to bring MarsBased to the next level: focus on getting new clients from outside Spain. I might have to grow this part of the team, but it'll pay off.
As for Startup Grind, I want to have at least 100 people in every event and become THE event for startups and entrepreneurs in Barcelona. I also want to find more opportunities for our team to talk at big events.
David joined MarsBased at the end of 2015 Q1 and has been mainly working on the Naiz project. He used to work with Javi and Àlex at VASS.
David Gómez Full-Stack DeveloperAlthough I had worked some time with Rails and JavaScript before joining MarsBased, I was never at this level. Therefore, I want to continue growing my Rails and JavaScript skills, especially with Angular and React.
I want to spend time writing on StackOverflow, which will help me to learn more coding, contribute to the community and also improve my written English skills.
This year I want to start really early to finish my working shift by lunchtime. That will allow me to have more time for side projects, such as launching my first mobile app with Ionic framework and learning Angular.
Xavier, not Xavi, joined right after David, at the end of 2015 Q1, from Ironhack. He's a pianist and you might remember him from his first blog post about code reviews.
Xavier SimoI want to commit this new year to work on DevOps - with a special emphasis on Docker - and testing. I have worked a little bit here and there, but I feel there's a lot of room for improvement.
I also feel I could bring more value to the company by learning how to estimate tasks better.
Like my buddies, I also want to learn how to manage my time better, so as to have a more balanced life, practise sport regularly and to plan my escape to a foreign country. I want to spend some time abroad.
We met Pedro when he was working at Mortensen, with whom we collaborated in three or four projects, mostly during 2014. He's Portuguese but lives in Barcelona. Well... he recently moved for some months to Mexico. Perks of being a remote company!
Pedro PimientaMy self-organisation skills need to be taken to the next level this year: how to name stuff, what tools to use and when to work and when not. This will help me to be more productive.
Technology wise, I want to hone my CSS knowledge, being animations and flexbox my top priorities. Venturing into the JavaScript world is also quite appealing, but that looks like stuff for 2017, because:
I'm maximising my travel schedule when I am not working. In the past, I was quite overworked, so I feel like chilling a bit in my spare time in 2016. I might use this time to figure out how to live without a home, like a true digital nomad.
Here's to hoping that all this traveling and soul-seeking will help me to find more focus on what I do, read more (I bought a Kindle!), write more and quit smoking!
Read about our team's new year's resolutions for 2015.
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For the third year in a row, our team of Martians shares their new year's resolutions!
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We like to keep traditions alive! Every year we share our plan for the year ahead, both personal and professional, so we can keep track of our progress over the years!
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