Add "Highlights of 2023" article (#278)

* Add "Highlights of 2023" article

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content/authors/bilge-yucel/_index.md

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     - name: LinkedIn
       url: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bilge-yucel
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+      url: https://sigmoid.social/@bilgeyucel
+      icon: /images/icons/mastodon-dark.svg
     - name: Twitter
       url: https://twitter.com/bilgeycl
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   blog_posts:
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       url: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bilge-yucel
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content/blog/highlights-of-2023/index.md

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+---
+layout: blog-post
+title: Highlights of 2023 
+description: "A Year of Growth: Highlights from 2023 for Haystack and our Community"
+featured_image: thumbnail.png
+images: ["blog/highlights-of-2023/thumbnail.png"]
+featured_image_caption: Highlights of 2023
+alt_image: Highlights of 2023
+toc: True
+date: 2024-01-05
+last_updated:  2024-01-05
+authors:
+  - Bilge Yucel
+tags: ["Open Source", "Haystack 2.0", "Community"]
+---	
+
+> *This post was originally shared through the Haystack newsletter. [Subscribe now](https://landing.deepset.ai/haystack-community-updates?utm_campaign=developer-relations&utm_source=highlights_of_2023) to stay in the loop on all things Haystack, including the latest updates, new features, captivating content, and upcoming exciting events!* 🗞️
+
+What a fantastic year it has been! In 2023, the world of AI saw tremendous progress, making it an exciting time for learning and growth. As we wind down and approach the new year, it's a good moment to take a breather, look back on the past year, and appreciate the highlights before gearing up for what's ahead. We've taken some time to review the noteworthy moments that made 2023 special for Haystack and its community.
+
+A big thank you for being part of this journey! Here's to a wonderful New Year filled with dizzying generative AI and NLP advancements 🥂✨
+
+## 💫 Haystack Highlights
+
+- The biggest highlight of the year was [**Haystack 2.0-Beta**](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/introducing-haystack-2-beta-and-advent), which is a more flexible, extendable, customizable version of Haystack 💯
+- Haystack surpassed [**12,000 stars**](https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack) on GitHub 🌟
+- It has been exactly 2 years since the [first stable release](https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/releases/tag/v1.0.0) of Haystack 🎉
+- We introduced [Haystack Integrations](https://haystack.deepset.ai/integrations) to highlight community-contributed external packages and incorporate additional technologies like **Amazon**, **VertexAI**, **Elasticsearch**, **OpenSearch**, **Chroma**, **Pinecone**, **Cohere**, **Gradient**, **Jina**, and **Ollama** that seamlessly integrate with Haystack 🧩
+- We hosted the first [**Advent of Haystack**](https://haystack.deepset.ai/advent-of-haystack) 🎄
+- **Over 80 pull requests from the community** were merged 🚀
+- We launched [Haystack Blog](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog), where we publish articles about Haystack, LLMs, demos, and use cases 📚 **P.S.** Did you know that you can [contribute to Haystack Blog](https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-home/pulls)?
+
+![Festive-themed visual with snowman, christmas tree and text displaying 'Haystack 2.0-Beta' and 'Advent of Haystack.](haystack-highlight.png#small "_We announced Haystack 2.0-Beta and hosted the first Advent of Haystack_")
+
+## 👥 Community Highlights
+
+- Our community has reached **2300+ members** on Discord, [join the Haystack Discord community](https://discord.gg/haystack) to ask questions, stay informed about Haystack updates, and connect with fellow Haystackers 🤖
+- Discord has been the platform for numerous **office hours**, a handful of **live coding sessions,** and engaging [**Road to 2.0**](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15IbtdRbafnPpUd4yAcNtu4vUveOs33Qn?usp=sharing) sessions 🛣️
+- We proudly participated in **Hacktoberfest** for the first time and welcomed new Haystack contributors 🎃
+- We introduced our monthly **Haystack community newsletter** 🗞️
+- **120+ Advent of Haystack participants** took the time to give us feedback on Haystack 2.0-Beta **🎄**
+- We participated in the [**Anthropic Hackathon**](https://partiful.com/e/pQHQrWPg1A6P31AYZMTd) 🧑‍💻
+- Haystack has spread its wings on Twitter/X, follow us at [Haystack_AI](https://twitter.com/Haystack_AI) 🐦
+
+![A spacious room filled with people, gathered and listening to a speaker from an elevated position.](community-highlight.jpeg#small "_A photo from the Anthropic Hackathon_")
+
+## 📆 Webinar Highlights
+
+We collected some of the webinars that the Haystack community found interesting in 2023:
+
+- [Prompting LLMs Using Haystack](https://youtu.be/-TfPkX3IoUQ?feature=shared)
