2015 Goals

Back at it with another beginning of the year goal post. The best part of this kind of post is being able to look back and say “Man, what was I thinking? or “Wow, I really changed direction from where I thought I was going!”. My plan for this year is to make all of my goals for this year quantifiable. We’ll see how it goes…

Blogging: Its number one on my list for a reason. I really want to improve here and I will set the goal pretty high, at least for me.
Goal: 100 posts for 2015

Presentations: I am speaking at a meeting in March (need to finish that up) and planning on submitting to a few SQLSaturdays to see if I can present. I’d also like to present online, maybe to the Healthcare VC.
Goal: 3 presentations total

Books: I’m going to change this up this year and not just set a number, but also add a requirement of writing up a review.
Goal: 5 technical/career related books with reviews

Conference attendance: This one may be tough since attending may be out of my control. I had big plans this year of going to 3, but that won’t be happening.
Goal: 1

SQLSaturday: I went to the very first SQLSaturday and in many ways that was the tipping point for me choosing a career with data. I have not attended nearly as many of these as I intended mainly due to commitments with family. I’m going to make a better effort to attend more this year.
Goal: 3

Certifications: This is one goal where it should be pretty reasonable to make show progress. I am one exam away from MCSE and I need to get that wrapped up. The Tableau Desktop and Hortonworks Certified Apache Hadoop 2.0 Developer certification exams look possible here too. Maybe not both, but I should be able to make one of them happen in 2015.
Goal: 2

Twitter: Hard to set a goal for this one. Do I measure in terms of interaction? Followers? Tweets? Tweeting more will make the other two follow, right? As of now, I have 257 total. Doubling that should not be too difficult.
Goal: 250 tweets for the year

PASS Healthcare Virtual Chapter: This one is especially difficult due to the limited presenters available. We are trying to get some momentum going with the group. If that happens a meeting every other month should be attainable.
Goal: 6 presentations

OK, there there are. Goals always change due to unknown factors and I don’t expect these to be any different. I want to keep up this year and adjust as needed, possibly even adding more depending on what happens.