First, a quick reminder: since 2022, at the end of the year, I try to wrap up everything relevant that happened to me in the past 12 months and share some thoughts I have.

⚠️ It will likely get truncated if you read it on your email app. I recommend checking it from your browser (and from a computer to better enjoy the pictures 👼).

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This is a public piece, I don’t know for sure who will read it, but if you have some intellectual curiosity, please give it a read, and don’t judge me only by this. I aim for it to be interesting to read in a bunch of years, for it to help me look back at past objectives and set new ones, for it to trigger few smiles here and there as some of you recall things, for it to spark new conversations & adventures.

The funny thing is that it’s kind of hard not to procrastinate about doing it and then I force myself to do it, and then I enjoy doing it, and finally here we are with a bunch of pages of writing and some lovely pictures (& video this year!) along the way.

I mean business

One year ago, as I was gathering thoughts and feelings for my review I settled my mind on the fact that I actually wanted to leave my job at Abrico. That’s what I didn’t want to spoil in my newsletter last year. As with many early startups, the mission had changed a bit since I had joined in June 2024. I also grew more and more uncomfortable building a product to patch the French administration processes. Finally, a deeper personal gut feeling and less satisfaction on a human level brought me to that decision.

I shared this with my bosses, and we agreed on a “rupture conventionnelle” that was enacted towards the end of April this year. So the first months of the year were focused on finishing my contract as best as I could, resting and sorting out what to do next. I applied to a couple of jobs opportunities I found interesting but was not accepted. For the best I’d say. It motivated me to finally get going with the idea of being my own boss for a bit!

After an incredible trekking adventure in Scotland, I came home with my mind set on that new objective. NextMile was born on the 13th of May 2025! Aka 944 385 368.

The plan was to do some freelance work to keep my way of living, get new ideas along the way and go easy on my unemployment benefits, while having time to work on my own entrepreneurial projects and manage my time differently.

I had 2 main clients this year (and a couple of other tiny jobs here and there): Kenko a Health Insurance, whom I found a bit by chance and it ended up being a pretty successful first collaboration ; and then I was back for some involvement in Qomon! Helping them keep moving on the geo data side where I used to work.

Freelance can be quite intense, it’s a new way of working. I want to make sure that my contribution is beneficial, even more than usual. Especially when I don’t know my clients. It’s different, rather in a good way.

In the end I billed roughly 60 days of freelance work this year (over the span of 6 months).

Between freelancing and a bunch of holidays here and there, it was a bit hard at first to focus on “my projects”, but since November I am pretty focused on delivering my first fully self-service own SaaS (Software As A Service), codename GoPutUp. Which will be the new category defining geolocation focused CRM / organizing tool (yeah a tiny bit of marketing here). More on that in next year’s blog post! Depending on how much freelance I’ll do early 2026, I hope for the first version to be live sometime in February. My head is quite focused on that so I have a bit less mental bandwidth for planning more 2026 at the moment. But I really enjoy working on this project, crafting it from scratch, challenging myself to work on tech areas I am less experienced (async backends, mobile & billing), and entrepreneur things like marketing, pricing, plans, support, taxes, etc.

Generally speaking, I want to build products that I enjoy building, that bring useful value, that are effective (do what they are meant to do and do it well), fast & efficient (because that’s better for everyone time and in terms of resources used to run them), have no dark billing patterns, affordable but not “cheap” in terms of product quality, etc. Accept to start small and not to go as fast as with Venture Capital money. Building economically viable products is a priority, that will enable me to hire others, maybe in 2027. It’s definitely not about the inherent technical challenges, rather to keep building useful things. Nor about becoming a millionaire, I don’t care about that. I’ll just aim to sustain my reasonable way of life, contribute back & help around as much as it makes sense.

Once GoPutUp will be live, I intend to focus on a second project that has matured recently on another topic that I enjoy. So I might have 2 live Saas by the end of 2026, hopefully setting the path for a more robust company / business structure in 2027.

From Employee to My Own Boss, lessons learned

I have learned a lot of things since I left Abrico. I did enter a bunch of deep intellectual curiosity “vortexes”:

• How to create a company?

• What legal structure to choose? What are their differences?

• What the impact on my unemployment benefits?

• What the heck is BNC vs BIC?

• What health insurance I should go for?

• How to fill my taxes / VAT stuff?

• What the heck is reverse charge VAT?

• What really are the implications of the JEI status?

• How high taxes really are?

• How to handle sales taxes internationally?

My funny stories so far:

• I was billed 1.08€ HT by the Greffe de Paris because I didn’t provide documents the “Guichet Unique” hadn’t asked for originally,

• URSSAF sent me a 2 (!) page PDF to explain how to wire them some money,

• On a Sunday I received a message by my URSSAF that was officially sent 3 days later. Magic!

The good news:

So far, because of my freelance work and other thingies, I haven’t technically used a cent of my unemployment benefits! By the way, kudos to everyone I interacted with at France Travail, I had really good and effective support from them!

Also, I want to mention that this year I have discovered new areas of expertise / professions through collaborations. I interacted with:

• A lawyer, to help me crack some contract issues (success),

• A wealth manager, to help me organize my savings and invest into assets I align with (success),

• An accountant, to finally understand some things regarding the company decisions I am taking (super interesting).

I do intend to delegate things to others in the future, but I still want to understand a bit what is being done and why. So I am “losing” time here to understand things better.

To conclude on this business chapter, if you want to start your company, few recommendations:

• lamicrobyflo.fr a cool website to help you with anything related to a micro-entreprise,

• Qonto does work really great as a bank (yes, it’s a referral link but I do mean what I am saying)

• Ksuite by Infomaniak is great if you don’t want to use Google Suite tools.

My all-time best investment and my take on “AI”

Since I have started by talking about business and wealth management, let’s jump to investment. In a rather troll way.

For my freelance work and projects, I bought myself a decent computer with 32 GB of RAM which is pretty big already. Note, for tech neophytes it’s one of computers / phones important components. However, from time to time I would run out of RAM because of some heavy processing I was doing. So I decided to upgrade to 96 GB at the end of September for 243€ TTC. For the record, I was like “64GB should be enough, but it’s like 40€ more to go for 96GB”, so I just did. Today, those exact same RAM sticks go for 1240€ LITERRALLYYY, 5x in 3 months 😱.

Why? Because OpenAI (also known as being the creators of ChatGPT) managed somehow to buy 40% of the world DRAM production. FOURTY PERCENTS. As a result the market is messed up. This company is losing billions per year. Has plans to loose 100s more of billions in the coming years and yet manages to buy 40% of the DRAM supply and the impact is obviously massive. I find this disturbing to say the least. I can recommend reading this article if you are more curious about this situation.

My take?

I was definitely not there in 1929.
[...]
I was not really there for the dot-com bubble.
I was still a bit young for the 2008 financial crisis.
I was there for the Covid, but it had an external taste.

I’ll be there for that AI bubble burst. All comments I read and hear are on the fact that there are already wild things going on, for instance check this recent news:

Dr. Josh C. Simmons

Nvidia Just Paid $20 Billion for a Company That Missed Its Revenue Target by 75%

First, Let’s Clear Up the Groq Confusion…

Read more

4 months ago · 3 likes · Dr. Josh C. Simmons

I am not a finance professional but I find this very sketchy and the impacts are likely to be far-reaching.

Bubble aside, I wish Bernard Stiegler, whose lectures at the University I had the pleasure to attend was still around. I am sure he would have numerous comments to make about that this technology. LLMs are such a powerful tool to which we are delegating big chunks of our reasoning and abilities, and that, in itself, has and will have quite an impact on society and humanity.

It’s kind of weird to feel my job as a “software engineer” has been impacted that much in such a short period of time. I do use advanced LLM completion when coding and chat when I need help on some specific things were Google wasn’t a success. I haven’t really used vibe coding yet, as I haven’t had a positive real life experience with it yet (or demonstration). But I feel I’ll have to keep an eye on that next year to stay up to date. AI has been a bit of an exhausting journey so far, it’s tiring to try to keep up with everything that’s coming out. I have stopped doing so. I do hope the bubble will burst and this AI wave will settle down a bit ; I at least hope for it not to be subsidized by VC money anymore, so that end users actually pay the real cost of it.