+- [Building Applications with LLM-Based Agents](https://youtu.be/1NPcnlqPf2U?feature=shared)
+- [From Hybrid Retrieval to RAG with OpenSearch and Haystack](https://youtu.be/Gn5SV8q887s?feature=shared)
+- [Optimizing LLMs with Retrieval Augmented Generation and Haystack 2.0](https://community.analyticsvidhya.com/c/datahour/optimizing-llms-with-retrieval-augmented-generation-and-haystack-2-0)
+
+![A slide explaining LLM strenght and weaknesses from "Optimizing LLMs with Retrieval Augmented Generation and Haystack 2.0" webinar by Sara](webinar-highlight.png#small "_'Optimizing LLMs with Retrieval Augmented Generation and Haystack 2.0' by Sara_")
+
+## 📖 Blog Post Highlights
+
+Here are the most visited blog posts of 2023:
+
+- [Gemini Models with Google Vertex AI Integration for Haystack](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/gemini-models-with-google-vertex-for-haystack): Multi-Modal components and function calling with the new Gemini integrations for Haystack 2.0
+- [The Beginner's Guide to LLM Prompting](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/beginners-guide-to-llm-prompting): Engineer your natural language prompts to get the best answers from a large language model
+- [Deploying RAG to Production](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/rag-deployment): From a working prototype to a RAG AI system in production: an overview for data scientists
+- [How to Prevent Prompt Injections](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/how-to-prevent-prompt-injections): Prevent prompt injections leveraging our new open-source model and dataset
+- [Enhancing RAG Pipelines in Haystack](https://haystack.deepset.ai/blog/enhancing-rag-pipelines-in-haystack): How the latest rankers optimize LLM context window utilization in RAG pipelines
+
+![An image of a robot looking at pictures of other robots](blog-highlight.jpg#small "_We published 'Gemini Models with Google Vertex AI Integration for Haystack'_")
+
+## 👏 Some of Your Work
+
+In 2023, your contributions to the community were truly outstanding, and we want to highlight some of these works that we enjoyed seeing:
+
+- [@cclauss](https://github.com/cclauss), [@faaany](https://github.com/Faaany), [@danielbichuetti](https://github.com/danielbichuetti), [@awinml](https://github.com/awinml), [@zoltan-fedor](https://github.com/zoltan-fedor), [@benheckmann](https://github.com/benheckmann), [@nickprock](https://github.com/nickprock) and [@recrudesce](https://github.com/recrudesce) contributed the most with their PRs
+- [@AIAnytime](https://www.youtube.com/@AIAnytime) on YouTube delivered two invaluable videos on Haystack:
+
+    [Chat with Data App: RAG using Mistral 7B, Haystack, and Chainlit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01_2-Dy57ys) and [RAG Implementation using Mistral 7B, Haystack, Weaviate, and FastAPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5mqILmVUEo)
+
+- [Laura Funderburk](https://medium.com/@lgutierrwr?source=post_page-----b782731ceb3d--------------------------------) hosted a [mentorship program](https://medium.com/@lgutierrwr/how-i-orchestrated-a-five-week-data-engineering-mentorship-program-a-chronicle-of-growth-and-b782731ceb3d) to help users build with Haystack and open source projects, in addition to her great Haystack [demos](https://github.com/lfunderburk/llmops-with-haystack)
+
+and numerous members showcased their projects with the community on the #show-and-tell channel of Discord, as well as on Linkedin and Twitter 🤩
+
+## 💙 deepset Highlights
+
+deepset, the company behind Haystack, announced a **$30 million funding round** led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors GV, Harpoon, System.One, and Lunar. Read more about it [here](https://www.deepset.ai/blog/funding-announcement-balderton-capital).
+
+![deepset logo positioned above the '$30M' text, with confetti in the foreground against a blue background.](deepset-highlight.png#small "_deepset raised $30 million funding_")
+
+## 🔜 Next
+
+- The stable version of Haystack 2.0 will be out in Q1 2024. Check out [Haystack public roadmap](https://github.com/orgs/deepset-ai/projects/3) to see the upcoming features.
+- Dive into the world of Haystack 2.0-beta with our latest discussion entry, designed to be your go-to resource until the stable release of Haystack 2.0. Find the roadmap, release notes, and continually updated feature table in [the ultimate guide for Haystack 2.0-beta](https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/discussions/6684).
+- We have just introduced a new repository: [Haystack Cookbook](https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-cookbook). Stay tuned as we expand this collection with even more example notebooks throughout 2024.
+
+To stay informed about everything related to Haystack, such as the latest updates, new features, captivating content, and upcoming exciting events, be sure to [subscribe to the monthly Haystack newsletter](https://landing.deepset.ai/haystack-community-updates?utm_campaign=developer-relations&utm_source=highlights_of_2023)! 🗞️