Jan 1, 2010 Posted by Herko on Jan 1, 2010 in Personal notes | 5 comments

My wishlist for 2010

I’m not really one for New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. I don’t smoke or drink cof­fee or alco­hol, so those vices I don’t need to cut down on or quit alto­gether. I play ten­nis at least once a week, and have a Kung Fu/Tai Chi/Qigong class every week. I take the stairs when­ever I can. And I also enjoy good food, which includes fresh veg­gies and lots of fresh fruit. Sure, there’s always room for improve­ment. I’m far from liv­ing the per­fect life. But I love singer/producer/DJ Ben West­beech’s motto “Wel­come to the best years of your life”. Live life to make the best of it. But this year, I’m mak­ing an exception.

A res­o­lu­tion for 2010

I joined Project 52, which is a per­sonal chal­lenge geared toward get­ting fresh con­tent on your web­site. The goal is to write at least 1 new arti­cle per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to pro­cras­ti­nate on our con­tent. A web­site is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and for­got­ten about!.

Writ­ing once a week (at least) shouldn’t have to present a seri­ous prob­lem to me, I have a lot of ideas for top­ics to write about. The prob­lem will be to con­vert hose ideas into read­able and enjoy­able posts. This post is the first for my project52 series so please let me know what you like and dis­like about my writ­ing style.

Any­ways, back to the topic. 2010 is a few hours old and I thought it’d be a good start to give my wish­list for this year. And just to be clear, it’s not a list of things I want other peo­ple to do for me, but things I want to achieve myself (with or with­out help from every­one, of course).

Peo­ple I want to meet in person

In 2010, I want to have a decent con­ver­sa­tion with some of the most inspir­ing peo­ple I know. In real life, face to face. So, I have to find ways to meet them in person.

First of all, I’d like to finally have that talk with Moly Holzschlag, web stan­dards guru extra­or­di­naire. In 2009 I had a decent con­ver­sa­tion over e-mail and an even bet­ter one over Skype, we Twit­tered a bit here and there. But 2009 was mainly the year of missed chances –where us meet­ing up is con­cerned. First was a date we had sched­uled in April in Lon­don, where she was to talk at the FOWD con­fer­ence, and my wife and I were enjoy­ing a city trip together. We were sup­posed to meet over a gen­uine Eng­lish High Tea at a classy hotel, but Molly sprained her ankle and sadly wasn’t able to join us.

Then, in novem­ber, Molly was head­lin­ing the 2009 Fron­teers con­fer­ence in Ams­ter­dam. As a vol­un­teer help­ing out at the con­fer­ence, I was invited to join the speak­ers at the speak­ers din­ner. And lo and behold, Molly was there too! We finally got to meet face to face. But because of some drama over at Opera (with a com­pany called Opera, there’s bound to be drama, isn’t there?) she just had to sit on my seat next to David Storey and Andreas Bovens (and for the record, there wasn’t any real drama over at Opera, but with a com­pany called Opera, that’s bound to be an excep­tion, right?). So we didn’t get a chance to really speak. But  since the con­fer­ence was the next two days, and she’d be in Ams­ter­dam for another few days after that, we thought we’d get our chance. But Molly’s back hurt a lot after she tried to lift a laun­dry bas­ket and epi­cally failed, and she was bedrid­den for –you’ve guessed cor­rectly– until her flight home. I was on my way to Ams­ter­dam to meet her in her appart­ment when she can­celled. So that was the third time lucky.

So, in 2010, I want to have that talk with her. She’s an expert, a guru, and an inspi­ra­tional per­son, and very nice to boot –I think.

But this wouldn’t be a wish­list if I didn’t set the bar even higher. Hav­ing a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with one of the worlds lead­ing standardista’s isn’t enough. I want to meet the God­fa­thers of Web­stan­dards: Don Jef­frey Zeld­man and Don Eric A. Meyer. I haven’t been in con­tact with them in 2009, so I have noth­ing to build on. But that’s what chal­lenges are all about, aren’t they?

Books I hope to fin­ish reading

I have a dis­abil­ity. It’s prob­a­bly a men­tal one. I can’t just read one book and fin­ish it. There’s always two or three books I’m read­ing at the same time. Some books I fin­ish, but not all of them. So, my wish­list is about books I’d like to fin­ish in 2010.

Design­ing with Web Stan­dards, 3rd edi­tion, by Jef­frey Zeld­man and Ethan Mar­cotte. This book explains why any web­site designer should work with web standards.