The fact is I also enjoy coding, as a craft. LLMs are removing this a bit and I might start to be a bit nostalgic. AI brings a productivity boost. Maybe it’s an enabler. Not so much a helper on mental load though. Let’s also not forget the environmental impact, the societal impact, all the data that was used to train them under fair use (capitalism magic trick) or the people that have already lost their job (illustrators, translators, customer service, …), the extreme wealth concentration at stake, etc. etc. etc.

For the record, this piece is 100% AI free. 100% hard work 😌

Enough about business, let’s get personal and a bit more political.

On the personal side

Of course the year was not a straight chill line, but I end it feeling good! Rested for once. With a strong will to do a lot of things in 2026. I am quite focused on my entrepreneurship adventure but I definitely want to use the flexibility I gained to keep putting energy and presence in human connections I have wherever they are: I want to keep being the trustworthy & reliable friend some of you know me as.

I am very happy that I managed once again to have plenty of great adventures this year. Here is a subset.

2025 started in Dieppe with a chill celebration of New Years Eve with my flatmate Olha.

February will be remembered for my cycling trip friend who came very close to death, but today he is back on his bike! Just a kick reminder that we shouldn’t wait to enjoy life.

In March I went skiing with relatives and was very happy to go snowshoeing for the first time. It was really satisfying to go away from the ski resort and deeper in nature. To be done again.

After my contract with Abrico ended, I went for a fulfilling and engaging 2-week trip in the Highlands in Scotland with my friend Helen. We hiked part of the famous West Highland Way, but I found it to be too much of a pedestrian highway, so we shortened that part and spent more time in Glencoe and Skye. The views were less green than I expected but often stunning. Hikes in Glencoe can be quite challenging and unfortunately we did go through some risky stuff. Never will I ever take again a path called “zig-zag” on a map (by the way, that path has been removed from maps few months later ha ha ha...). Also I’ll try to have a better idea of the difficulty when I hear “I came this way but I don’t really recommend it” (by a 40ish year-old not particularly fit guy — it should have been “I came this way BUT IT’S REALLY DANGEROUS AND TECHNICAL DON’T DO IT”. Here is a video of what we went down by someone else.

Let’s also not forget that we had 15 kg backpacks, not an as good weather and had hiked 6+ hours and 1100m positive elevation gain before going down that path. So it was very stressful, not in a good way. After that we did have the magnificent Lost Valley to rest for us only!

On Skye, we did parts of the Skye trail which were times easier but definitely outstanding. Including a 4-star bivouac in the middle of the Trotternish Ridge. Souvenirs for life with my great friend Helen.

Few weeks after I was back in Corrèze for a lovely university friends’ wedding, with a new suit that I am happy to report positively stood out. ✨

In July I helped my sis family move to their new home and went back near Castelnaudary for my grandpa 90s birthday. From there we went on a challenging 3-day trek with my cousin in the Pyrenees. On the first day, we did 1500 m positive altitude gain and summited the Pic du Carlit. The ascent was pretty scary from far away, but ended up doable.

Day 2 was incredible in terms of ecosystem diversity. Memorable. Same for the thunderstorm during the night. Not again.

My cousin had his drone with him so here is a really nice video sneak peek of what we did. Enjoy it!

NB: if you are not familiar with that song, to be clear, it is much more feminist than what you can think at first.

In August, I went with my friend Anaïs to Les Résistantes, a militant festival. Some speakers and workshops were really great. I also enjoyed experiencing another style of organizing, more decentralized and based on trust. For instance, I was not asked to show my entrance ticket but only if I had one. All meals were “pay what you can for them”, and it financially worked out for them. Everyone would have to give a hand involved in some aspects of the festival. On my side, I contributed to the Human Industrial Dishwasher and washed hundreds of plates and cutlery for a couple hours one day. For the record, we were a few thousands per meals.

Overall it was an insightful experience.

We then jumped into a night train to go right to the Cantal for a week-long trek. The GR400 is really challenging. We did parts of it at our own pace. It was really great! Among things, we did the most stunning (and comfortable) bivouac I have done so far.

There we met with an amazing Astro-Photographer who taught us a lot (check the last picture of this post). He happened to be named Florent also, what a coincidence! We helped him with 2 L of drinking water too. Cooperation is always fulfilling when hiking! On our side, we were luckily given a small propane tank for our last bivouac too, which saved our risotto!

We saw really beautiful landscapes. Plenty of souvenirs there too.

End of August we moved our flat sharing to my sis in the South to enjoy a bit of the Mediterranean sea. I did work quite a bit in parallel so I was a bit less present.

Finally, in September, I was back on the bike for our annual bike trip, this time around Lake Constance. It was pretty chill. We were lucky to have reasonably good weather. Lake Constance is also more natural than Lake Leman. The part I enjoyed most was, of course, when we could see the mountains in the back.

Adventures aside...

My flat-sharing is going great, with great communication, listening, support and cooking skills on both sides! No plans to move out soon!

Almost forgot to mention a big one! I have started Salsa & Batchata courses. That was not planned early 2025. But during the “fête de la musique” I happened to meet an incredible dance teacher, super kind, that inspired me to give dance finally a try. The first class was HARD, but as months go by I have definitely improved and also we are a very lovely group of people. It’s a queer friendly environment that I enjoy as everyone is super respectful and welcoming 🏳️‍🌈 ; and we learn “role rotation” so there is basically no gender-related dynamic, which I find easing and more compelling. Give it a try if you are curious and in Paris.

This year I also felt some friendships evolve, other distend. It raises my attention as I do aim for friendships to be an important part of my life. It’s also an opportunity to meet new people and discover new things. One thing is for sure, I know those links have been strong enough that nothing can erase them. Just like few weeks ago, when I met again my friend from high school after 12 years of no contacts whatsoever and it was a super friendly accounting talk, as if 12 years never had gone by.

Connections and connections of connections help me better understand the world and the impact some stupid politics may have. It’s also an invitation to keep learning things and staying curious.

My stance on current Politics

12 months ago, I concluded with “Please Trump, don’t f*** [2025] up too much.”

I remember the early months of his presidency as things were moving dramatically fast. Too fast. Now, we are maybe a bit too used to it. But I feel weird and sad about the clear undermining of democracy, the firm steps back on societal matters, the disgusting complicity with Putin, the unreliability he is bringing to the world scene, the many steps back on the environment, etc. He is irritating (to stay polite).

I do hope the 2026 midterms will impact the power balance in the US in a positive way and that nothing worse than that will drop by after.

On the other side of the Atlantic, I feel the EU is getting closer and closer to a generational shift. The challenges that emerge from free-for-all globalization are real and weaken our ability to sustain our society & social contract long term. We are too nice with Trump, likely too nice with China, also too nice with companies finding ways to avoid paying taxes where they should be paid and too nice with our own companies undermining our own autonomy. I feel we are foolish about opening & extending the Union to partners with asymmetrical labor cost and environmental norms. There is also a bunch of disagreements on major topics between countries. I am pro EU as an ideal, but I am not completely sure where we are heading.

Finally, France.

French politics is messed up right now. And nothing, especially good, seems to really emerge at the national level. We will have a better idea about that towards the end of 2026. Or if Emmanuel Macron somehow decides to call again for snap elections. Please, could we move to a new chapter? (Really not Far Right though.)

I feel the focus on the environment has decreased by an order of magnitude. It’s a bit dull, or sad I don’t know for sure. Even some informed friends and acquaintances seem to be a bit less concerned. The narrative has changed. On my side it’s still a big concern and I try to be a part of the solution as much as possible rather than fueling the problem. By the way, I am still mostly (pesco)-vegetarian!

The hardliner emigration folks are also impacting those who wanted to call France home, I find this dumb, often heartbreaking.

Also, the economics of our retirement system is (already) inherently broken (I really recommend watching this video from Le Figaro — not a newspaper I usually read to be clear).

I feel we would need to rethink it completely on its own, without considering the wealth inequalities that should be handled separately (there is things to change there too don’t get me wrong). There is a clear generational unbalancing that is taking place and it feels desperately hard to rebalance anything. I feel there is a need to build a new social and economical contract at the French level and likely at the EU level too.

Let’s do something about it?

This year recipe

Here is my pick for this year recipe: cucumbers the “asian way”. Pretty simple, yet so good!

