2015: Let's DOS IT!

Published by Christian Mohn · Read in about 4 min (686 words)

Inspired by Scott Lowe’s Looking Ahead: My 2015 Projects, I’ve decided to do something similar.

Since I didn’t post anything like this in 2014, I can’t really go back and see how my plans turned out, or provide any assessement of it. I can say this though, 2014 was pretty awesome. I got a promotion, my vExpert status was renewed, vNinja was voted in the top 50 of the 2014 top VMware & virtualization vote, I published a book and finally got the Norwegian VMUG up and running. My VCAP-DCA 550 should be on this list as well, and so should my failure in achieving VCAP-DCD certification status. 2014 was also the busiest year in vNinja.net’s history, with close to a doubling of traffic generated through the year. The same goes for vSoup, some of the episodes we recorded in 2014 had some rather insane listening numbers…

Last year was also the year I realized that becoming a real proper IT-Architect takes work. Real work. I’m not there yet, but I will be.

All in all, 2014 will stand as a good year for me professionally. Not perfect, but good. But here’s the thing; How much of this was planned and how much of it was made up on the fly? Honestly, most of it is due more to circumstances than deliberate actions on my part and that’s the main thing I want to change in 2015. 2014 is done and dusted, let’s get on with what’s to come.

So here it is, my own 2015 bucket list.

  • Completely master Markdown - I want Markdown to be a part of my muscle memory, so that I don’t have to think and look up formatting. The possibilities when combined with Pandoc are pretty amazing, and so far I’ve only scraped the surface. So, Markdown will be me go to markup language for just about anything I write in 2015.

  • Get more organized - As mentioned before, things often happen without me actively seeking or planning to do something. This has to change in 2015. Getting more organized, and reducing the amount of digital clutter will help me focus on the thing that matter to me and my business. No, I’m not turning into a life coach, nor am I trying to be the most organized man in the world (Trust me, that will never happen), but I need to get my stuff together in a coherent manner - and stick to it. This is probably more of an effort than most people realize.

  • Write better blog posts - This is an easy one, really. I have always regarded blog posting as a spur-of-the-moment thing, writing about something whenever I feel like it. Often written very quickly and posted immediately. I might still do quite a few of those posts in 2015, but I plan on really working on how I publish, when I publish and what I publish. Hopefully this will mean better blog posts, as I’ve always thought that quality beats quantity any day.

  • Get that VCAP-DCD certification - If there is one single thing that 2014 thought me it is that if I want something, I have to make an effort. I was close on passing it, very close in fact. Perhaps it’s just my age starting to show, I don’t know, but I’m certain that if I genuinely try, I’ll get stuff done. I want to get this box ticked, in order to make the next step to VCDX. I don’t think 2015 will be the year I defend, but I sure want all the other tickboxes to be ticked as soon as possible. One does not simply become an architect.

  • Redesign vNinja - vNinja will be redesigned in the near future. I´m not going the route of all the other cool kids, and move to some other publishing platform, but it will get a new, cleaner and simpler look.

And that, as they say, are the broad strokes. There is a theme here, and the theme is pretty simple. In 2015, I will: Declutter, Organize and Simplify (DOS).

I wish myself good luck.

Post last updated on January 2, 2024: Add author

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The primary focus is on IT architecture and data center technologies like virtualization and related topics, but other content also pops up from time to time.

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