Goals for 2013

Yes, while it is already February 2013, I decided that I should provide myself a commitment device for the year.

Reading List

Let's start with what I plan on reading for the year. My list of books is long, but it is exciting.

Blackboard

Plain and simple...kill it. I love this job and all the opportunities it presents. I love the work environment and everybody who is there. There are some great challenges and a fast paced environment. No metrics that I can use to track my progress come to mind, other than my happiness.

Blogging

When 2012 ended and I tallied up all my blog posts, I had to say I was quiet disappointed with the number of posts. 20! That's it. Well, for 2013, I plan on pushing myself. 1 blog entry a week. That's 52 entries. Now I know what you are saying, "Mike, it's February and this is only your second post". Well, I am going to post as much as possible to catch up.

DC Continuous Integration Meetup

I am proud of the progress we have made on the DC Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment Meetup (opens in a new tab). This group has had some great meetings and we have some great ones coming up.

My goal is to continue the success the group has had before. I plan on alternating meeting locations between Blackboard in Chinatown, DC and Excella in Arlington, VA. I also want to continue to find speakers that want to share their real experiences implementing continuous integration, continuous delivery or even continuous deployment. I will try my best to turn away speakers who want to push corporate agendas.

Regarding metrics, here we go:

Increase membership to 250 members (currently 179)
12 meetings for the year (1 per month)
At least one meeting is a hands on workshop

Public Speaking

By the end of 2012, I have two good presentations in my bag of tricks and I would like to ideally develop two more. I would like to continue speaking at user groups and conferences throughout the year. My goal is to have at least 4 talks this year, 2 of which are new talks.

Chef

My goal plain and simple where is to learn Chef (opens in a new tab). I have familiarity with Puppet and how it works but right now we are leaning towards using Chef. By the end of 2013 I want to have extensive knowledge of building Chef based solutions.

Jenkins Plugins

I have extensive knowledge of Jenkins (opens in a new tab) and how to install and utilize it. I would like to learn more of is Jenkins' plugin architecture (opens in a new tab). My goal is to contribute to an open source Jenkins plugin. Additionally, I would love to start my plugin.

Learn Ruby

This is a simple enough task. I have spent most of my career on the JVM and I feel it is time to branch out a bit. Yes, I could learn Ruby on JRuby, but I might as well take the full-on plunge. My goal is to be able to be able to hold my own in a Ruby environment. Pretty simple. This dovetails nicely with my Chef goal.

In Summary

So, to tally up my goals for 2013, I have to:

Read 10 books
Post 52 blog entries
Host 12 meetup meetings (DCCI)
Increase membership to 250+ members (DCCI)
Host a hands-on workshop meeting (DCCI)
Give 4 talks (2 new presentations)
Learn Chef
Learn Ruby
Contribute to Jenkins open source plugin