BABD. This abbreviation of Become A Better Developer represents my intentions for the upcoming year 2008. Why you say? In the past months, there have been coming out so many new things, think of Ajax, Silverlight, MVC, WPF 3.5, WCF 3.5... that it's my opinion you need to structure how to keep up with all this.
After some thinking, I thought it would be a good thing to create a list of things I really want to achieve in 2008. Of course, new things will come along, but this list (I did check it twice) are the bare neccesities to become an even better developer that has a global knowledge of everything that is available, and a deep knowledge on selected topics, like in my case Silverlight for example. It's my opinion that this is what you need to do to keep up with the pace of releases.
Also on this list are some intentions that I want to achieve for the community, like blogging on a more regular base.
So, here's my list of intentions for my BABD initiative. Why don't you create your own and put it on your blog too?
- Learn WCF and WF: I'm busy creating a software factory for my job, and I really need deep(er) knowledge on WCF and WF. If I'm successful, I hope by the end of this Christmas holiday, I will already have covered this topic partly, since I recently got me the "Learning WCF" book from O'Reilly, which after reading reviews on Amazon seemed the best buy.
- Become MCPD/MCTS: I promised Ordina (and some other people too...) that in the course of the following year, I'd take all the exams to become MCPD, if possibly by June 30th.
- Blog at least 3 times a week: I think I do this already, however, I do want to write on Snowball at least 3 times a week on news from the .net world.
- 2 (I hope) articles on CodeFlakes.net every month: I started CodeFlakes back in September, but I must confess, I didn't have the time to do what I actually wanted to achieve with it this year. However, by the end of next year, I want it to have 25 articles of my own, so that's 2 a month. Topics will be Silverlight (duh), AJAX, ASP.net, LINQ... Webcasts might also be an option here.
- 6-8 ChopSticks webcasts: MSDN Belux recently launched ChopSticks and my first webcast will be appearing shortly. I want to create at least 6 in the coming year, if possible even more...
- Read more blogs and create a blogpost about it: I follow a lot of blogs, but it's sometimes hard to keep up. I therefore intend to clean up my list, and start using Tags to keep up. I would love to create a blogpost with the most interesting topics (which counts as a post for Snowball!!)
- Create 1 .NET Magazine article: after my first publication this year on AJAX, I intend to write another one in 2008. That shouldn't be that hard...
- Visug: I've doing a good job for the Belgian .net community. I intend to keep doing the same here, however I should find the time to create a new website.
- Create a succesful Ordina blog. We're currently creating something new there (more on this later)
- Patters and Practices: Also for my job, I need to pick up on the Web Client Software Factory and others. This is quite high in priority too...
- Start something I can't really say a lot about yet... something completely new, stay tuned...
- Buy a Full HD Plasma TV!
- More will come, I'm sure...
Phew, that's quite a list. I hope that in one year from now, I can say that I really achieved all this.
What about you? Have your intentions ready yet? Post them here!