Posting goals online is great as long as you meet your goals, can be something less than great if you don’t. It’s all in the point of view that your next client/employer has, do they like someone that sets goals even if there is some risk, or do they see someone that doesn’t follow through if the goals aren’t met? It’s wise to be cautious, yet there is value in sharing goals and the thinking behind them, so here goes for 2010!

PASS

• Complete my new project of building a speaker bureau
• Continue to participate in the SQL Server Standard and grow that in 2010 to at least 16 articles published
• Post once a month about what I’m doing and what I can report on
• Try to change the culture to make translucency the default and get more board members writing about their efforts (how to measure?)
• Attend the 2010 PASS Summit
• Decide whether to run for the Board again

Work

• Put more effort into SQLShare.com (if you haven’t looked, the concept is very short videos that teach one thing), for public goals let’s say it’s:
  • Doing 20 videos myself
  • Bringing in at least six new authors
  • Make it faster, smoother, more effort on SEO
  • More emphasis on the classes I teach
• Build something else SQL related (I have ideas, but you’ll have to wait!)
• Do a better job of pacing my work, I’m going to try to stick to 40 hours and very few weekends (other than for events)
• Speak at each of the Florida SQL user groups (may have to do Live Meeting for Pensacola!
• Attend at least six community events, but limit travel to no more than one weekend per month (I’d go to all of them if time/money allowed!)
• Try to attend one community event (SQLSaturday, Code Camp, or user group meeting) each 

oPASS (Note: I share the Presidency of OPASS with Jack Corbett, so some of these are shared goals)

• Conduct 12 meetings in 2010, all in person, but in some cases using LiveMeeting for remote speakers
• Raise attendance from 20-25 to 30-35 for meetings with an in person speaker
• Work harder on getting sponsors to subsidize 100% of our meeting costs plus bringing in 4 out of town speakers
• Conduct a ‘how to be a speaker/blogger’ course for members
• Grow/identify three new local speakers (first time speakers at the user group, at least one of which goes on to speak at SQLSaturday Orlando)

SQLSaturday Orlando

• Conduct our fourth annual event in Sep/Oct 2010
• Try to move the event to central or South Orlando to reach a different market (finding a venue is hard)
• Shoot for real attendance of 350
• Identify someone to lead the 5th event in 2011

Professional

• Complete the transition from my SSC blog to the new one here (move whatever content I can or choose to, get the theme set, spend some time learning how to leverage WordPress)
• Write a book on being/becoming a first level manager
• Write a short publication (almost a whitepaper) on how to participate in the SQL community (not sure to what extent this will be a collaborative effort yet)
• Take one MS SQL exam (I debated going for the Master cert, but I just don’t see the time there this year) to make sure I’m staying current
• Grow my LinkedIn network to 700 (up about 185 from today)
• Blogging
• Post 200 times, but not necessarily every day
• Highlight one SQL blogger each month
• Do a lot more commenting on blog posts by others, a goal of one per day on average (pain to measure)

It’s a lot of stuff, but is it enough? Too much? Right now all of those seem achievable, though I definitely need to spend time on strategy for some of them in the next week or so, especially hard ones like building my network.