1. Peel or not peel the cucumber, there are different schools on that matter,

2. Remove the core of the cucumber (it helps with digestion),

3. Slice it in ~8 mm cubes (you get the idea, 8 mm is for the joke),

4. Prepare a sauce by mixing sun flower oil (2/3), soy sauce (1/3), salt, and as much garlic as you like.

5. Let it marinate a bit 🎉

That’s how I have done it so far, but while preparing this piece I checked online and for the sauce another option is to go for: 4/10 Rice vinegar, 3/10 soy sauce, 2/10 cane sugar, 1/10 sesame oil, and add a bit of chili peppers / mint. I’ll try that ASAP.

While we are in this section, I’d like to share a bunch of fun food facts I have learned throughout 2025 🤓

• A red pepper was a green pepper that became orange then red. Yes, I looked surprised and dumb when I learned that!

• Pickles and cucumbers are basically the same.

• Curry is not a single spice, it’s a mix of spices.

Well, we never stop learning so let’s keep being curious about things.

A quick look back at the objectives I had set for 2025

Keep caring for those I care, stay open. Respect others’ choices (yes of course, it just can be a bit hard for me to accept doing things I would do in a different way sometimes).

I don’t think I could have done a lot of things differently on that topic this year, so rather achieved.

Be overall less tired across the year, definitely finish it rested, take care of myself.

As described above, big win here I feel!

Find new, robust, optima / equilibria in my personal / professional life. Give a push to myself to get involved in some project other than day-to-day work. Make time / room for it.

I definitely have a new work / life setup. Going freelance / entrepreneur means I am even more focused on what I am building so not a big win for getting really involved in other topics. But I feel OK about it today. Especially because I have gained a lot of organizational freedom and I think I use that freedom wisely.

Gain back more intellectual stimulation one way or another.

This hasn’t been a big focus for this year but I really feel OK at the moment on that topic. I learned a lot of stuff regarding administrative stuff so it was still a year full of learning and intellectual challenges in some ways.

If I have stamina, take on a new sport-related routine, mind more about my diet and lose 8-10kgs, durably => get ready for the GR20 in 2026?

Starting dance is a good win. I did manage to lose ~6 kg after my Scotland trip with some intense workout for 3 months, but I gained them back after (even though the muscle / fat ratio has improved significantly I am convinced — I can do pushups!). I have started going to the gym lately and I feel I’ll stick to that habit now.

Finally, about the transportation numbers I usually include in those reviews: I didn’t do the maths this year. But my intuition is: in 2025 I did a bit less km by train than last year (less abroad travel above all), still pretty moderate car usage, and still 0 km by plane 🌍

The vibe I am setting for 2026

In 2026 I expect that I’ll be quite focused on my projects. So here are my business objectives:

• GoPutUp is live,

• My second project / product is live or close to be,

• Those projects have brought in at least the amount spent in terms of servers, everything else is a bonus in 2026 but the more the merrier (I’ll keep those financial objectives out of this newsletter for now but I have some more concrete ones)

• I have billed ~110d of freelance work (less if my products bring in more income),

• I am still a net contributor to the French budget (I do expect to use a bit of my unemployment benefits in 2026 though).

On the more personal side:

• Keep cherishing connections,

• Celebrate my 30 years on this planet and make sure the 8^th of May stays a public holiday (what a silly idea),

• Keep an informed eye on politics,

• Try a lot of new recipes,

• Stick to my new sporty gym habit and lose more durably a bit of weight this year,

• Hike new places with friends, maybe come back to ones I have already been.

Huge thanks to those I have shared adventures with this year! ❤️ (and for authorizing me to share your faces here).

2026, I am ready for you!

I wish the best 2026 possible to everyone! 👋

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A few months ago I was quite eager to write this piece and wrap 2024. But in recent weeks my energy level has been a bit lower than usual. It requires quite some effort to write these texts (100% AI-free). To choose the words and thoughts that I’ll share openly, and I want to share a lot to stay true to myself. So it’s not particularly easy this year.

Still, I feel having and sticking to some routines is important. They enable us to keep a pace. They are kind of a rhythm. This “year review” routine is my way of gathering my news and personal thoughts, keeping in touch with the people I care for, people I shared things with, people I live with; sometimes sparkling new conversations.

So, in the last 3 days, I have gathered time and energy to properly conclude this year and start the new one. Is this text perfect? Nah. But, Something is better than Nothing. I hope you will have a good read, maybe learn some stuff, remember others, or at least enjoy some of this year's pictures ❤️ Don’t hesitate to send me a message if you gave it curiosity and a few minutes of your 2025.

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In short, I feel 2024 was pretty fu**** up if I may, with some good things along the way. At least that’s the intuition I get by watching this year's recap by Le Monde (let’s avoid making a list here) and my experience / the things & people I care about. But there is still plenty of things to share 😌

So let’s do it 💪

Flo Emir de la belle data

On the professional side, 2024 was busy.

Most notably, around February I decided it was time to move on from Qomon after 3 years. Not an easy decision given my interest in politics and the best / most unique group of individuals I have known so far on a project. But some stuff was bothering me, ethical concerns being one of them. So unfortunately, I didn't pursue the several project ideas I was excited about last year.

Am I happy to have changed job? Yes! I still think it was the right decision. Do I miss some things? Yes of course (the international context or the bit of adrenaline that came with campaigns for instance). But I am also very happy to have kept close contact with a lot of colleagues, now friends. And also to witness Qomon growing from a new angle 😉 Long live Qomon & Democracy ♥️

I am now part of the earliest adventure I have ever joined: 🍑 Abrico. It ticked all my boxes I had in mind at the time. And in 6 months I have learned a lot about houses / flats renovation to improve energy efficiency. Another subject close to my heart 🌍 In that time I also first touched the talent we have in France to engineer administrative complexity. It’s kind of painful to see and understand. But we are making it easy for everyone to navigate this complexity and get access to subsidies and the credit they deserve. To accelerate renovations and fight climate change.

I have transitioned from “data” to general full-stack software engineering at the moment, relying on skills acquired as far back as when I developed that foreign exchange feedback platform back at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. I am also fairly happy to be temporarily leaving Python*. Typescript* type system is really a joy to work with. I am a fan.
*To my non-tech friends and acquaintances, Python & Typescript are programming languages.

Changing adventure also means discovering a new work style with a welcome emphasis on async written communication and deep work friendly environments. I enjoy both.

We are still very early, I won’t dive too much more on Abrico in itself here. Not to spoil things to come.

To wrap this professional facet, I’ll share one answer I gave during my (partly written) interview process at Abrico as I feel it is relevant in this piece.

[Question] How far and how do you project yourself?

[Answer] It depends on the phases of my life. Life is made up of encounters (both professional and personal). Some encounters inspire more desire to "project" myself than others. I don’t believe there’s a global optimum that will remain valid until the end of my life; instead, I look for local optimums and accept as best as I can that they might change. [...]

But in the long term (>5-10 years), I estimate:

• It’s unlikely I’ll still be in the Paris region (it’s not a life goal to stay here, even though I’m enjoying it again at the moment).

• It’s likely I’ll run for parliament or president (whether as a joke or not), because today’s politics don’t seem optimal to me.

• It’s also likely I’ll start a company with friends or acquaintances.

• It’s very likely I’ll still be doing week-long hiking (or cycling) trips every year.

But I strongly believe life is made up of encounters and unpredictable things, which will change my understanding of things and my desires.

Yeah, I try to be honest during interviews. There were plenty of other questions. I won’t dive into my answers in this year review (let’s keep content for another time 😇). But here they are in case that’s interesting to reflect on yourself:

• If we work together and in 1 year you are very satisfied, where will you be, and what will make you say that you have had the best job in the world for 12 months?

• What is the archetype company you want to join? Why?

• What industrial sectors interest you?

• What are the constraints of startups for you?

• What demotivates you? In the past, what have you done when you were demotivated?

• What do you expect from your manager?

  

Flo’s personal facet

🧠 Stimulation

This year I have attended 2 PhD defenses of close friends. It felt good to encounter some deep intellectual work again. The subjects were both very technical / scientific and in one I only understood the first slide. I am proud of them, the effort they put in. And especially to Gwen for their defense conclusion, basically a thoughtful “review” moment. A very good one. Listening to it made me / everyone emotional. Respect to you, I hope you will find the thing that fits you.

