2010, the year ahead

Well its 2010 already and like a lot of people I’ve been thinking about the year ahead. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. Blog regularly, I know not a original idea, but something I think is very helpful for both a career perspective and a learning tool. It seems that this year is the year blogging gets big again. With sites like Project 52, where blogging in encouraged instead of Twittering.
2. Join Project 52, it will be a big challenge producing a weekly article, but the challenge in investigating a subject and writing a article is worth it.
3. Work on a open source project, this year I want to really get into Adobe AIR, but unfortunately the place I currently work does not use AIR. But not all is lost, thankfully there is a large open source community of projects which I can get involved in so I can use Adobe AIR.
4. Learn Ruby on Rails, now I am mainly a Flex and Flash developer, but I’m also interested in learning a new web framework in order to build website with. Ruby on Rails has had a lot of hype over the last couple of years, and I have been interested in the hype that has been spoken about Rails. So this year I’m going to learn Rails.
5. Build a website for a charity, I’ve been lucky enough to receive some help from charities who held me and my family when my son was diagnosed with Autism. So as part of my ‘giving back’ I’m going to help one of these charities update and develop their website. (Going to use Ruby on Rails if I can).
6. Work towards eventually working from myself, my great plan is to eventually work for myself as a Micro-ISV, using Adobe AIR as my tool of choice to create a suite of products that I can sell. Working towards this goal I’d like to be at a point where I can work on client projects and my own projects. While at the moment I can only work on my own projects in my spare time, by eventually working for myself I could spend more time on the products for my Micro-ISV.

So these are my main goals for this year, here is a list of the other minor goals I have for this year:

• Train regular in BJJ and JKD.
• Compete in a BJJ competition.
• Achieve Brown Belt level 3 in Jeet Kune Do.
• Start running.
• Read Essential ActionScript.
• Read Getting Things Done.

After writing this list it looks as though I have a very busy year ahead.