2007 What are my Resolutions?
Accountability is an important charactersitic that is manadatory for successful people and organizations, without it there is really nothing that truly motivates a person to acheive their goals and expectations. Therefor I am am going to lay out several of my personal and professional resolutions for 2007 here for everyone to see.
- Completely revamp Extreme Web Works. This sort of happened because of things outside of my control last year and this goal is sort of ambiguous because I am not really sure in what capacity I really want Extreme Web Works to continue. Certainly continue servicing existing customers. But most likely ground rules will drastically change, causing most of the trouble making customers to hit the road and making my life much easier. One thing is for sure I am going to stop trying to compete with below cost hosting providers and raise my base hosting rates back to where they were when I started. I also plan on raising my rates immediately.
- Continue to build my own web properties. I started doing this some last summer, but sort of got distracted the last 5 months or so. When I was putting energy into the effort it provided some decent supplimental income and provided a great platform to test some of my development ideas. I will certainly announce any updates on that front.
- Do much, much more contract work. After my experiences over the past 5 months, this is the way to go, I don't have to bother myself with business development type things and can focus completely on development. Much less stress invovled and I can do a much better job with my actual development.
- Attend at least two development conferences. I currently plan on attending Mix '07 and PDC, so hopefully that will come to happen. As a corrolary I also want to attend at least 2 code camps this year. Unfortunately I am not starting off well because I can not make it to Atlanta this month.
- Speak at more events. I have really had a good time presenting to user groups and code camps over the past year. I find that it really pushes me to find the edges of the ASP.NET platform that help me differentiate myself from the crowd. I plan on seeking out more User Group opportunities this year, there are several in my imediate region I can get to with a short drive, so be on the look out. I also get to New Jersey at least once or twice a year as well as the Dallas/Ft. Worth area for family reasons, so a User Group would be very doable for me.
- Make at least one strong code based blog entry a week. I think this should be doable as I seemed to come real close to this in 2006 and I have a few waiting to be finished and published for you guys right now.
- At least explore the options of writing another book. Not sure if this is doable, but I have already begun exploring this option. On a related note, I think I will have the content of my current book submitted to Wiley by this time next week (see public accountablity on this :>).
- Personally I want to finish loosing the weight I set out on last summer. I dropped 57 pounds in three months last summer, but have gained about 20 back because I have not been able to get back in the gym like I want. So I hope to drop 30 pounds from where I am right now over the next 3-6 months.
- I also want to watch less television, I feel like I am becoming a middle aged couch potatoe these past few months. I DVR way too many things. To my credit it does take me months to actually watch some of the shows and others I just delete.
- Prove I can program in C#. This seems sort of strange since I have done 99% of my programming in VB.NET over the past 5 years. But I am seeing more and more opportunities for C# and recently everyone is asking for it. Personally I think C# is not as efficient to program, but C# jobs pay more money and seem to be more plentiful at the moment.
I think I will leave it at that. Look for my 2007 technology predictions later this week.