Thanks to a new encounter of this year, I have also discovered l’Institut des futurs souhaitables and we went to an interactive conference by Olivier Hamant “Antidote au culte de la performance”. Super interesting. I’ll look forward to attending more of those events next year. I miss intellectual stimulation in general.
I had plans to read his short book (same title) before writing this review, but I failed to complete this task. Though I’ll leave you with these quotes I took note of so far, which ring some bells:

Comme le dit Dennis Meadows fréquemment : “il y a deux façons de réagir à une déficience perçue. L’une consiste à s’efforcer d’obtenir plus. L’autre à se satisfaire de moins”.

Nous avons optimisé notre environnement pour le mettre au service de nos demandes, et non de nos besoins.

And one word: “Robustness”.

Ideas he presented echoed some of my recent personal choices. I highly recommend this read.

🚄 Where have I been?

Flo not moving around is… not possible I guess?

Here is a recap.

• End of January, I went to Valenciennes with my brother, to choose our new bikes 🚲. Not a city I would go live in personally. But my new bike on the other end is pretty nice (and has some orange of course).

  

  

• Not long after I went for a few days at Puy Saint-Vincent to enjoy some ski with family. I really like to go back to this specific ski station as I have been there dozens of times and I know it by heart. There I shared an off-piste session with some very bad snow but good views with my brother-in-law.

  

• Few days after that I was in Nantes for the 1st PhD defense of the year and a very nice weekend in Redon.

  

• Then Six-Fours-Les-Plages for the baptism of my niece,

• Of course in the first part of the year I also went to Bordeaux several times, as a Qomon employee, and also to say goodbye.

• Early April I took a bunch of trains to go all the way up to Norway. I saw extremely appealing landscapes. And also had the pleasure to make stops at Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen, Ålesund & Trondheim, see the Norwegian fjords, go cross-country skiing, etc. Extremely nice trip. And the fun fact is I left Olso on the 16th afternoon, and made it to Bordeaux at 9am on the 18th. All by train.

  

  

• Early May, I went bike-backing around Lac Léman for 3 days with my usual biking

  partner in crime. Extremely nice weather. I recommend it, especially the Swiss side is really really nice. It was a pleasure to get back to Lausanne, Geneva, and quickly discover Montreux too.

  

• And because that was not enough travel for May, I went back to Croatia a couple of weeks later 🤩 On the menu? Trains of course, a bunch of buses too, but most importantly, Zagreb, hikes in Plitvice, Zadar and Ugljan island, Krka, Split, and the marvelous Dubronick (I had never seen that many tourists in a single place before though). Croatia is stunning. And I was pleased / surprised to discover more of its inland greener parts. The way back was pretty fun, Dubrovnik -> Split -> Ancona (Italy) -> and then a bunch of trains back to Paris. That was the fastest (less than 24h) route to get back just before the start of my new job.

  

  

  

• The summer kicked off with a stop in Lyon for the second Phd defense.

• Then a quick weekend in Bordeaux / the Pyrénnées for a challenging hike around the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. It was really nice to share it with 2 former Qomon colleagues. You should have seen the heels of one of them, that was very brave of you to keep going.

  

• Few days after that I headed to Tours / Blois to bike for a week along the very nice Loire à vélo. It’s a lovely region of France, maybe with a bit too many castles to stop at, though. It was also an opportunity to meet again with a friend there.

  

• A quick day stop in Paris, and I was back on trains to go to the South of France near Castelnaudary at my grandparents.

• And shortly after, we temporarily moved our colocation to my sis place in Six-Fours-les-Plages. It was hoooottt. But nice to get back to the Méditerranée.

  

• In September, I went for the first time to the Fête de l’Humanité. It was

  interesting and the music really enjoyable. It was funny to listen to artists and be like “Oh damn, you are the ones who sing thhhhattt” (I listen to a tone of music but don’t pay attention to it). Seeing all those PCF stands was sometimes funny. It was also a condensed summary of a lot of militant activities happening across France and the world, which was a bit overwhelming sometimes for me. But super interesting and nice!

• Few days later I finally made it to my friends in Alençon for our usual friend reunion (I was in Norway for the previous one 😭). For a short period of time though, as I left early Saturday to get back to Paris for my high school graduation 10 years celebration (allreaaadyyyyy), where 50+ people came.
  It was really nice and a bit emotional to reconnect with them like no time had passed.

• Weirdly enough, I have no train records in October 😅 I remember I almost went to Spain to honor a pinky-promise I had made. But my stamina was not there so I stayed and the pinky-promise was extended 🙏
  Well, no trains in October, but I did go to the esthetician for the first time! More on that later.

  

• In November I spent a quick weekend in Rouen (first time there) and back to Alençon too.

  

• And finally in December a quick stop in Tours and a weekend in Six-fours-les-plages to help out with my nephew & niece (sorry I was really tired). I also went by surprise (no joke here) to the private place with the most ostentatious wealth display I have ever been. I can’t share pictures here. It was interesting but too much too. I feel it shouldn’t exist in this world.

And… that’s it. Ok well, you can add Dieppe where I am spending with my roommate the best introvert New Year’s eve right now 🎉 (and proofreading one last time this piece 🕵️).

That is quite a lot. I don’t know if 2025 will be as packed, but I am sure I’ll be back to some of those places. And new ones. The only thing planned to this day is Scotland early May 🤩

✨ What “cherry on the cake” stuff have I done?

I finally got my ears pierced and I love it. Thank to those former colleagues who convinced me to make the jump ❤️ (for the record, I wanted to do it, you can check last year piece for instance, I just needed that little extra push).
I think my dad is the only non-fan of it. We will survive that.

👪 Family wise?

I am going to be short.
1st circle, pretty ok, I’d say.

2+ circle, a bit rockier, health / relationship wise. But mostly everyone is fine from my imperfect point of view.

Of course everyone faces challenges, but I am also seeing people exploring, entrepreneuring, questioning, etc. Positive things.

The biggest change to come, should be my parents entering retirement next year 😱

How is my original apartment-sharing going?

Really greattttt 🔥

Major events include having ants as pets. Then, them dying 6 months later. But a new colony has arrived 💪 We will try to take even better care of them.

Our apartment-sharing almost ended because of professional reasons. But in the end everything worked out and I am very happy not to have had to move again.

Of course we had some issues, but I’d say extremely few and we are pretty good at communicating, improving, moving on, etc. So 🔥

And yes, we finally got a sofa, to celebrate our 1st year living together. You are welcome anytime (we have a sofa bed too) ❤️
Gif-sur-Yvette, la Vallée de Chevreuse and Paris have a lot to offer.

Maybe we will do a housewarming party after 2 years who knows 😀

🥇 Finally, 2024 was a year with a lot of firsts

It’s usually hard for me to do things for the first time on my own. Not like I don’t want to try things but more that I like to do things the best possible way from the start and therefore to share those firsts with more knowledgeable people on the matter.

Among those firsts that happened this year are:

• I tried out climbing, and happily now does it once or twice a month with friends / acquaintances / family,

• I went cross-country skiing,

  

• I personally took part of a political campaign.

  • Which included a real-life Splatoon like billboard battle and covering fresh posters from a far-right candidate just before midnight 💪

  • And for the first time being an assessor for 2 full days at a polling station.

    • And checking the ID with a big smile of that far-right supporter who insulted me in the street a few days before. Democracy.

  

• I took a night train ride (multiple actually),

• I bought a sofa,

• I witness flooding (in Gif) from centimeters away,

  

• I went to a music festival as a “participant”.

• I went on a “cruise ship” (not a bigggg one)

  

• I ate (good) bread from a bakery trash,

  

• I discovered The Rocky Horror Picture Show “experience”, the right left way

• I got my eyebrows waxed to dress up as drag for a birthday party

  

• I bought my first perfume 🌸 (the AWESOME exhibition we visited at Le Clot Lucet during my bike ride on the Loire à Vélo inspired me to do so)

• And last but not least, I filled a sworn statement to support a friend changing their legal name 🌈

🌱 This year's vegetables?

I discovered the Blue meat radish at the local market in Gif. I love it. I wanted to share it with the world.

👨‍🍳 This year recipe?

I am inaugurating this year a new section to share a (vegetarian) recipe others and I enjoy. I have a bunch that I enjoy a lot but let’s start with marinated pepers. For its history, it was one of my childhood's top desired foods, I think mostly done by my grandma. I have perfected it this year, you can ask the few who had the opportunity to taste it 🔥

Ingredients:

• n red peppers (I usually go for ~8 / 1.5kgs)

• Olive oil

• Garlic

• Lemons

• Shallots

• Honey

• Cinnamon powder

• Salt & pepper

Steps:

1. Cut around the stem of the peppers, remove it, try to remove as much of the seeds inside with your fingers, wash the peppers and their inside and remove as much as possible of the water.

