2024 magic moments
Issue 225: The year from my personal lens
Instead of a Spotify-esque year in review by the numbers, I’m sharing magic moments this calendar year for me. If I had to sum up the year, it was fill of new milestones, reunions, and unexpected journeys. It started in Huntington Beach Replit's annual kickoff with a Hackathon and ended up my relaxing in Palm Springs after joining Atlassian.
It’s impossible to fit every moment and will highlight magic moments that sparked inspiration for me. In chronological order of the Gregorian calendar, here are the magic moments.
Visiting New York
One of my earliest newsletter issues was about finding your Creative Lazarus Pit, and for me it’s New York City. The former Brooklyn resident in me always wants to kiss the ground of JFK International Airport like the Pope visiting a city1. In February I visited the Replit Design team to co-work. In addition, there were two wonderful design community events. The first was Drinks and Demos with Play at M13 in Soho, where the team demo’ed the best prototyping tool for mobile. Mihika Kapoor from Figma also hosted an AI in Creative Tools event with incredible demos.
The New York Design community is one of the most creative when it comes to merging art and technology together. That trip really set the tone for the rest of the year. We ended up collaborating on a Figma blog post, How AI will influence creative tools: A conversation with Replit’s David Hoang.
Replit rebrand
Leading Design and Marketing at Replit was one of the funnest challenges in my career. I infused the teams since the two work so well together, and we embarked on a rebranding Replit and our second ever Developer Day Event.
I finally had the opportunity to work with Stewart Scott-Curren and Judson Collier, friends from Design Business Company on the rebrand.
It was incredible to see all the people on our team lead an amazing event. Ornella Altunyan worked on making Developer Day come to life.
G’day, Atlassian
After leaving Replit, my original plan was to take a break; maybe the rest of the year off. I make a plan and the work says, “lol.” In July, I joined Atlassian to lead AI Design. I was bullish on the potential Atlassian could make on how teams harness the power of AI, but also always wanted to work with Charlie Sutton—I had to join now.
Rovo goes GA
My start at Atlassian was baptism by fire (in the best ways). I went straight to Sydney to meet with the AI Design team, who were already in the midst of working on getting Atlassian Rovo (our AI product) to general availability (GA).
Check out the Founder’s Keynote where Mike Cannon-Brookes shares the announcement.
Returning to Europe
This year marked the first time I visited Europe since the pandemic, and I had the opportunity to visit two beloved cities: Berlin for Hatch Conference and Barcelona for Team 24 Europe.
Europe has some of the best design talent in the world. My only disappointment is I didn’t get to spend more time and travel more; perhaps next year!
Resting for 2025
2024 was a wonderful year with unexpected twists and turns. It was also an intense year of travel and ambitious goals. I’m looking forward to winding down the next fortnight to physically rest and creatively recover. I’ll be taking a personal Thought + Craft Week in the desert to achieve this. I wish you a happy new year and hope you have time for creative reflection!
I won’t though because it’s gross
Our org is part of the Rovo pilot and I'm so excited about the possibilities for our design org!