I’ve never been a fan of “New Years Resolutions”, maybe it’s because they seam to be so quickly abandoned.. maybe it’s because of the sound of permanence that they carry. A resolution, resolute, solidarity… oops, I missed it, why even try now. Hmmm.. so I like goals. Goal can me missed, re-adjusted, and gone after again. Goals can be small and quickly achievable or they can be grandiose and drivers for the whole year. I have life goals. I have things I strive for all they time.. and then I have goals, that I set as markers for each year.
2 years ago, I had a developer goal of getting better at my code-ninja skills. Then I sat with David O’Hara and Mark Miller at the MVP Summit, they showed me CodeRush, I embraced it….
Check mission accomplished.
Last year, I was starting a new job, learning GIT, finishing a chapter for a book, finishing some Windows Phone 7 apps for Microsoft’s Showcase – so those were my goals.
I’ve been at my new job for over a year now, my side company, that specialized in developer mentoring and architecture, Proaction Mentors, finished 3 showcased Windows Phone 7 apps for Microsoft (because of NDA’s I can’t tell you which one’s – sorry… *however* I can tell you that if you have a Windows Phone, then you probably already have one of my apps installed). I discovered Smart GIT (love this for GIT!), Finally, yes, with all of this going on, we were able to get a new and awesome book out the door!
Check missions accomplished.
This year, I have a couple of developer goals as well.
1. Start using my GIT Hub account to actually post code and participate in some project, instead of just stalking the projects that I’m interested in. 
At a minimum, I’d like to get my demo code out there, and reference that as the place to get the code for any of my talks. Preferably, I’d like to fork and contribute to some of the projects that I’ve been using (and locally improving) recently.
2. Attend and speak at some new conferences. I’ve already blogged about this, but it’s worth mentioning, I’m moving in to some new areas with the Agile community this year, and I’m planning on making a focused effort on participating more at a couple of conferences… with some new talks that I’m really excited about!
3. Do more with ASP.NET MVC and AZURE. This is for my personal saw sharpening. I’d like to create and publish and commercial product on these platforms this year… that’s goal #3 on purpose. I have no idea if I’ll actually have time to get this done – but I’d like to!
What about you? What are your developer goals for this year? Have you made any resolutions? Share them in the comments.
Happy New Year of Coding!
Image Credit
Sally Mahoney
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