When I was at CF Summit in November I had lunch with Gavin Pickin, and we talked about the need to encourage people to be more involved within the community. Before the conference was even over, Gavin wrote a blog post about his ideas. I was inspired. I had grand plans. I wrote several pages on my plane ride home with the full intent of cranking up this blog and making my first post. But my old excuses crept back in, and I continued to procrastinate. It's been a month.
I did submit a presentation topic to dev.Objective() about the excuses devs make to themselves for why they haven't participated more in the community. Apparently that's a topic I excel in. I'm not only a procrastinator but a hypocrite, too.
So I guess it's about time to actually do something about that. I wanted to do a lot of things in 2015, but I never actually did them. The only goal I set for myself that I actually achieved was attending CF Summit, and that was a promise I made to a friend who passed away earlier this year. I'm glad I went.
So for 2016, I want to give something back to my dev community, even if it's the trite knowledge I've packed into my skull over the years. To accomplish that, I want to:
- Write here. At least once a week. Preferably more.
- Make this space prettier.
- Make some serious progress on The Davis Initiative (more to come).
- Organize my reading. I like to read. I do it all the time. But the things I like to read are a bit scattered, especially blogs, and I often end up playing catch-up on those.
- Contribute to some of the open source initiatives in CF, like CFDocs.
- Find the CFUG here, and if it no longer exists, get it running again.
- Attend at least two or three developer conferences. My short list is:
- CF Summit
- dev.Objective()
- CodeStock
- Wanted to do SQL Saturday in Nashville, but I moved. I need to find one down here.
- I'd also like to hit Music City Code this year, but the logistics might make it difficult. I've promised a friend that if his preso gets selected, I'm coming up.
- Present at least once to a UG, a conference, or my mirror. I have several ideas that have been rattling around in my noggin for way too long. I've already submitted two General topics to a conference. I can do this.
- Learn:
- more about the CF functionality that I don't use regularly.
- more about jQuery, that I do now use regularly.
- more about the RaspberryPi that I finally picked up this year. This thing is like Legos for geeks! Next Christmas, I better have my Pi-powered Christmas Lights running.
- more about TestBox and all the other Boxes.
- Actually read some of the coding books on my bookshelf. As a self-taught coder, this can only be beneficial for me.
- Pi-powered Christmas Lights - see above.
So now that I have publicly expressed my goals, I hope it will give me the kick in the backside to actually DO some of these this year.
After I see the new Star Wars, of course. :-)
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