Happy anniversary to my parents—who’ve managed to survive one another for the past 55 years together and who are looking forward to the years to come. Congrats, you both are truly an inspriation.
I’ve taken a bit of time off and away from the computer, blogging, and such to get in and enjoy the holiday season (the past two weeks off work helped too ;)).
Since I’ve been back to work, a few have asked me what my resolutions are—unfortunately, I tend not to make annual resolutions since most of my goals focus around events OTHER than the changing of the calendar. However, last year, I started the “letter to yourself” approach. The idea is writing to yourself and reflecting on what you did that year—it’s a bit reverse and crazy, but I liked the approach because it made you THINK how you want to remember that year.
You can read the 2007 letter here.
My “goals” according to my letter were:
I don’t have a good excuse regarding MOSS 2007–-the enterprise just wasn’t ready. I did migrate our single SharePoint 2003 server to a new, 5 server SAN installation and it runs like a dream. Usage of the SPS system has skyrocketed and almost everyone in the district uses the portal for one reason or another—everyday. That’s a huge increase over the 15–18% usage in 2006.
Heh, I didn’t get much of a vacation this year—if I wasn’t working, I was studying or writing or sitting in the library. I’m hoping to change that this year.
So, with that retrospect, here’s where I hope to be in 2008.
Dear David,
This last year has proved quite interesting for you. To fill the gap of school work, you dedicated yourself “free” time to researching upcoming development technologies and acquiring your MCPD certification from Microsoft. The benefits from this certification can be seen both in your consulting and professional work at the office.
The continued success of your web strategy has reduced project turn around by nearly 40% in the past year and increased customer satisfaction beyond measure. A few of your highlighting projects, such as the integration of mobile technologies into the district and MOSS 2007’s migration have helped pave the way for continued invention in 2009. In addition, 2008 was quite a challenge with the rollout out of Java technologies within the workplace—learning another environment (Eclipse, ThinkCAP, Oracle Application Server) and language (Java). Aside from work, you found time to blog a few times a week and remain active within the Microsoft community newsgroups.
Now, without the constant chains of school, you managed to take a few vacations this year, attend the local .NET developers group, and relax.
This year has been a blast! Have a great 2009!
Like I said last year, better than a checklist and a bit more fun. We’ll see how those go—there are other goals and aspirations, but those are the general ones.
Have a great 2008!
In the US, today is Thanksgiving Day—a traditional holiday for friends and family to sit around, reflect on what they’re thankful for, watch football, and play games. :) It’s not a bad deal since, usually, you get the following Friday, aka Black Friday, off as well.
Have a happy and save Thanksgiving or, if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy Thursday and go crazy shopping tomorrow!
I think, however, that simply calling the current school-age generation a “generation of editors” is a little too limiting. It’s true that today’s kids don’t have to hunt down kernels of information as if they’re ancient Cro-Magnon scrounging for roots and berries. Instead, it seems to be replacing those hunting-and-gathering skills with the ability to synthesize and combine information in ways that my own Baby Boomer mind can’t always grasp.
Are We Just Editors Now? by Loyd Case of ExtremeTech
This article from ExtermeTech’s Loyd Case caught my attention this morning. He, as ironincally has he notes, is responding to Bill Harris’ article entitled “Information”. In it, he notes how disecting information has changed through the generations. Both authors are comparing times to those of their generation (mid-to-late 40’s to 50’s) and even that of my parents (70’s) in how information is acquired and decoded.
So if you were researching something, you’d have to pull out a rack in the card catalog according to the alphabetized subject and flip through the cards. If you got lucky, the title of a book or a brief description would point you in the right direction. Then you had to actually find the book, skim through it, and hope that you’d find some information.
I know what you’re thinking about now: you’ve got to be freaking kidding me.
Dubious Quality: Information by Bill Harris
I remember that. I’m, in spite of the target audience, in my 20’s and I remember the card catalog (my small, rural school district was a bit late in adopting technology). I even remember the dewey decimal system—inspite of all attempts to forget it. But, I’m also part, I believe of this age of information mashup—using Google or whatever information source of choice, and finding bits and pieces of data here and there, applying logic and care (ala: not everything you read on the Internet is true—you’ve had this lecture, right?), and then turning that data into information for your purpose.
Now, looking forward and seeing what the youth of today are doing is astonishing. Collaboration, sharing, information overload using MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, even here on WordPress. The alpha site for Popfly is a great example of the current demand—taking dozens of information services and mixing and mashing them together to come up with a solution: a photo album that contains music referenced by keywords in each photo, an address book with photos from Facebook and a map using Maps, etc.
I do agree with Loyd’s assumption that these are not “editors”, as that, to a degree, implies that nothing new is being created; however, this generation advocates data and services as multi-purpose tools and excel at finding new ways to use data and turn it into information, not simply finding a source of reference and citing it in a book report.
Happy Anniversary to my parents who today, March 1st, are celebrating their 54th year together in blissful marriage. 
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