Looking Ahead: My 2017 Projects
Published on 31 Jan 2017 · Filed in Personal · 613 words (estimated 3 minutes to read)For the last few years, I’ve been sharing my list of projects for each year (here’s the list for 2012, the list for 2013, 2015’s list, and last year’s list—I didn’t do a list for 2014). Toward the end of each year, I also publish a “report card” assessing my performance against that year’s list (here’s the 2016 assessment). In this post, I’m going to share my list of planned projects for 2017.
Without further ado, here’s the list for 2017:
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Finish the network automation book. One way or another, the network automation book I’m writing with Jason Edelman and Matt Oswalt is getting finished in 2017. (It’s available now as an Early Access edition if you’d like to give it a look and provide some feedback.)
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Launch an open source book project. This is something I’ve been tossing around for a while now. Since my efforts at making code contributions to an open source project aren’t going so well (though I’m going to keep moving in that direction), I figured I’d contribute in a way I know I can do. This is going to be a “cookbook”-style book, and the goal I’m setting for myself is to produce at least 2 “recipes” per quarter for the book. Stay tuned for some additional details soon. (Stretch goal: Produce 3 “recipes” per quarter.)
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Produce some video content. My target this year is to produce at least one piece of video content every quarter. This will most likely be a brief video demo of a project, a walk-through of a particular configuration, or similar. (Stretch goal: Publish 6 videos over the course of 2017, instead of only 4.)
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Get the Full Stack Journey podcast back on track. I launched the Full Stack Journey podcast last year, and managed to get 10 episodes published (reasonably close to my target of monthly episodes). Now that I have a better idea of what’s involved (this post by Ethan Banks is truly spot on), I’m going to shoot for 9 episodes in 2017 and give myself some room for really busy periods (like VMworld). I know that heavy-duty podcasters will tell me that I need to do more in order to really build an audience, but—like my blog itself—the point of the podcast isn’t monetization. It’s to help the community. (Stretch goal: publish 12 episodes in 2017.)
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Complete a “wildcard project.” I’ve had this on the list for the last couple of years. The thinking behind including this is that it’s pretty difficult (impossible?) to predict what sorts of opportunities will emerge over the course of the year, and I’d like to remain open to tackling a new or different project should it present itself. At the same time, it’s entirely possible that a new or different project won’t appear, so I probably won’t give myself a negative grade if some new unforeseen project doesn’t emerge.
So there’s my list of 2017 projects, and—importantly—associated goals for each project (along with stretch goals for some of the projects). Two other things that will keep me busy this year (aside from my day job, of course!) but which I’m not going to list as projects include:
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Migrating to Linux on my primary laptop (a new Dell Latitude E7370; see my brief hardware review here)
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Supporting the VMUG community worldwide (I’ll be in Pittsburgh in early March and St. Louis in early April, with more dates on the horizon; contact me if you’re a VMUG leader and are interested in having me speak at your event)
I’d love to hear your feedback (positive or negative, but try to be constructive if at all possible). Feel free to contact me on Twitter. Thanks!