2. Put the peppers in the oven 180°C, fan on. Your objective here is to roast each face without burning the peppers so that you can peel them easily. It usually takes around 40 minutes in total, but make sure to check on them every 5-10 minutes and appropriately rotate the peppers. I found that a good position to start with is the tip up, hole down.

3. Once peppers look ready to be peeled, remove them from the oven, let them cool down a bit. Peel them and break them at least in eight. Do not wash them. If the skin is a bit hard to peel, know that next time they need a bit more oven time.

4. 🤫 My secret twist: put them in a colander, and let them dry outside for several hours. A bunch of juice will come out of them, make sure to have a plate underneath and to empty it regularly. The idea here is to remove a bit of the moisture so that they later absorb as much as possible of the marinade.

5. Prepare the marinade. I usually go for a mix of olive oil, lemon juice, a bunch of crunched garlic, minced shallots, a bit of honey, cinnamon, and finally salt and pepper. The quantities are yours. Just make sure to make enough of it ;)

6. Mix the peppers with the marinade, and put everything in the fridge. They will be best the next day.

Do I have (nice) pictures of marinated peppers? No, oupsi. But I hope you will enjoy it!

Please accept a nice random food picture instead 🫶

Looking back at last year numbers & objectives, setting the path for 2025

Here is the update on my transport / carbon footprint from last year:

• ~35 000 km by train ⇾ ~20 000 km (bye bye TGV Max well well well) + ~7 500 km with Interail 🇭🇷 🇮🇹 🇫🇷 🇨🇭 🇩🇪 🇧🇪 🇳🇴 🇸🇪 🇩🇰 🇸🇮

• ~2 500 km by bike ⇾ I didn’t keep track of it too much, maybe ~1 500 km. Definitely not enough given my new really nice bike.

• ~3 700 km of mostly car sharing ⇾ Forgot to track that (and I don’t have stamina to look back in detail), but I am confident it’s less than last year.

• 0 km by plane ⇾ 0 repeated 🙌

  

Objectives I had set for 2024

Mind about my diet for the planet (also for my own health 😅)

• And extend my cooking knowledge / creativity, I feel there is room for that in my new colocation. Maybe start to gather the recipes I enjoy.

I have become 98% Pescatarian since ~February. I won’t make a scandal if there is meat to eat basically and I eat as little as possible. Fish is still around in my diet partly because it’s logistically easier at home.

I did lose quite a bit of weight in the 1st half of the year. But it appears to be back 😅

Go on adventures in Spain, Switzerland & Northern Europe (most of them are theoretically planned). I am not sure the GR20 hike is for this year unless some people join this project and I get physically ready for it.

Spain was planned in my mind, but when the time came I had no stamina. Unfortunately. Northern Europe is a big check. GR20 might be a good one for 2026 to celebrate turning 30?

Share hiking / bike trips / adventures with more / new people ; introduce new people to these kinds of adventures.

We are good here 🍾 More to come next year.

I would love to join a collective / “militant” group, it would remind me of the good old days before the start of my “professional life”. I feel my work is already a lot in itself. But I love engagement towards the community and I think I can help with my skill set. Just like with me being helped to kick off my adventures facet in 2022, I’ll need some help / push here. Feel free to reach out.

Personally taking part in the surprise French legislative elections is a win here I feel. But nothing regular has emerged unfortunately.

Be less tired (I have a lot of energy but I am also a bit tired regularly 😅)

A mix of success and failure. I need to take more time for myself. Accept to rest / “burrito” more. Self-date, take care of me, myself and I more often.

Keep learning, supporting, becoming more aware, staying open-minded, exploring, cherishing relationships and embracing change.

Pretty ok from my PoV here.
Embracing change is not necessarily an easy thing when it’s not aligned with what I envisioned or hoped, but that’s life.

The vibe I am setting for 2025

• Keep caring for those I care, stay open. Respect others' choices (yes of course, it just can be a bit hard for me to accept doing things I would do in a different way sometimes).

• Be overall less tired across the year, definitely finish it rested, take care of myself.

• Find new, robust, optima / equilibria in my personal / professional life. Give a push to myself to get involved in some project other than day to day work. Make time / room for it.

• Gain back more intellectual stimulation one way or another.

• If I have stamina, take on a new sport-related routine, mind more about my diet and lose 8-10kgs, durably => get ready for the GR20 in 2026?

By the way, why “Flicks!” as subtitle?

We are getting towards the end of this review.

Giving a title to those year reviews is hard. Especially this year. But flicks (“pichenette” in French) sounded appropriate. Like not so gently pushing / annoying something or someone. Making it / them leave their current local optimum / stable or unstable position.

One of the biggest flicks of the year is, of course, Macron and its “misunderstood” dissolution. But I had a bunch of other flicks to deal with this year. Thanks to friends, acquaintances and family for always being there.

Well, also in one way… the next optimum is often one flick away 🎉

“Flo you are always so hopeful 🥲”
From me, but I can hear this from miles away by someone I know very well. Sorry not sorry.

It actually felt good to write this review and to wrap this year. Give a fresh start to 2025.

2025 here we come!

Please Trump, don’t f*** it up too much.

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PS: as usual, more pictures are available at photos.floflo.ch 📷 Also, I suggest scrolling a bit more.

PPS: one last image to meditate.

It’s the second time I am writing such a piece. And I think it’s important to start things by quoting the words I used last year:

[It is] inspired by the work of my Canadian uncle & family from whom I have received yearly reviews for as long as I can remember. The difference here is that I am making my review publicly available. This is a challenge, nobody is exactly the same in public as with their family or friends, colleagues, etc. My first goal is to make something relevant for myself and maybe tickle your curiosity along the way. Keep in mind that it will likely be a bit stingy in detail and no matter how curious you might be, we are not necessarily intimate on all matters.

2022 was a special year, meeting a lot of new people, getting on adventures, understanding a lot about myself and others, etc. It was publicly entitled “A year worth remembering” but I personally entitled it “Expect the unexpected” (there were some traces of that in the review).

I am very glad that 2022 kicked off this new habit of reflecting once a year, looking back and writing down my thoughts and acknowledgments, sharing with the ones who know or will know me, strengthening and deepening connections along the way.

For 2023, I am proud to personally and publicly entitle the year “Embrace the unexpected / the difference”, a natural evolution from last year. A lot of different people and things have been a source of tremendous personal growth / “catch up” in the past 2 years. Things that the 2 years-ago Florent was unaware of, inattentive to, thought to be too different, etc. that I now feel more knowledgeable, at ease with, more fluent in some ways. And that feels good.

2023, went by fast. Like extremely fast. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. I am going to say something that will trigger some of my friends and acquaintances (who are usually a bit surprised when they learn that I am 3-5 years-old younger than what they initially thought): the more I “age” the faster time seems to go by. Cringe old vibes I know.
Note, I don’t think I have ever exactly fitted with the stereotypical people of my age, and I have never really cared about that 😄 In the end, I think it’s about everyone finding their own ways and respecting others’ 😊

2023 went by fast, time is limited, but it’s really good to take a bunch of hours across several days to sit down and write this in the last week of December. Gathering all those thoughts is kind of relieving and sets a new fresh state of mind for the months to come. I am writing this piece while I recover from a cold. I couldn’t put as much energy in it as I would have liked but I really wanted to keep New Year's Eve as a deadline.

To conclude this intro, as I feel this has to be said in 2023, this is guaranteed 100% Generative AI Free and 100% pure me, enjoy 🎉

I am going to keep a similar organization as last year with the three “facets” : professional, familial and personal as I feel it can help the reader follow through. Even if some things might have been a bit more intertwined this year.

Florent, the Émir de la Belle Data et de la Perf

Yeah, this year, my company Slack title was extended with “et de la Perf” (Emir of the Nice Data and Performance): I like nice well-formatted data but I also enjoy a lot performant / fast / efficient tech, optimizing database queries, digging into bottlenecks, finding bugs in the database connection pooler, etc. 🤓

Tech nerdy lines aside (I put those here a bit for the joke), 2023 has been a good entire Qomon year.

