It was a very very interesting year. In January my long-term contract ended and I have managed to avoid taking another long-term contract. I did take 3 small contracts throughout the year, two around working with Azure and one in Rails. I hope to take even less work this year (although I might be doing a short gig in January, but it sounds pretty fun).
This year a number of big things happened. The first was that I got serious about The Lounge and Ruby Row and spun them off into a separate company called Zerk Media. In January the idea was that I would continue to build new networks, but that didn’t work out so well. (I blogged about that already).
The second big thing was the launch of TekPub. I am thrilled to be a part of this with Rob and it is going excellent so far. It’s great to see an idea be validated and all the hard work pay off quickly rather than months or years down the road.
Some other very exciting things have happened this year, but I am going to talk about those in separate blog posts over the next couple weeks. (both are new ventures)
For 2010 I have some big goals:
1) Continue to grow TekPub, if we can just maintain the momentum of bringing out new series and reaching new customers it will be a great year.
2) Solidify Ruby Row as the best way to reach Ruby developers, the network grew hugely this year but there is still alot of room to grow.
3) Turn The Lounge into the premier independent network to reach Microsoft focused developers, the advertising market took quite a hit in early 2009 but it has recovered nicely and with a new sales team working with me its only going to take off in 2010.
4) I am launching a new venture this month and it is going to be the big one, it’s the culmination of 2 years of being in the advertising business and I think it will take up a large amount of my time in the new year.
6) Lose Weight. This is always a goal isn’t it? But this year I realized that not exercising and eating bad has contributed to more stress and unhappiness, its going to change this year and I hope to be back below 200 by summer.
Oh, I also managed to read 24 books (fiction and business) this year which isn’t too bad, I should be able to top it this year.
-James
