It’s really nice to look back at the past year to see what you’ve accomplished and come up with ideas for how to be even better the next year. I started doing these as a way for friends and family to keep up with me without the hassle of doing holiday cards (2008 and 2007 editions). I’m going to try to make this one shorter than in previous years and focus on just a few things.
2009 in Review
- Wrote a book – Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy (available in paperback, kindle, or PDF versions).
- Launched The Crazy Neighbor, a new website celebrating crazy neighbors everywhere, where you can contribute pictures of your crazy neighbors.
- Helped organize some great events as part of Legion of Tech, including several Ignite Portland events and BarCampPortland. I encourage you to watch the Ignite Portland documentary. Liz did a great job of capturing the spirit of the event in just 8 minutes of video, and I was honored to participate with an interview.
- Spoke at some great events, including sxsw, Innotech, WebVisions (video interview and presentation materials), Community 2.0, Ignite Corvallis (video of my talk), Business Leader NW (audio recording of my discussion), and others. More details and some of my presentations can be found on my speaking page.
- Continued my work with Yahoo Pipes, including a bunch of 2 minute video tutorials.
- Had many great clients and really interesting work in 2009. Most of it was confidential online community strategy work that I can’t link to, but I also wrote a bunch of blog posts for GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily and Intel.
Some thoughts on what I want to do in 2010
- Continue to do interesting work on fun projects where I can collaborate with cool people.
- Start a few more websites, like I did with The Crazy Neighbor. It’s a great learning experience, a good way to practice my skills and fun to experiment with something new.
- Stay healthy by continuing to work out and eat healthy food.
- Spend more time reading a combination of fiction and business / technology books.
- Take more beach vacations! I haven’t taken a real vacation that didn’t involve visiting family, since I started my own business. In my defense, I did take two beach vacations the previous year, but it’s time for me to start planning another nice vacation.
I gave up on a holiday letter or cards a few years ago; however, last year I started doing a year in review post, and it seemed to work pretty well. Here’s the 2008 version …
Let’s start with the negative.
What did I want to do in 2008 that didn’t quite make it?
- Didn’t quite achieve 501(c)(3) status for Legion of Tech. The paperwork is nearly done and will be submitted in January.
- Didn’t get the O’Reilly Art of Community book published. For too many reasons to list here, we finally decided to can the project.
- Didn’t do anything spectacular enough that it prompted someone to write a Wikipedia article for me.
Now on to the fun part.
2008: A year of change
- My biggest change by far was deciding to leave my steady employment at Jive Software to become an Online Community and Social Media Consultant. I am very happy with the change, and despite the economy, things are going pretty well.
- Redesigned my blog with a better look and feel.
- Helped organize events like BarCampPortland, Ignite Portland, and more as the co-founder and chair for Legion of Tech.
- Ignite Portland was featured in the Oregonian resulting in mayhem, overcrowding, and a new LoT policy of no mainstream media coverage prior to events like Ignite and BarCampPortland.
- Spoke at a bunch of conferences: OSCON, Community 2.0, Innotech, BlogHer Business, Web 2.0 Expo, Ignite Portland, Love@First Website, a few BarCamps, etc.
- Attended too many local Portland events to count.
- I took my mom on a vacation to Maui where we spent time lounging on the beach and drinking fruity drinks out of pineapples.
- I joined Portland-based startup, Shizzow, to manage the Shizzow community (as a side project, since we are currently bootstrapping). We were also honored to be guests on the Strange Love Live podcast.
- Became obsessed with Yahoo Pipes resulting in a video podcast series with Yahoo Pipes demos.
- Began writing for GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily.
My personal hopes for 2009
- Grow Fast Wonder Consulting into a more successful business with a few more clients.
- Achieve 501(c)(3) status for Legion of Tech.
- Continue to help organize more awesome events in Portland.
- Finish my eBook about Companies and Online Communities.
- Learn more about Yahoo Pipes.
- Continue mission #GetOffButt to get healthier, stronger, and in better shape.
- Again, I want to do something spectacular enough that it prompts someone to write a Wikipedia article for me.
Another thing I’m excited about for 2009
- The Portland tech community. I rave about it almost constantly, but I do expect the Portland tech community to continue to produce exciting new companies, projects, and community organized events to become even stronger in 2009.
Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:
Open source, Linux kernel research, online communities and other stuff I'm interested in posting.