Goal Setting

Last year, I did a wrap up post of the year to see where I landed from where I wanted to be.  At the end of that post, I came up with a number of goals for the year.  Now’s the time to see how I did with those goals.

2011 Goals

1. Moar Blogging. Success! I wrote a 31 day series that was well received.  I posted over 30 more posts in 2011 than in 2010 and had over 110K views on this website.  That doesn’t include those that read my materials on SQLServerPedia and SQLServerCentral.
2. Moar Writing. Success! I finished a chapter in MVP Deep Dives, Volume 2.  I’m almost finished as a co-author on Expert Performance Indexing for SQL Server 2012.
3. Moar SQL Saturdays. Failed! With the wedding, see goal 6, and other obligations, I only made it to five SQL Saturday’s this year.  The first for 2012 is coming up next weekend, so I expect that 2012 will see moar here.
4. Moar Presenting. Success! I spoke again at the PASS Summit, and I didn’t choke this time.  Posts on how this went coming very soon.  I also did some great presentations with Quest and the PASS virtual chapters.
5. Moar Knowledge. Success!  This year I failed and then passed the SQL Server MCM written exam.  Then I failed the MCM lab exam.  And to make sure I keep myself motivated to pass this exam, I started an MCM study group on yammer.
6. Get Hitched. Success! Last goal, but definitely not the least.  In July, I managed to not screw it up and married Sarah Strate (Blog | @DanceM0m).

2012 Goals

1. Complete SQL Server MCM.  I’ve got a study group going and am feeling 95% ready to try the lab again.  February will be my second shot – hopefully all will go well.
2. Become a Microsoft Certified Trainer.  This seems to be on par with where I want to take my career and where it is heading.  I want to embrace it and make sure that when people come to hear me on a topic that they leave with the message and information that I intended.  Through the MCT, I expect I should find some additional tools to improve on myself.
3. More Community.  Last year, I became a Region Mentor for PASS.  This year I want to make sure that means something to those in the North Central region. I plan to do what I can to help all of the chapters in this region operate better.  Along with that, I want to find a way to start seeding new chapters in areas in this region where there isn’t a PASS presence.  Lastly, I really want to participate in SQL Saturdays more and am planning to attend nine of them this year.
4. Build Content.  I blog quite a bit.  Unfortunately, it isn’t all content.  there are weeks where I blog multiple times, but it’s about the events that I’m at or going to.  I’d like to shift away from that some and provide more technical content.  Give people a good reason to come to the blog and stay a while.
5. Have free time.  Too much of 2011 was spent on projects and balancing between projects.  I need some down time to be built back into my life.  So this year is all about being lazy.  If I can build a script to give this to me, all the merrier.

Blog Statistics

Keeping with last year’s stats, here are some of the highlights from my blog this past year.  As is a bit obvious, the SSIS series that I completed last January had a huge impact over the entire year.  Expect to see another series on SSIS and a series or two around DBA topics; which I focus a bit more on these days.

Top 10 Posts per WordPress Stats

1. 31 Days of SSIS – The Introduction
2. 31 Days of SSIS – Raw Files Are Awesome (1/31)
3. 31 Days of SSIS – Merge Join Is My Friend (8/31)
4. 31 Days of SSIS – Using Breakpoints (2/31)
5. 31 Days of SSIS – Generating Row Numbers (23/31)
6. 31 Days of SSIS – One Variable to Rule Them All (5/31)
7. 31 Days of SSIS – Recursive SSIS Package (6/31)
8. 31 Days of SSIS – Folder Structures (4/31)
9. 31 Days of SSIS – Data Flow Breakpoints?! (3/31)
10. 31 Days of SSIS – SQL Server Configuration (18/31)

Top 5 Downloads

1. Index Black Ops Whitepaper
2. Index Black Ops Presentation
3. 31 Days of SSIS Project
4. The Creepy DBA
5. Discovering The Plan Cache

Related posts:

1. Wrapping Up 2010
2. PASS 2011 Countdown – 2 Weeks To Go
3. 2011 SQL Server MVP Award