Specific focuses and vague goals for 2016

It’s funny how I’ve been looking forward more to writing this post than I was to writing my reflections on 2015. I guess it’s good to get some of that out of the way first to help focus more on what’s next.

I’ve adjusted last year’s self-reflection projection title a bit to better apply specificity and vagueness.

As 2016 progresses, I hope to revisit this post as a guide for what I thought I would enjoy doing as the year went on.

Reading.

I’m successfully falling in love with reading again. And now that I’m back on track I think I can get a bit more focused. I set a goal of 15 books in my 2016 Goodreads reading challenge. Here’s how I want that to break down.

2/3 should be fiction. 1/3 should be non-fiction.

I’d like to continue my Orwell streak. I rounded things out pretty well with some of his lesser known novels last year. Now it’s time to revisit my favorites, specifically Homage to Catalonia and 1984, and finally get to (finish?) The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London. Three of those count as non-fiction. Sweet!

I’m slightly more fascinated with James Joyce after finishing Ulysses. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man should be part of 2016.

I’d like to finish the original Foundation trilogy and I have Second Foundation waiting for me on the Kindle. The first took a bit and the second was better. If the story continues to be interesting I may find myself reading even more Asimov.

I’ll mention Hemingway because I finally read A Moveable Feast last year and want to dig in, but he’s a backup for the time being.

William Hertling’s Singularity series has been a ton of fun and I still need to finish the 4th, The Turing Exception. I’d like to explore more fiction along these lines if you have any suggestions!

As for non-fiction, I have a very specific list to start with:

• I’m in progress on The Basque History of the World, which will probably be my first book for January.
• Between the World and Me has been sitting on my shelf for 3 months.
• And Crypto, because I just can’t get enough.

I’m forcing myself to stop recommending myself books now. Time to read!

Learning.

In a similar vein, I’m starting to focus more on learning and how I can establish patterns for learning in my day to day life. Rather than attempting to adapt on the fly, I’d want to start being proactive.

In 2016…

A passable amount of German. We’re planning on being in Vienna for about a month in June around WordCamp Europe. I’d like to be prepared for some limited conversation. The time we spent in France and Spain in 2011 helped me realize how much I stumble in situations where English is not an option. While a large number of people in Vienna speak English, I’d rather attempt German more often than not.

JavaScript. Deeply. 😜

But seriously. I can sit down and hack at JavaScript. I can build things that rely on JavaScript. But I can’t give you a comparison of frameworks or really tell you why React seems like overkill and something like Ember might be better. And I’d like to.

One of my goals for WSU in 2016 is to establish a more friendly front-end development workflow for WordPress themes involving templates and a local environment requiring HTML, not PHP. The only way this really happens is if I start to know what I’m doing. 😉

And JavaScript, for now, is the future. There is a lot of fun to be had and I’d like to start digging in.

One of the things I’m going to try to introduce to my daily workflow is spaced repetition through Anki. I’m expecting this to help mostly with memorizing frequent German words, though it would be interesting if I can apply it the right way to JavaScript as well.

Writing.

Still a goal! It feels good to be 650 words into something, I should do it more often. I have so much to share that fades away once I do something else instead. I should start sharing instead of doing something else.

Speaking.

I was surprised to look back and see that I spoke 4 times last year. I remember feeling burnt out half-way through the year and not wanting to apply or speak at all.

My talk at WordCamp Vancouver was invigorating, mostly because I didn’t have time to prepare as a fill-in and I made some modifications to a talk I had already given.

Until then I had focused a lot on never giving the same talk twice. I used the process of creating the talk as a way to dive deeply into the subject and learn something about it.

But it’s fun to talk about something you’re the expert on! And I want to focus more on that in 2016. I’ll probably submit the same talk to a few camps, and be less worried about missing out. And when I do give the talk the 3rd or 4th time, those kinks will be gone and we’ll all have a better time.

I have a few weeks left to apply for WordCamp Europe. I’ll cross my fingers for that, LoopConf 2, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and US. I’d love to hit Denver or Chicago, but we’ll see. Budgets!

WordPress

Make multisite better? 😘

But really. Some big stuff should be figured out this year.

WP_Site, WP_Site_Query, and WP_Network_Query to start.

In the process I’d like to become less afraid at taking a scythe to stuff that’s been there since the beginning and replacing it with some definition of expectations.

I want to adapt our configuration at WSU to use WP Multi Network instead so that we aren’t reinventing the wheel. Doing so should help make better decisions around the future of multi-network in WordPress core.

Oh, and I’d like to introduce a new site switcher.

Washington State University

It’s going to be 3 years in July! Big things are going to happen in these first 6 months. To start, we’ll have a new WordPress developer joining the team at some point in the next couple months!

This means I’ll have time to focus more on connecting big picture stuff:

1. Content syndication throughout the University.
2. Give everyone a place to share their work with open registration for students, faculty, and staff. Free websites!
3. A better search experience for the University built on Elasticsearch.

In the process, I’d like to do a much better job for our team of defining how we work with the web at WSU. Now that we have a new WordPress developer coming on board, it will be especially helpful to have documentation to match.

I’d also like to do a much better job of talking about the work that we’re doing. Things like being HTTPS forward and embracing HTTP/2.0 immediately are pretty cool. Professors and labs that are inspired to share their work with WordPress are awesome.

These should be written about in better ways.

And other wonderful experiences.

Have a great 2016!