My Geeky Goals for 2011 (T-SQL Tuesday #14)

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday party is being hosted by Jen McCown from MidnigthDBA and the topic she picked was:

What techie resolutions have you been pondering, and why?

…and what a better time to talk about goals and resolutions than the beginning of the year, right?
 
A few nights ago, I went trough the exercise of reviewing my career/community goals for the new year and I came up with a rather long list of things:

• Speaking. 5 presentations (or maybe more?). Last year was when I got serious about it and ended up delivering about a dozen of them in 7 different cities. It was a lot of fun and I felt it helped me a lot to get to the first stop: feeling confortable in front of an audience. This year, I would like to polish my presentation skills, but I doubt I will be able to commit to present as many times as last year, mainly because I need to reduce time away from family and travel expenses.
• Writing. I am considering 2 different formats this year: Technical articles and blogging. I am thinking I should be able to write 3 articles and to blog an average of 2 or 3 time per month. Again, trying to be conservative to make sure I get enough time for the remaining goals. A stretch goal here is to write some of them in Spanish.
• Helping: I want to increase my contribution to technical forums – perhaps sticking to MSDN SSIS forum for now. This is how I first started contributing to the technical community and something I really enjoy.
• Learning: The wish list here is long, so  in order to make it doable I may need to limit myself to 2 new areas/technologies. So, right now, I think any 2 from the list below should make a good goal:
• Data visualization
• Data Quality
• Analytics
• PowerShell (yes, me too!)
• SSIS Denali

I am choosing to work some in several areas rather than doing a lot in just a couple of them. Not sure if this will be the most effective way to invest my time, but it looks like is going to be fun. At the end of the year, I expect to look not only at the number of goals I have accomplished, but also how fun the ride was.
Happy new year!