Three notions / plans for 2016

(originally published on The Lost Outpost)

Hello. I haven’t written here in a while. That’s something I hope to change.

I realise it is 6 weeks into the year already, but after a trip to California last week, my own vague ideas about what 2016 should mean for me, have solidified.

1. Travel (a bit) less / be more thoughtful about travel. I’m in an International role, and I work for a company with headquarters and many of the decision-makers 8 hours behind me. This makes the notion of travelling less in 2016 a little ironic and possibly, untenable! Nevertheless, I work with a great team and I hope to be more thoughtful about where and when I travel (and for how long) this year. I know I’ll do more again, but right now, I’m at a point in my life where I need to be setting more roots and plans locally. Interestingly, my trip to SF this week was my first significant travel since October, so this is already working (to an extent), but the global #HelloWorld tour will of course eat into that significantly — not that I’m complaining!
2. Make more Stuff. Per Chris Heilmann’s fantastic post about Developer Relations / Evangelism / Advocacy this past week, “how often do you code?” is a key question in understanding our role(s), and I’d been aware for a while that I simply hadn’t been doing much of it lately (beyond testing out examples where devs said they were unable to make samples work). My plan in 2016 is to build something — anything — at least once a month. So far this year I’ve dabbled in Twitter ebooks bots and Alexa skills — both built on the backs of others — but I hope to build, publish, and write about more in the coming months. I’m particularly excited by the growing trend towards No UI / conversational interfaces and it has been great to re-connect with friends like Matt and Haje in the preceding months on these topics. I’m also hoping to write a lot more, as blogging and sharing is a major part of where the amazing ride and network I’ve enjoyed since ~2006, started.
3. Invest more time in mentoring others. In my previous lives at IBM and Pivotal I had a lot of opportunity to get involved in these activities. I’ve been at Twitter very close to 2 years now, and it is incredible to realise how much I’ve learned “through osmosis” — partly from amazing individuals like Isaac, Sylvain, Taylor, Craig, Chris, and Romain — and more often, from others still around me. My goal in 2016 is to share my knowledge and support much more widely: both to co-workers, third party developers, and up-and-coming members of the tech community around me. Time to hit the local meetup circuit, and to do more coaching of others in public speaking, career mentoring, and personal support.

I’ve got a lot of exciting stuff to look forward to this year professionally — I’m deeply involved in a number of initiatives, and I’m excited that @jack has put Developers firmly on our list of priorities! This is where I’d always hoped we would get back to. Nevertheless, on top of that, these are three of my personal plans for the next ~10 1/2 months. I’ve made a good start.

As always, I’m open to comments here, but you’ll also find me open to discuss on Twitter @andypiper.