I like to do this every year. It’s a reflect and reset-type of thing for me. Here’s what I accomplished from last year’s resolutions:

• Published another article in php|architect magazine, SELECT * FROM Internet: An Introduction to the Yahoo! Query Language.
• Gave a talk on the same topic at Atlanta PHP in February.
• Continued to sharpen architecture and development skills. I’ve done a fair amount of work with Test-driven Development this year, which has definitely beefed up my more general design skills.
• Built some more iOS apps, both at work with Half Off Depot and some personal projects.
• Definitely have spent more time with PHP since my move to Half Off Depot.

I’ll keep it short. This year, I want to:

• Finally release FloodWatch for iPad and Mac. I’ve already started the static library. This should be done in the first half of the year.
• Gain a deeper knowledge of PHP 5.3 and 5.4 features, such as namespaces, closures, and traits.
• Beef up my front end development skills. I’ve done front end work for months at a time, but never for a long period of time. When I take on this kind of work, I enjoy it, but I want to do more of it in a focused manner. Front end development skills have been my area of weakness for my entire career. I’m a back end kind of guy.
• Refocus my technical leadership skills. I’ve led a number of large projects during my career, and I’ll get to do more of that in 2012. As a result, I look forward to really sharpening my technical leadership skills with respect to architecture, technical project management, and driving teams of incredibly talented developers.
• Get back on the conference circuit. For real this time.
• Blog more. I’ve started getting back to this recently. I’m going to stick with it.

From where I sit, 2012 is going to be incredible. 2011 was great, but I’ve got my work cut out for me this year. It’s going to be a wild ride. See you around!

What are you going to do in 2012?

Better late than never, right? I should’ve done this in December, but at least it’s only two weeks into the New Year.

Last year was a great year. Looking back at my 2010 resolutions, here’s what I accomplished:

• Learn a new language — really dove head first into learning Objective-C, along with the Cocoa and UIKit frameworks
• Built and released my first iOS app, FloodWatch

My 2010 resolutions aside, I also managed to make a move to Yahoo!, start to hone my front end developer skills, do some Java work, learn some Hadoop and Pig scripting, learn some Lua, and speak at BarCamp Charleston. It’s been a busy year!

I’ve been absolutely horrible at blogging over the past year, though. Two posts in 2010 is just pitiful and sad. Shame on me.

So, given the look back and the year ahead, here’s what I’m challenging myself with:

• Blog more: This is the biggest resolution of them all. I really need to write a few blog posts a month on whatever it is that I’m working on, when I might have something that can and should be shared with a larger potential audience. More often than not, I complete my tasks at hand and charge ahead to the next ones. I need to take more time to stop, reflect, and share.
• Speak at more user groups and conferences: …this is already in the works, too, with my first 2011 talk at Atlanta PHP on February 3, 2011. I’ll be talking on the Yahoo! Query Language.
• Write another article: …already in the works! Look for it later in the year.
• Continue to sharpen my development and architecture skills: I’ve learned an amazing amount of new things during my time at Yahoo! I work with some ridiculously smart people, and am constantly learning from them and becoming a better developer because the people in my environment. I’m loving every single day in the office where I get to focus on code and architecture. This one should be a breeze.
• Read some of the classic programming books again: Classic books like The Pragmatic Programmer and Code Complete are great to read every few years to keep yourself grounded and humble. This should be one of those years for me.
• Build another app of some sort, iOS, Mac or otherwise: …have some ideas here, should be totally doable.
• Spend some more time with PHP: I haven’t written much PHP since mid-2010, so it’d be nice to get back to it. I should contribute to Zend Framework, etc. — that’d be a great way to achieve this goal, while contributing to the community at the same time.
• Get back on the conference circuit: I didn’t do so well with this in 2010, mostly due to my job change. I’d like to get to at least one PHP, OSS, or development conference in 2011.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing in 2011. Hopefully I’ll be here about 50 weeks from now, recounting how I knocked out every single one of these.

What are you doing in 2011?

This weekend, I attended iPhone/Mobile Camp Atlanta at the King Plow Arts Center.

It was great to meet some new, non-PHP-specific faces in the southern iPhone and mobile communities. The crowd seemed to be quite tech-heavy, rather than business-heavy. As such, I learned some new things such as how to handle analytics on the iPhone (use Flurry), how to reduce latency when using Core Audio, and some new-to-me information on parsing XML on the iPhone.

I also dusted off my talk, “Rickroll To Go With WURFL, PHP, and Other Open Source Tools”, trimmed it down for a 30-minute timeslot, and presented it as “WURFL, Device Identification, and Mobile Media”.

My talk seemed to go great because, hey, what talk with a little Rickrolling and Ice Ice Baby isn’t going to be a hit, right? It was tough to keep it to that smaller timeslot, but it seemed to work well. I was followed by everyone’s favorite Microsoft evangelist, Glen Gordon, who was speaking on all things Microsoft.

I definitely walked away with a continued motivation to actually produce a useful Cocoa and/or iPhone app sometime this year, so I’d better hop to it. It’s the ideation part that’s tough for me, though. And all of the graphic design can be a bit demotivating, too, but there are creative ways to handle that.

