This will be the seventh year I have written a recap or “wrap” of the year that has passed. I started writing these in 2019, and I have continued writing them since then. In this one, I will reflect on some of the crucial professional accomplishments I achieved in 2025. Fasten your seatbelts!
Table of contents #
- Highlights
- Public speaking in 2025
- Blog posts in 2025
- Being a guest on a podcast
- Community activities
- Listening to Podcasts
- Misc
- Conclusion
Highlights #
Below are the highlights of 2025 in a nutshell:
- I did 10 in-person public talks/workshops this year. I did a couple more at work. In addition to Sydney, I gave talks at Canberra, Perth, and Shanghai, China too.
- I wrote 16+1 (this post) blog posts this year, much less than previous years, which I had stated in last year’s recap, too. And I still beat my goal.
- I was a guest on one podcast this year, Everyday Karma, where Saroj asked me many meaningful questions. The Podcast is in Nepali.
- I helped organize nine meetups and one conference for GDG Sydney, and I have transferred the GDG Sydney organizing part to the next generation.
- I have listened to 9 days, 19 hours of podcasts this year, from the Pragmatic Engineer to Practical AI and from Tech Lead Journal to Kubernetes Podcast.
Below are some of the details of the review of this year.
Public speaking in 2025 #
In 2025, I did 10 public talks (or workshops), most of them in Sydney. In November, I gave two talks at two conferences and participated in one panel discussion. In August, I gave a talk to mostly Google Developer Experts (GDEs) at Shanghai, China, for the GDE Summit APAC.
This year, I did the most talks in a year, which was 10. The last record was in 2019, with eight talks, all in Sydney. You can view all of my talks since 2016 listed on this GitHub repository. I wrote talks/workshops on six new topics this year and gave five talks by June. Some of the topics were Feature flags, Image to geolocation using Gemini, and Building a resume reviewer app with Gemini. One workshop has already been planned for April 2026 in Darwin.
Blog posts in 2025 #
This year, I wrote 16 blog posts (the target was 14), and with this recap, it will be 17. One thing I did differently this year was to refresh a blog post about free Node.js hosting from 2021, with help from Ashis, Yash, and Bibek. Thanks for updating the post. And after the refresh, it has climbed back up in the Google Search Results.
Unsurprisingly, 13 out of the 16 posts have been about AI, and that is what sells in the current times. Speaking of which, the most popular blog posts from 2025 are as follows.
Most viewed blog posts of 2025 #
The five most popular blog posts written in 2025 are:
- Ollama commands: How to use Ollama in the command line [Part 2]
- How to use Ollama and Open WebUI with Docker Compose [Part 4]
- Using Ollama APIs to generate responses and much more [Part 3]
- How to use NotebookLM: A practical guide with examples
- How to run (any) open LLM with Ollama on Google Cloud Run [Step-by-step]
The top three are from the Ollama Series I wrote in Feb 2025. There were almost 500K users on my blog in 2025, browsing through nearly a million pages. I will keep the same goal of 14+1 (recap) posts for 2026.
My blog landed on one of the top 290K websites in the world for November 2025, as per Similaweb:
And between the top 220K to 240K websites in the world as per the Tranco Rankings. Next, you can read about a podcast on which I appeared as a guest.
Being a guest on a podcast #
This year, I was a guest on only one podcast: the Everyday Karma podcast, hosted by Saroj Dahal. Below is the audio of the podcast, and it is in the Nepali language:
The podcast was released towards the end of January 2025.
Community activities #
As the organizer of GDG Sydney, I helped organize 15+ evening meetups and the full-day, three-track conference: DevFest Sydney 2025 in mid-October this year. I attended the Google For Developers Summit, having both Google Developer Group(s) (GDG) organizers and Google Developer Expert(s) (GDEs) from Australia and New Zealand in mid-March. It was amazing, the best part was meeting all the participants in person (in Sydney). I also attended the Google Cloud Summit 2025 at the end of July. A quick summary of the events is below:
I could not attend the AWS Summit, but I did attend some other meetups in Sydney. As usual, I helped around eight people with their first (or second) talk to kickstart their public speaking journey.
Listening to podcasts #
In 2025, I listened to 9 days and 21 hours of audio content. That is a total of 237 hours in a year, averaging at around 39 minutes a day. Below are the podcasts I listened to this year:
Mostly, the podcasts were technical, but I also listened to some non-technical ones like Investopoly. You can also see the full breakdown of each podcast I have heard in 2025.
Misc #
Some of the other things that came to fruition this year:
- I reached more than 10K followers on LinkedIn in March this year.
- Made 975+ public contributions on GitHub (33% less than last year) and also completed Hacktoberfest
- The side project this year was to help some people get into the habit of listening to podcasts. We gamified it in the Xplorers group, and we got it done in style.
- Similar to previous years, I did many 1:1 chats with people about career, finding a tech job in Australia, and similar topics. I hope it has helped many individuals.
- I have written three blog posts this year around how AI can help you with job search. It would be good for you to read them.
Looking back, I achieved some of the goals I set in 2025, and I have set some goals for 2026. Hopefully, I will achieve them too.
A couple of new things will be coming in January or February of 2026. Stay tuned to my LinkedIn, the only social media I use.
Conclusion #
Looking back, 2025 was a good year. I attended many tech events and was fortunate to be a guest on a podcast. I also wrote the 15+ blog posts (a lot less than previous years with 25 blog posts), which still exceeded my target.
I look forward to 2026, but I will scale back on things I have been doing, like blogging and community activities, to focus on something else. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2026.