I did a goal review back on August 22, reporting some good progress on my yearly goals and some plans for the remainder of the year.  Somehow, I seemed to have fallen off the earth since then.  I only posted twice since
then, and both of those were in the week following the review.  I’ll be posting this week about what happened (spoiler alert…not much).

In the meantime, here’s how I did on my goals for 2016

1. 100 posts. I only got to 35.  That’s kind of embarassing.  On the plus side, I had some of my best months in the last year (January – 10 posts, April – 8 posts, August – 7 posts).  If I could keep that kind of momentum it would make a lot of difference.  On the down side, if you exclude those 3 months I only has 10 posts in the remaining 9 months.  That’s abysmal.
2. Virtualization Lab. In my review I mentioned that the box I bought to do virtualization on was only at 16GB of RAM and I needed to bump it up.  Didn’t do that.  I also mentioned the possibility of buying an R710 off of eBay.  Did that.  Dual, quad-core cpus, 36GB of RAM, 8TB of storage (so far).  I’ve done more virtualization since I bought it (in October) than I had ever done before.  I can definitely say I got this goal accomplished!
3. Configure Servers with DSC. Other than the talk I did at MidMo, I haven’t really done much DSC this year.  Now that I’ve got a solid lab machine, this is high on the list for 2017.
4. PowerShell User Group. I’ve started a PSUG at work (I work for a sofware company, so there are hundreds of people using PowerShell) and we’ve had 3 meetings so far.  They’ve mostly been sharing news and what we’re working on, but it’s a good start.  Beginning to form a community there.  Also, I attended several (more than a dozen, less than 20) meetings of local-ish PSUGs in Missouri.  The two I know of are each a 3-hour drive one way to get to so that’s a challenge but they’ve been great.  They both started this year, and I’ve tried to lend my support as much as I can.  I’ve spoken 6 or 7 times (I didn’t keep track) and had a great time at all of the meetings.
5. Continue Teaching at Work.  Did lots of teaching.  I’d have to check the calendar to get a real total, but it was at least 10 days of teaching.
6. Share more on GitHub. Really got into Github this year.  VisioBot3000, SQLPSX, POSH_Ado, etc. Next step: PowerShellGallery!
7. Write more professional scripts. I think this will always be a goal of mine.  I’ve published a couple of checklists and try to be thoughtful about how to write better code as I’m writing it, but I often find myself writing “throwaway” code and cleaning it up later.  Need to eliminate as much of that first step as possible.
8. Speak. I’ve spoken at 6 user group meetings this year and at 2 or 3 others in the past.  If you’ve got a UG within driving distance of SW Missouri (KS, NW Arkansas, Oklahoma), let me know…I really enjoy sharing what I’m doing as well as speaking on “general” PowerShell topics.  Also, it doesn’t need to be a PSUG…I’ve spoken at .NET and SQL groups as well.
9. Encourage. Another perennial task.  I haven’t been as active in this as I have in the past.
10. Digest. (from the goal review)

I get about 10 different paper.li daily digests either in email or on twitter. I don’t find a lot of value in them…they don’t seem to be curated for the most part, but I think adding another into the fray at this point would probably be lost. I’m going to skip this one this year…but keep it on the back burner.

I’ve been thinking about maybe doing something slightly different here.  Maybe a “module of the month” or “meet a PowerShell person” regular post.  Any suggestions?

Well…by my count I accomplished 6 (maybe 7) of the 10 goals from last year.  If you haven’t thought about what you’re going to try to accomplish this year I highly recommend you do.  Remember, if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not like where you end up!  A concrete list of goals, shared with friends (or with the public) makes it  easy to know if you’re achieving your goals or have lost sight of your goals.

–Mike