Anyways, it was a great event! Hopefully they’ll conduct one again next year! Special thanks to Jonathan Freeman of Widgetpress (and all involved) for organizing the event!

Reflecting on my 2008 New Year’s resolutions, I didn’t accomplish all of them. The only one I really even began to tackle was contributing to Zend Framework.

I participated in PHP TestFest, and my tests ended up making their way into CVS, so that was a nice surprise. I did manage to speak at both php|tek 2008 and ZendCon 2008, so that was good…though not really a resolution of mine.

Regardless, it’s been a good year for accomplishing some of my technical- and PHP-related goals. But what about 2009?

Well, since it’s public knowledge now, my wife and I are expecting our first child in June 2009 (woohoo!), so I’m going to be taking a bit of time off of the conference circuit. I specifically didn’t propose anything for php|tek 2009, because it’s due to take place just a few weeks before the kid’s due date, so I don’t want to be away from home at such an important time. Maybe I’ll supplement that with more talks at Atlanta PHP?

So, since I’ll be stepping back from conferences a bit, what will I be focusing on? Here are some of my PHP/technical resolutions for 2009:

• Continue contributing to Zend Framework: With my first proposal now in the state of “Pending Recommendation,” I’d like to start drafting a proposal for a Zend_Cache_Profiler of sorts, ala Zend_Db_Profiler. I’ll be looking to write up and submit that proposal within Q1 2009, I think.
• Contribute to php|architect: The 2009 Editorial Calendar for php|architect has been released. There are at least two topics in there that I’d love to write on. Specifically, I want to attempt to adapt my “Rickroll To Go With PHP, WURFL, and Other Open Source Tools” presentation into an article format. That should prove to be an interesting, entertaining challenge.
• Catch up on my list of technical books I want to read: My Amazon Wish List is filled with all kinds of books that I want to read, so I’m really hoping to get through a handful of them this year.
• Finish my iPhone game: It’s a super top secret idea, of course, but the gameplay is largely done and works well. I’ve got to work on scoring, how leveling works, preferences, and finally, graphic design. So…I’ve got a long way to go on that. It’s been a great exercise in learning UIKit/Objective-C!
• Write an OS X Memcached GUI monitoring/profiling client?: I’ve wanted to build a little OS X desktop app for monitoring the performance of Memcached servers for a while now — think cool graphs of gets, puts, evictions, bytes used, etc. Something that, if you managed a pool of many Memcached servers, that it’d come in really handy at giving you a snapshot of performance and potential areas of improvement. This would be another great exercise at learning more about Cocoa/Objective-C, too. Desktop software development just feels a bit more legitimate sometimes, ya’ know? Or maybe that’s just me.

So, I think that’s it for now. We’ll see how I do this year.

Happy holidays to everyone! See you in 2009.

Just a little note that I’m officially changing my duties around a bit at work. During my three years at Schematic, year one was spent as a Senior Software Developer, the second was spent as a Manager for our Open Source Platforms Group (the PHP team), and for the third, I went back to the hands-on technology side as a Senior Software Architect in OSPG. Now, I’ve decided to make a move back over to the management side as “Senior Manager, Technology” in our Atlanta office.

“What is this ‘Senior Manager, Technology’ thing?” you ask? Well, basically, it means I’ll be leaving some of my hands-on development duties behind (though still using them occasionally!) to focus on managing a crack team of developers across various technical disciplines. I’ll also be helping to match these people up to projects they’d like to work on, helping ensure their career growth is on the right track, that they’re happy, enjoying their work and so on. I’ll also be actively involved in recruiting and other types of managerial-type activities. I tend to think that I’m a good fit for this role given my years of experience down in the trenches, getting my hands dirty with code and project teams, while also being somewhat business-savvy given my experience and education.

It’s a different kind of challenge for me, but I’ve got some experience with it and am happy to help out our growing technology team in the Atlanta office. I will be working on the occasional project at a high level, such as in a Solutions Architect role, or maybe even acting as a Software Architect from time to time. I’ll continue to act as the Platform Chair of our Open Source Platforms Group team, too, which means that I’ll continue to be involved in shaping coding standards, best practices, and other key technical processes around Schematic.

“But…you’re a developer! Surely you’re not leaving that behind!” you exclaim. Of course not! I’m going to use my spare time outside of work to pursue other things that interest me right now, such as Cocoa and iPhone development as well as working with the Arduino platform to do some tinkering with electronics. And don’t worry, I’ll still be spending a lot of time with my dear old friends, PHP, Zend Framework, and other open source technologies.

So, this is all very exciting! For the three of you that read my blog, this is a short summary of what I’ll be up to for the foreseeable future. See you PHP’ers out on the conference and user group circuits, too!

Wow, I FINALLY found the one thing I wanted on my Mac — multiple desktop support.

VirtueDesktops

With Leopard coming sometime soon, Apple’s new Spaces feature will likely replace this, but for now, it’s going to be a huge help.

And best of all, it’s free!