I am gonna start by quoting my first ever appearance on Instagram (omg):

I am lucky enough to be working on a daily basis around some of my hobbies: politics / building a better society & computer science. [...] My favorite thing about working at Qomon is the responsible autonomy we are given and the quite diverse, resilient, honest, transparent and effective collective we are in itself. Specifically, my favorite aspect of Qomon is that we are building something that has a long-term positive impact on society. I also love the very diverse ways Qomon can be used!

I enjoy our unique and growing team more than ever. I feel we are a one of a kind collective with great motivation. If in 2023 we are on an overall growing trend in terms of headcount, we had few people leave for different kinds of what I consider “good reasons”. That has impacted the atmosphere in different directions and I definitely miss many of those connections 🫶 I extend this last remark to people moving back to where they feel better and who are still working with us ; dear Sunshine of Spain, you are being missed in the Paris office 🥲.

Though, I consider that we are all learning from these experiences and it feels reassuring that we are sticking to the Qomon way of running things.

Oh, and of course, I am so glad to have had an awesome someone joined the Data / R&D team full time this year 🚀 It’s very nice to be able to do more things, to share, challenge, learn, grow, safely disconnect during holidays, etc.

We didn’t have as big elections / events in 2023 as last year which changed the dynamic of the year. We had the opportunity to improve the Maps features by A LOT, finally switching to vector tiles and unleashing a lot more power. Deploying in production an early beta of the cool Insights© feature, adding search capabilities, etc. and setting the path for exciting new evolution next year.

One of our main challenges is to build an intuitive, exciting and engaging platform, releasing complex features that are understandable to everyone.

Also, in 2023, we have added worldwide contours thanks to Open Street Maps, and extended Data operations in existing or new markets: Mexico, United Kingdom (their census is very precise), the USA, Iraq, Nigeria, Germany, France, New Zealand, Canada and Belgium.

This year, I am very happy to have seen new kinds of projects / clients joining Qomon: big NGOs, unions, etc. And having clients commit for multiple years is exciting news and a great recognition for what we are building and plan on building.

We made mistakes but we also achieved great things and grew as a collective. I have to personally acknowledge that the last quarter of this year is balancing a bit the overall year and is setting a very exciting path for the next year: we are getting back to some important old routines and adding new ones to the mix. It's satisfying to see interesting small organizations joining through “SelfService” (no need to talk to sales, etc.), to see clients grow in a bottom-up fashion, to be acknowledged as a relevant solution for both small use cases and the biggest possible ones too, etc

I don’t want to spoil 2024, I feel some great stuff will be released by the Data / R&D Team, and of course, Qomon in general! Challenges across the board will be there. New people will join our unique collective. And we will be getting closer to our long-term objectives, and at this moment, I want to be there and part of the crew that will be achieving them.

On the professional side, I have to mention that I have switched offices: I am back in Paris 🎉 More on that later, but Bordeaux colleagues, you are being missed!

As a reminder that time flies, I expect to celebrate my three-year “anniversary” at Qomon in May. Time does fly.

My final words for this section will go towards my personal-fun-side-professional goal for 2024 (yeah… spoiler alert…): I really want to do the front page of Le Monde website with the results of the 2024 European Elections at the Polling Station level on election night (or more realistically the next morning). The public is used to the Municipality level and I feel like everyone could grow and learn from the polling stations results. We have put a lot of efforts at Qomon to have the best French Polling Station Maps in France, and we want to give back a bit ☺️

Florent, the “Florinou” facet

“Florinou” is my close family nickname. This is a public post. I am obviously not going to dive into an in-depth review here.

I honestly have focused a lot on myself especially in the last semester with me moving around. I have to acknowledge that it is a bit hard to look back on the year that passed on this side. One thing is sure, I wasn’t struck with really bad news this year, even if there was a close call in the recent days. I’ll stick to my 2022 conclusion: “la vie c’est short”, life can be unexpected, take care of yourself, the people you care for and do not wait for a possible later moment to enjoy it. Note that ‘enjoy’ is a broad term here.

In 2023 I went back a lot of times to the Paris area, where I could enjoy the presence of acquaintances, friends and family. I am very thankful to my parents for always warmly welcoming me and for the countless drive to the Massy TGV station on very early mornings 😇 Now and since mid-October I am more permanently back in the region for who knows how long 🥷 (but definitely not for life). I am definitely the new person of choice to water plants at my parents’ 🌱 Even though I now have a new “my place”, it’s nice to be able to invite people over at my parents’ and enjoy a bit more space.

Around the same time as me moving, I also openly shared last year review with my parents and siblings 😌 And the reactions were funny to be honest. Anyway, I am happy I did it. And since none of them became subscribers after that 👀 I won’t wait months to share this one and I’ll do it in a few hours.

In 2023, I was not the only child to move around and now our family is spread in France in a new way. In the end, that’s more places to explore with logistic support and opportunities to share.

In 2023, I also joined my parents and grandparents big wedding milestones celebrations. I am happy for them 😌 I have to say, it’s a bit confusing when I compare my family situation with a lot of my acquaintances family history. It’s also a bit fun to think about the fact that both of my siblings were clearly kicking off their family at my age. I don’t know exactly what to say, except that there are no plans of this kind for me in the foreseeable future. I am enjoying the relationships I have at the moment. Note that I like to refer to the word “relationship” in a “mathematical” sense: a link between two individuals whatever it can be, mentorship, friendship, companionship, etc. Yeah, the ‘multilayer graph’ nerd I was at university is back 🤓

If I look past the “first degree family”, I would note that I am witnessing cousins exploring and getting to adulthood.

But, in the end, I don’t think this year I was there enough, attentive enough, to make a general statement that feels accurate as I did last year regarding my family learnings. Let’s see in 2024 😌

I’ll definitely conclude this section by saying a huge thanks to my family for the help in moving back from Bordeaux! Your support was invaluable 🫂

Florent, the “<pick your favorite personal nickname>” facet

I don’t think “Flobulous” is the most accurate nickname for the personal section this year, so I’ll let you choose your own: Flobulous, Flobot, etc. 😉

I would say this year naturally followed 2022 in many aspects. No one popped up in my life from “nowhere” this year. But I feel and I know for sure that the majority of my relationships have evolved. And gladly grown for most of them (I use “gladly” but it’s also OK to reframe / accept the stagnation / degrowth of others).

Early 2023, I told my bosses that I was gonna move out of Bordeaux at some point this year. I (still) love my Bordeaux colleagues and the very few people I am still in touch with there. But I had been sharing a house for 2 years, and I grew extremely incompatible with one of my housemates over time. The atmosphere became unhealthy (but you also learn stuff from every situation). I also didn’t manage to grow a wide enough network of relations there and I felt the need and desire to move back to the Paris region.

So here I am, in my new Home, in Gif-sur-Yvette. Sharing a new apartment. Yes, it’s a bit of an uncommon / “different” apartment share for those who know the details. It was one thing to suggest it. It was another thing to plan it, with some doubts, of course. And it was another thing to execute it, with some challenges, of course. But 2+ months later it feels great, natural, supportive, etc. etc. It’s the first time I am starting a ‘colocation’ with people I know and things are actually quite straightforward with good communication, which we have.

It is also the first time I am living in a place that we furnished from scratch, so it’s a bit of my first personal Home 🏠.

I enjoy the location, the view we have (Bordeaux / Pessac was way too flat for me 😭), the people I am with, all the things I am learning, etc.
I am happy when I can help people be happy 😌

And, of course, the RER B is sh** but you don’t need my blog post to know that 😉

In terms of “significant” events this year, I can also mention the loss of Ginette, the bike that followed me in all my adventures in the last 2 years. I hate bike robbers… Ginette still does not have a replacement yet, but it’s definitely planned in 2024. I want to get back on my bike packing trips! I love those.

The other worth-mentioning things are that I changed glassess and I got a new haircut this year. 2022 was the year of the birth of my bear. And now, 1.5 years after my last “short” hair cut, and patiently growing hairs, I now have what I believe is called an undercut / bound hairstyle 🎉 I like it a lot. I love playing with the hair elastic color depending on what I am going to do or who I am going to see that day, or even what is the color of the political clients I am going to meet 🤫 There are still some plans for some earrings one day, maybe. I still haven’t had the intuition for what would look nice to make the jump. So, do keep the suggestion flowing 😇

I know a few things on my personal side can be a bit unusual to some of my readers, but “Embrace the unexpected / the difference”. I am happy after all 😊

On a more personal note, I feel that I have grown and matured quite a bit this year again. I did things that felt hard before doing them and now they feel natural. The synaptic connections have bridged the gaps.

