2023. A look ahead.

After taking a look back at some of the stuff I got through in 2022, I thought it would be a nice exercise to cast an eye ahead and write out some of things I’m excited about for 2023. There’s a mix of professional and personal listed below, in no particular order.

Extending CO2.js

The back end of 2022 has seen CO2.js start to be used in more open source and commercial projects. I’ll be writing up some case studies on those for The Green Web Foundation later in the year.

In the meantime, I’m really excited for what some upcoming changes to the library can unlock. This week, I started working on a pull request that enables developers to use custom grid intensity, caching, and visitor figures in the Sustainable Web Design estimation model. This will allow for more accurate estimates to be produced using CO2.js, and opens the door for the library to be a viable option for use in website sustainability audits. You can check out the PR here, feedback on the API is welcome.

As the year goes on, I also expect that we’ll be adding a lot more open grid intensity data into the library.

Nerding out on the Solar Protocol

I’ve had this on my to-read list of a while. The Solar Protocol explores the potential of solar-powered computing, and how different servers around the globe can be used as a distributed network running on the power of the sun.

I’d really, really like to explore the possibility of having a website hosted on the Solar Protocol that lives on a few solar-powered computers around the world. When someone visits the site, it would be served from the location with the highest solar energy generation at that time. This is something Chris Adams and I have touched on briefly during chats about Green Web Foundation stuff, so hopefully it’s something we can actually build together later this year.

Just travelling again

I haven’t left Taiwan for close to three years, and am very keen to travel again. There are a lot of folks I work and collaborate with online who I’ve never met in person. I’m hoping to get the chance to have an in-person beverage with some of them later in the year.

Of course, I have to get back to Australia at some stage this year too. Age is slowly catching up with my parents, and expecting them to come to Taiwan’s a bit of a stretch.

And, of course, there’s bound to be an obligatory trip or two to Japan.

International Touch Footy!

Chinese Taipei (say it with me now, TAIWAN) Touch Association is a very small member of the International Touch community. In 2019, we attended our first ever international event as a country when we sent one team to play in the 2019 Touch World Cup. The momentum we hoped to build off that was curtailed by COVID, so we’re starting from close to square one again this year.

That said, I am really excited at the prospect of our association sending multiple teams to multiple international tournaments this year. I’m especially eager to help organise a junior team which we hope can travel to Australia or England (undecided yet which one) to represent Taiwan at a Youth Touch tournament. As president of the association, I’m really hopeful that this could be a catalyst to have more kids take up Touch here in Taiwan.

I’m also hoping that I can pull on the boots once again to represent Taiwan as a player at the Asian Championships in September. We hope to send multiple teams to that tournament, which would be an awesome achievement for an association of our size.

We’ll also be holding our (used to be annual) Taipei Touch Tournament in March this year. We’re expecting to have club teams from around the region coming to Taipei for a weekend of good footy & even better food! Touch has allowed me to become friends with some amazing people throughout the Asian region, and I can’t wait to see some of them again this year.

Writing more. Reading more.

I think I’ve written more in the last year and a half than I did in the 5 years I spent in a marketing job here in Taiwan. I’ll be doing a lot more of it this year, both through this blog and for The Green Web Foundation.

Reading, however, is something I’m less regular with. In 2023, I want to be more consistent with reading blog posts, research papers, and even the odd book. Keeping notes on these things is something I’ve also struggled with. I’m currently trying out Readwise Reader, which keeps highlights alongside the web pages, PDFs, and videos. This is something I’ve been searching for, and I really hope that this solves that problem for me.

I’m sure that through all the reading & writing, I’ll get nerd sniped into building a prototype or two over the year! Let’s see how the year unfolds, and take a look back at all this (and more) in a 2023 review post come December.