The Smash­ing Book, by var­i­ous authors. Smash­ing Mag­a­zine became one of the web’s most influ­en­tial web design and –devel­op­ment mag­a­zines, and this book has chap­ters writ­ten by some of the emerg­ing experts.

Devel­oper Evan­ge­lism, by Chris­t­ian Heil­mann. Chris Heil­mann is Yahoo’s devel­oper evan­ge­list, a gifted speaker and a pas­sion­ate man about all things web. His book should be over­flow­ing with inspi­ra­tion for my own web stan­dards evan­ge­lism goals (more on those in later posts).

And these aren’t books, but DVD’s, but I’ll add them here any­way: Design­ing with CSS and Design­ing Web Acces­si­bil­ity, by For A Beau­ti­ful Web’s Andy Clarke. I got ‘em both on DVD.

Skills I’d like to learn

Well, this is where it gets chal­leng­ing for real. I don’t want to learn these skills, I want to mas­ter them, and skip the learn­ing bit. At least, that’s what I think most of the time. I have a new hypoth­e­sis tho: that learn­ing stuff is at least half the fun. If you get past the frus­trat­ing first bit of being con­fronted with lack of skills, that is. But these are the skills I’d like to develop in 2010.

For my work as an e-government con­sul­tant I need to be more struc­tured and effec­tive, so I’ll focus my pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment on mindmap­ping, the GTD method and tools, giv­ing effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tions to large groups of peo­ple, and facil­i­tat­ing cre­ative and effec­tive workshops.

I’d also like to learn more about Web Stan­dards, and specif­i­cally by apply­ing them myself. So, I’d like to learn about (x)HTML, CSS, the DOM, acces­si­bil­ity and seman­tics. And then their cut­ting edge rep­re­sen­ta­tions, so HTML5, CSS3 and some basic script­ing, as Javascript is a whole new ter­ri­tory for me, and not to be con­quered in 2010.

Also, I’d like to learn more about web stan­dards evan­ge­lism, and how I can bring across my mes­sage to a dif­fer­ent and rel­a­tively new group of peo­ple. But, more on that topic in later posts as well.

Events I’d like to attend

Here’s where the wish­ful think­ing kicks in. And prob­a­bly some exper­i­ment­ing too. The event I’d like to attend will most likely not be spon­sored by my employer, thus mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to raise the funds nec­es­sary for me to actu­ally go there. But if you look at my goals for 2010, one of the best places to reach them, is by going to a con­fer­ence or meet­ing or work­shop or some­thing. So that’s a goal I’m adding as well.

I’d love to go to An Event Apart in 2010. There’ll be 4 of these events, but I hear they’re the best there is on web design and devel­op­ment, so I’d love to go to one of them. How, when, I don’t know yet.

I’d also like to go to @media Lon­don, Future of Web Design, SxSWi, or any other web design and devel­op­ment con­fer­ence, but the AEA is at the top of my list.

And I have to men­tion Fron­teers 2010, the excel­lent con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Dutch Fron­teers soci­ety. I hope to play a small part in orga­niz­ing it this year! So most likely, there’s more on that in future posts too!

Year of the Challenge

So, it’s quite a year that is ahead of me! So I hereby announce that 2010 will be the Year of the Chal­lenge! Lets make it count.

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5 Responses to “My wishlist for 2010”

1. herko says:

   1 January 2010 at 22:18

   New blog post: My wish­list for 2010 http://www.herkocoomans.net/2010/01/my-wishlist-for-2010/

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter
2. herko says:

   5 January 2010 at 9:13

   @mollydotcom did you see my goals for 2010? You fea­ture in them http://twurl.nl/6mgpv0

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter
3. Molly E. Holzschlag says:

   5 January 2010 at 9:58

   Won­der­ful post. But this woman Molly sounds like she’s diss­ing you. A sprained ankle AND a bad back? What’s up with that?
4. Herko says:

   5 January 2010 at 11:33

   Yeah. That Molly woman is going to great lengths and pains to avoid me. But hark my words, I’ll catch up with her some time!

   Dis­claimer: this info can­not be used in a court of law to jus­tify a restrain­ing order
5. herko says:

   6 January 2010 at 16:45

   @surpass here’s mine: http://www.herkocoomans.net/2010/01/my-wishlist-for-2010/

   This com­ment was orig­i­nally posted on Twit­ter

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