On the adventurous side of me, this year was *packed*.

I have gone on 86 one-way train trips (for the record, I have subtracted 27 Bordeaux <-> Pessac), including around 20 Paris-Bordeaux round trips. So on average I took the train once every 4.24 days, that’s a bit crazy.

An example of this packed year is: I had these crazy 2 weeks during summer when I took a train from Bordeaux to Nantes, then bike packing trip to Morlaix, trained back to Nantes then Bordeaux, train to Castelnaudary the next day for wedding anniversaries, then train to Le Creusot with a beer stop in Lyon, for a professional Offsite, then train to Paris and finally Bordeaux.

I love taking trains.

I am so lucky to be able to work on trains and from anywhere regularly.

Turning 28 this year and having to say goodbye to my TGVMax subscription, associated booking bot and Carte Jeune is going to be hard 🥹 Dear French Government and Regional bodies, please make the TER national pass a reality in 2024, the Earth needs it.

Anyway, this year I have been to several places in France, Germany (God, German food…) and Spain: Alençon, Arrens-Marsous, Avignon, Biarritz, Bormes-les-Mimosas, Carcassonne, Cassis, Castelnaudary, La Ciotat, Compiègne, Le Creusot, Étretat, Fécamp, Fontainebleau, Frankfurt (Germany), Fréjus, Giverny, Hendaye, Josselin, Laval, Libourne, Lyon, Le Mont Ventoux, Morlaix, Nantes, Niort, Ollioules, Ouistreham, Passau (Germany), Regensburg (Germany), Redon, La Rochelle, Roncesvalles (Spain), Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, San Sebastian (Spain), Savenay, Six-Fours-les-Plages, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tours, Ulm (Germany), etc.

So many opportunities to get nice pictures 🎉 And in short, places that I knew, places that I discovered and some places that I will for sure come back to in 2024.

I do have to mention the scariest “oh shit” moment I had this year: I don’t recommend the saddle “Port du Lavedan” in the Balaïtous, Pyrénées. We were on a hike with a friend and it’s one of those rare times in my life I felt really anxious. It required a bit of climbing with big backpacks and a lot of wind at 2 600m altitude. I clearly went slightly above what I would have wanted to experience with the gear and guidance we had. Even though we felt OK doing it again after 2 hours. The mind forgets fast; but let’s not take unnecessary risks.

All in all, a lot of adventures, solo or shared. Every single one was nice!

Looking back at last year numbers & objectives, setting the path for 2024

Here is the update on my transport / carbon footprint from last year:

• ~33 000 km by train ⇾ slightly raised to ~35 000 km this year

• ~4 000 km by bike ⇾ my rough estimate is 2 500 km by bike this year (I have been more in Paris where I bike less)

• ~1 400 km of mostly car sharing ⇾ ~3 700 km this year, more adventures required the car and also did moving.

• 0 km by plane ⇾ 0 repeated 🙌

Looking back at objectives set early last year:

• I did change bank to “Crédit Coopératif”, I can recommend it!

• I don’t know for sure if I ate less meat this year, but I know for sure that I kept it as a strong objective and I kept thinking about it.

• I did go on holiday, not necessarily as much and as far as I would have liked. But I did spend a lot of great times with others and took some awesome pictures.

• I did not add a new time consuming habit to my life. Writing takes me a lot of energy and I don’t feel like I can be regular with it. But I know for sure that I took more pictures and that I am taking more time to take care of others 😌

• “Keep learning, supporting, becoming more aware, cherishing relationships and embracing change.” I think I did!

So what personal vibes I'm gonna chase this year?

• Mind about my diet for the planet (also for my own health 😅)

  • And extend my cooking knowledge / creativity, I feel there is room for that in my new colocation. Maybe start to gather the recipes I enjoy.

• Go on adventures in Spain, Switzerland & Northern Europe (most of them are theoretically planned). I am not sure the GR20 hike is for this year unless some people join this project and I get physically ready for it.

• Share hiking / bike trips / adventures with more / new people ; introduce new people to these kinds of adventures.

• I would love to join a collective / “militant” group, it would remind me of the good all days before the start of my “professional life”. I feel my work is already a lot in itself. But I love engagement towards the community and I think I can help with my skill set. Just like with me being helped to kick off my adventures facet in 2022, I’ll need some help / push here. Feel free to reach out.

• Be less tired (I have a lot of energy but I am also a bit tired regularly 😅)

• Keep learning, supporting, becoming more aware, staying open-minded, exploring, cherishing relationships and embracing change.

I am thankful for 2023. All the people that I enjoyed spending time with and from whom I have learned so much. I have materialized my giving back mood in a different way as last year, giving time for the people I care for, furnishing a shared apartment, etc. So I don’t have numbers to share this year. But I really love to give back to the causes that are important to the people who are important to me. I think I’ll be able to get back on that track next year. So for next year, get ready to be asked: “Hey, is there anything close to your heart I could give to? 😊”. Yeah, I like supporting others and what they are doing. That’s one anecdote about me.

If you want another more random anecdote: I have listened to 90 000 minutes of music on Spotify this year, and I don’t freaking have a single artist or title name that I know 😅 Yup. Don’t give me a hard time for it 🙏

Anyway, my final words are,

Just like 2022, I am truly grateful for 2023, and especially grateful to all the people that have made it possible.

Farewell 2023. Happy new year eveyrone!

PS: I hope you have enjoyed along the way some of the lovely pictures I took this year. I would have loved to include more pictures covering everything I have explored this year but it would have interrupted too much the text. The selection here is from the ~4000 pictures I took and rest assured that they were not all that great 😇 You can view a lot more here https://photos.floflo.ch/2023.html.

I tried to include in this review more pictures with people than last year, while purposely keeping them as anonymous as possible.

For the photography nerds around there, most of them were shot on a Fujifilm XT-5 — new camera body this year — and a mix of these lenses that I have gathered in the last 5+ years:

• Fujinon XF10-24mmF4 R OIS WR (I feel this lens lacks a bit of sharpness, but I LOVE wide angle — I’ll look for evolution here in 2024 😇)

• Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR (this lens is so sharp but a bit heavy)

• Fujinon XF 56 mm f/1,2 R (well if you want Bokeh)

• Fujinon XF 50 mm f/2 R WR (sweet lens)

2022 has been a great year for me personally, plenty of unexpected things happened, making it a year worth remembering and a good topic for a first post on this quite quiet blog; well, we have to start somewhere, and I never promised a regular publishing schedule 😬.

N.B. Don't get me wrong, 2022 has also been a shitty year for worldwide peace and other news  (the Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc.), what I am writing here is just a portion of the story.

It is my first time writing such a reflecting piece, inspired by the work of my Canadian uncle & family from whom I have received yearly reviews for as long as I can remember. The difference here is that I am making my review publicly available. This is a challenge, nobody is exactly the same in public as when they’re with their family or friends, colleagues, etc. My first goal is to make something relevant for myself and maybe tickle your curiosity along the way. Keep in mind that it will likely be a bit stingy in detail and no matter how curious you might be, we are not necessarily intimate on all matters.

Anyway, I am aiming for something I’ll be happy to read in one or two decades and have this “oO crap this was (me in) 2022”.

Yes, it is in English. I am truly sorry for my French speaking only audience. I am starting to like English more and more. A few weeks ago, a very close friend told me “We have different personalities depending on the language we are using”, and I feel like my English personality is a good fit for this review. In fact, it has been my language of introspection for several occasions in the last months.

I have a feeling that I currently have 3 facets: professional, familial & personal. Keep in mind that things are porous and coexist. So it’s only a way to organize my ideas a bit.

Florent, the “Émir de la belle data” facet

I am extremely happy that 2022 has been a ‘Qomon all the way’ year professionally speaking and I am definitely pleased to have changed jobs back in 2021.

Regarding the headline of this section. I love well-formatted data, and have my personal ranking of open-data providers across the world. “Émir de la belle data” (Emir of the nice data), is kind of my internal nickname. It was first “Ministre de la belle data” (Minister of the nice data), but we collectively agreed that it would be better to reflect part of my Lebanese history.

