As I’ve just discovered that I can post blogs from my Blackberry, I thought I’d take this opportunity (I.e. A very dull train journey to work) to jot down some of my online aims for 2010. I know what you’re thinking – dull, Dull, DULL! I think the same every time I spot a “10 greatest blah in 2009” list on Twitter, so I don’t blame you at all if you skip this. But I reckon that by writing it down in a public forum, I might just have a chance of sticking to some of these…
Consolidate my efforts…
Having been doing internetty stuff for over 15 years now, I’ve collected quite a few different sites, projects and profiles along the way. Just as I think it will be for the internet as a whole, I’m going to aim to consolidate and reduce the amount of different places I ‘reside’ in 2010 – or at the very least try to reduce duplication and confusion.
Just off the top of my head I can list social networks I belong to (Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, FriendFeed, Yammer, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Google and Plaxo), websites I build/maintain (Melissa George, Elize du Toit, this one, My New York Wedding site, Our First Flat, Scilly Holiday), Projects I’ve started up (My social mash-up friend map, My family tree site, …) And many others I’ve probably forgotten. And that’s before I even start thinking about the sites I work on/with at Tamar. It’s a lot to remember! So I’m hoping to consolidate that down a bit… I think I’m going to start by closing my MySpace and Bebo accounts, since I haven’t got anything useful out of them for well over a year.
Take a photo every day
I know this seems slightly ironic given my point above, but little projects like this are what makes the internet fun for me. As I explained in a previous post, I’m going to aim to produce a “My year in photos” collection over 2010, with a photo for every single day of the year. And for those of you that follow me on Twitter and see what I usually Twitpic – don’t worry, I’ll try to keep the pictures of my son to a minimum, I promise!
Blog smarter
As I already explained in my very first post, I do quite a bit of blogging already – not just here (if you can even call my sporadic missives ‘blogging’), but on the Tamar blog, the Econsultancy blog, Media140 and a few others. But in 2010 I’m going to try to blog more – not necessarily *more* blogging, just smarter blogging. I definitely need to keep this place a bit more lively, and I might start inviting guest bloggers on if anybody wants to contribute. With my work blogs I’m going to try to blog more about subjects people actually want to read about – not just a vanity exercise. And particularly with my work blogs, I’m only going to blog if there’s a clear benefit to doing so – not for me, obviously, but for my work.
300 entries on my map by 2011
Another of my favourite little projects at the moment is my social mash-up friend map thingy (note to self: come up with a better name for it…). I’ve had some great new entries on it lately, including some famous faces you might recognise (if you can find them!). I think the map currently has 124 photos on it – by the end of 2010 I want to get that to 300, which I think is pretty achievable. Heck, I’ve got 700 connections on Facebook, plus well over 1,000 on Twitter – 300 is a reasonable-enough chunk of that to aim for…
Somehow top 2009
Thanks to the internet, I have been lucky enough to do some very cool (and some very odd) things the past few years. As well as an appearance in The Times, a few very unflattering appearances on London Tonight, a totally libelous appearance in a book (and several subsequent mentions on the radio because of it) and meeting a few cool famous peeople, 2009 was topped off with an appearance on BBC1’s ‘Imagine‘ and a trip to Downing Street. I’m not entirely sure I *can* top those. without doing something illegal, so maybe this is a tough one – but at the very least I’d like to think I’ll get to do other interesting things in 2010…