2021: Forbes, start-up, and the future.
My 2021 year-in-review post
2021 was my most challenging year so far. Hardly have I imagined some of the milestones that have happened this year. Let's break it down to a few chapters.
Adam Carer
I’d like to devote the first chapter to the most meaningful project of mine. I’ve mentioned Adam Carer a few times on my social networks (follow me on LinkedIn for regular updates!) but in case you’re not familiar — Adam Carer is a voice application powered by AI for people with Alzheimer’s disease.
This year has brought major changes and updates. It all started with winning the prize of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, continued by announcing the project in Czech media, including Forbes (read more below), and finishes with support provided by JIC. Those were just the most significant milestones, of course, there is much more to write about. Such as a great place in the Idea of the Year competition by Vodafone. It all started as a school project — described in a small thesis and resulted in a real project.
Forbes
Being featured in Forbes magazine is one of the meaningful milestones. I guess it's more like a result of endeavour of work in the chosen work field, not a single goal.
From time to time, someone asks me how it happens to be featured in Forbes. It all began with my intention to share my last year's project with Google. Firstly as an article written by me. Alessandro from the team helped to transfer it as an article on Google's global blog The Keyword. Thanks a lot man for your contribution and ramping up the impact.! After a long time there was someone from the Czech Republic, so the Czech version of the article, which was captivating enough, came up soon. Thanks to the Czech's Google. Last but not least, thanks to Filip from GUG.cz for your help not only within this project!
Hand in hand with it, a couple of other articles regarding this project were published, as well as mentioning, for instance, Adam Carer or Flutter on Air events (I'll slightly talk about it at the end).
Investing
As far as I'm concerned, investing is the most paramount skill I've ever learnt. Why? I found it super important to understand even the basics of economics — how inflation erodes savings or what can we do to protect them. Despite some of my trades weren't as profitable as I expected, such as BABA with a 27% loss, I consider the overall growth (mainly based on Bitcoin) of my portfolio as a success.
Find out more in my article describing 4 lessons I learnt in investing at the age of 18 🚀 📈.
Other notable challenges
- C1 Advanced in English. As I decided to do my utmost to study abroad, every spare moment during December (till now) was dedicated to hitting the books. Not only have I hopefully passed the exam, but also, which is indeed more important and makes me content, my English has significantly improved. I read a lot, listen to podcasts and even started my own about Flutter — Flutter on Air. (After two episodes, I was needed to focus on different things)
- Work. Except for working on Adam Carer and doing all the other stuff mention here, I decided to accept the job offer from Kiwi.com at the beginning of Summer. As time passed, my time during Autumn became priceless and I had to change work for other activities. Anyways, working at Kiwi for months gave me a stunning insight into how to work within such a large company. In particular, I see that my organizational, project and team skills have increased.
- Driving licence. Yep, I finally got my driving licence. Even though the car wasn't a Tesla, it still was a ride. By the way, thanks David for the Summer Tesla experience.
- Flutter on Air. Early in March, a major and important new version of Flutter was rolled out. To support, celebrate and learn it, I organised with Dominik (most likely) the first Flutter conference in Czechia.
What lies in store for me?
At the end of the year, I always try to visualise the next one. I've never been able to predict it, it always exceeded my expectations enormously.
Now there is one clear goal. I am going to graduate from high school in 2022. It appears to be a challenge since my classmates and I spent 1.5 years studying remotely because of the pandemic. On the other hand, I don't find it now as hard as it seemed to be a few months ago.
And what comes next? I've spent numerous months thinking, searching, talking to people to learn about options. Thanks, everyone for chatting with me, especially thanks to Vasek. Ideally, I'd love to move to the UK and study Computer Science there. Astonishingly, I've already received 2 of 5 conditional offers (still waiting for the rest), but, unfortunately, and most likely I'm going to turn them down. During Christmas, my attention is going to shift slightly from the UK to Holland as that's country number two on my list. So stay tuned for the results.