I am a generalist. I currently thrive in the “Full-Stack Data-Science” world, where I can do a crazy lot of things including Infrastructure, DevOps, Data-Engineering, Geo-Data-Engineering, Data Analysis, Statistical Models, Software Engineering & Database-Engineering. I enjoy every piece of it.

I haven’t done my official administrative yearly review yet, but I am honest (as always) when I say that I don’t plan on leaving this adventure any time soon.

Being surrounded by motivated colleagues, some of them being there since the very beginning 4 years ago, who love what we are building is really ‘one thing’. Being guided by 2 complementary co-founders that are great and smart leaders is really another ‘thing’. Having ideas for years-worth of roadmap material is another ‘thing’. So Qomon is really 'one big thing'. I like the transparency and the internal debates we have and the trust I have been shown. I feel empowered.

This is not an ad for Qomon. I don’t consider everything as perfect, there are ups and downs, of course, but everything is pretty damn good and, most importantly, everything feels honest and unique.

The company project has grown a lot in 2022, in a nice way, i.e. not in an uncontrolled start-up rocket way. Yeah, I prefer calling it a “project” than a “company”, that’s my personal choice.

Among the hundreds of organizations (for the record, we don’t only work with political organizations) we worked with in 2022, we were involved in 2 French Presidential campaigns in parallel, which was challenging and exciting. Running Machine Learning models in a campaign HQ on election night to get a better grasp of the outcome of the election is really not something I had thought I would be doing one year ago. People that are a bit familiar with me know that I like politics / democracy. Being behind the curtain can feel weird sometimes but it is always interesting. It’s also strengthening my desire to one day contribute even more directly to public decision-making, just saying. Finally, I am glad that I have the feeling that what we are doing is ‘right’ and that I am not subject to cognitive dissonance.

In 2022, we also expanded (data) operations in many countries across the world including Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Romania, Belgium, Latvia, Germany, etc. The adventure is just starting.

Some other challenges have been (and still are) around new areas of focus for me. I was appointed Qomon Data Protection Officer in 2022, and have learned a lot about GDPR with room to grow on the matter. Everybody also knows my love for the French Research Tax Credit but we are becoming better and better with experience. And finally, I have conducted dozens of interviews since August. It's challenging, but I am confident we will find someone to join my team and are not rushing things. Learning and gaining experience there too.

One of the 2023 objectives for me regarding Qomon is to gain more focus, to have time to dive into feature development and ship awesome features for our clients. We have so many ideas in store.

Anyway, what is my conclusion here? Time flies! I really enjoy feeling like I am not just “working”. And I am definitely questioning my future ability to move to a “job” where I don’t feel this way.

Before moving to the next facet, I’d like to say that I was super happy to go back to my former university during the summer to lead a full-week workshop on Applied Data Science. It was thrilling to share knowledge with 30+ motivated students.

Florent, the “Florinou” facet

“Florinou” is a more familial nickname. This is a public post. I am obviously not going to dive into an in-depth review here.

2021 ended with me being “COVIDed” during our family Christmas on the 25th of December. I remember going downstairs during the night to smell my grandpa’s bottle of red wide. And I was like “this smells weird” and in the morning I was officially tested positive to Covid and the plans for the holidays changed.

2022 was mostly COVID free and this was awesome.

2022 was also my first full year in Bordeaux, quite far away from all family relatives. I am definitely not the best at keeping in touch on a regular basis.

I enjoy watching everyone get along and grow. I have also witnessed the challenges they face and how they are going through them. I am learning. Though, I must say, I can improve on giving a hand sometimes.

My very young nieces and nephew are growing like crazy. My cousins are into or getting close to adulthood and it’s interesting. It reminds me a bit about my fuzzy post Baccalaureate experience. My sister and brother are now well into parenthood and I had the opportunity to give a hand from time to time. I must say, it’s really a challenge, from my point of view.

2022 was also a year of some rather big milestone birthdays, such as two grandmas turning respectively 80 and 90. I am 26, it is really far away and makes me question what I want to have done by then, if I ever get that old. It is one way to be reminded that “la vie c'est short” and we should think about it sometimes.

One event in particular made me think about it: the death of a close friend & relative a few months after retiring. I was sad. I am getting mature enough to understand what life means for me and for others. The “au revoir” ceremony was the finish line for some things. But it’s the starting line for other things. All I can say, thoughts have emerged from it on my side.

Florent, the “Flobulous” facet

“Flobulous” is a new nickname that has emerged in 2022 among my newest relations and that characterizes a new ‘side’ of myself that I enjoy.

First, dear parents, if you read this, I am sorry that now when I come to the Paris region I hang out a lot and you don’t see me a lot at home.

2022 has been a year like none before on the more personal side. It’s a very intimate feeling that I am not sure even a single person has full awareness of. It is something I wanted to share but not necessarily dive into details with everyone.

The short summary is, I understood a lot about, and became more aware, of myself and others than I could have ever imagined. I have learned and learned, read books again, thought a lot, reconsidered expectations, had some “oh shit” moments, had several “brain fucks” along the way, etc. I can be a bit exhausted these days because of all the energy that this process has consumed. It kind of feels like having lived 15 years in the last 5 months of 2022. But the most important thing is I am happy and more conscious every day.

And those last two paragraphs are really the reason I wanted to write this blog post.

In 2022, I really enjoyed moving a lot in France, going on adventures (hence the photos along this post), cultivating existing relationships and thriving in new relationships, non-existent a few months ago.

Want an idea of how far I have gone? (This is a metaphor just in case you are not getting it)

• ~33 000 km by train,

• ~4 000 km by bike,

• ~1 400 km of mostly car sharing,

• 0 km by plane 🙌

In 2022, I have been to Bordeaux (obviously), Paris and its region, Toulouse, Avignon, Tours, Lyon, Castelnaudary, Nimes, Valence, Marseille, La rochelle, Arcachon, Bourges, Nantes, Arles, Biarritz, Bayonne, Bidarray, Saint-Jean Pied de port, Royan, Alençon, Ussel, Atlantic coast cities near Bordeaux (Le Porges, Lacaneau, etc.), etc. (you can check out photos.floflo.ch for more pictures).

In short places that I knew, places that I discovered and some places that I will for sure come back to in 2023.

“la vie c'est short,” let’s explore what to do with it 😌

In 2022, I had several objectives. I don’t recall necessarily having them at the beginning of the year, but they naturally came along the way. Meet new people in a ‘natural’ fashion, go camping, go hiking, discover places, go to a protest, etc. I am extremely grateful to all the people that either inspired me or openly and genuinely gave me a hand in achieving them. It means the world.

Of course I am still very much concerned about climate change. During my trips I have witnessed visually the drought we had this year, and it was a very, very hot year. I am a bit sad that my 1 400 km of car sharing emitted the same amount of CO2 as my 33 000 km of train travel, but that’s life.

I have objectives for 2023 to keep addressing my personal impact:

• Change bank,

• Get on a flexitarian diet (I have already dropped most ‘red meat’  consumption).

Other objectives for 2023 include:

• Go on holiday. Explore Europe a bit. Wanna share some time/adventures? Let me know. I have a lot of holidays in stock 🌴

• Add a new time consuming habit to my life (Writing? Drawing?) 

• Keep learning, supporting, becoming more aware, cherishing relationships and embracing change.

But most importantly, keep setting objectives along the way, every day is its own journey. The best things of 2022 were unexpected. I expect that to be the same in 2023.

I was really not into concluding on financial stuff, but I am finishing 2022 with a giving back mood. I am happy to have witnessed my parents make donations while growing up. I have donated in the past, this is not a first. Maybe it can encourage people to do it as well. I don’t have regular donation habits, but I like to support causes that are either close to my heart or close to the hearts of the people I know; I have got to know so many more people this year… 😄

This year, after deductions (yes, no tricks), I have given the equivalent of 20% of the “2022 money” I haven’t spent ‘living’ to political organizations that challenge the status quo and NGOs supporting refugees, children and women in need, advocating for inclusivity and enabling a more decentralized web. It can be fuzzy to say such a percentage, but people who know me, know that I am not a very big spender guy, so believe me, it’s not peanuts 🥳.

My final words are,

I am truly grateful for 2022, and especially grateful to all the people that have made it possible.

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To conclude here is one of my favorite things I photographed in the last 10 years.