Looking Ahead: My 2015 Projects
Published on 16 Jan 2015 · Filed in Personal · 495 words (estimated 3 minutes to read)In this post, I’m going to discuss some projects that I’ve set out for myself in the upcoming year. I’ve done this in years past, and the feedback that I’ve gotten from readers is that they found these posts to be quite helpful.
I first started posting annual project lists in January 2012, when I posted a list of some projects for 2012. In January 2013, I graded myself on my progress (spoiler alert: I didn’t do very well), followed by a new 2013 project list in early February. The series of posts ends in January 2014 when I assessed my 2013 performance.
Here’s what I’m seeing for myself with regard to 2015 projects:
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Complete a new book. Having successfully transitioned the “Mastering VMware vSphere” series to Nick Marshall (who did an astounding job with the 5.5 release of the book), it’s time for me to get back into the book writing saddle. One of my projects for this coming year will be to complete a new book before the end of the year. This is a pretty significant effort, and it will absorb a large portion of my time and attention (as those who have written books can attest). I’m not ready to talk details about the book I’m going to write, but rest assured I’ll post something here when the time is right.
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Make more open source contributions. Here, “more” means more than in 2014, both in the number of commits as well as in the number of projects to which I commit. In 2014 I made commits to both OpenStack and Open vSwitch; I’d like to expand that this year. Maybe I can add the recently-announced OVN project to my list?
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Expand to a new configuration management solution. I’ve worked with Puppet a fair amount, but in 2015 I’d like to expand my knowledge into a new configuration management solution. The two options I’m weighing right now are Ansible and Salt. I’m leaning toward Ansible because it’s written in Python, leverages YAML, is hosted on GitHub, and doesn’t require any agents. As I have found in previous years, selecting projects that have some synergy with other projects can be helpful, and I think the Python/YAML/GitHub combo aligns well with other efforts/directions/projects. I’ll post more later once I’ve made the decision which direction I’m headed.
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Complete a “wildcard project.” In the spirit of “I don’t know what I don’t know,” I’m putting a “wildcard project” here in the list. There’s lots of innovation happening in the IT space, and I want to be open to what new technologies, new projects, and new ideas might pop up over the course of this coming year.
So, that’s it for my 2015 project list. Now, if I ever get around to adding the necessary code to the site to enable comments via Disqus, you could tell me your thoughts about this list of projects. Until then, feel free to hit me via e-mail or Twitter. Thanks!