Last year I posted professional goals along with quite a few other bloggers and it helped to keep me somewhat focused on them (for at least the beginning of the year).  I am going to do so again in the hopes that I do even better this year.  My goals this year are a bit less aggressive than last year’s goals, but I think they’re still enough to challenge me and make me work at them.

Community Involvement

New Posts on SSC Forums: This goal is only 25% of last years goal, but I’ve fallen completely out of the habit of posting on a regular basis, so I’m hoping that sometime soon I get into the habit again.  If I do, I shouldn’t have any problem meeting this goal.  (Currently at 1412)

Article for SSC:  I’m not really sure what I’ll write this one on, but I enjoyed the time I spent on the last one and think this is a good goal to continue yearly.

Blog Posts Written: I really enjoy blogging and want to get back into it, so I’m setting a somewhat more moderate goal of 35 posts this year.  I’m really hoping to exceed that, but don’t want to feel like it’s out of reach if I miss a few weeks.

Participate in T-SQL Tuesdays:  T-SQL is my focus, so participating in these just makes sense and serves as a good inspiration for blog topics.

Host a Lunch and Learn at my Office:  I haven’t talked to anyone about this yet, but I figure I still have 11 months to pull it off and there are a lot of people I work with who are interested in learning more about SQL Server, so I figure I’ll sneak one of these in there this year. 

Learning

Read SQL Books:  I want to claim that I’ve definitively *finished* 2 books this year.  Last year I had 3 down as my goal and don’t claim any because I didn’t exhaustively read any of them.  I skimmed a couple and read bits and pieces of others, but I think reading 2 full SQL books a year is within reach.

Attain MCTS + MCITP:  Last year I let myself use the excuse that the closest testing center was almost 2 hours away, but this year I’m fairly sure I work about a block from one, so that excuse no longer holds water.  I’d like to knock both of these out this year

Learn the basics of .Net:  Really, my biggest holdup with this is just how confusing Visual Studio is if you’ve never used it.  If you’re used to it that might seem ridiculous, but I get lost every time I try to mess with it.  I’m sure this would be fixed if I ever really sat down to devote time to it though and I’d like to do that this year so I can take that excuse off the books.

Networking

Add Linked In Connections:  I feel like LinkedIn is a decent tool for maintaining professional connections and I’d like to continue expanding my network.  Last year I did very well on this goal and would like to keep up that positive growth. (Currently at 84)

Attend SQL Server User Group Meetings:  SSUG meetings are a great way to learn about topics as well as meet your peers and keep a pulse on what’s going on in the community.

Attend a SQL Saturday:  We had a local SQL Saturday in Raleigh last year, and as far as I know there’s no reason they wouldn’t hold another one this year.  Ideally, I’d like to hit up 1 or 2 others, but a lot of this goal depends on where they end up being hosted and how busy I am on those particular weekends, so I want to keep this goal conservative.