Ampers & Dot

It’s that time of the year - when we plan to do a bunch of things throughout the rest of the year, that we’ll probably give up on in a few weeks. The Resolution Phenomenon explains why Google search volume for “Gym Membership” and “Quit Smoking” spike significantly every January 1st. But hey, I’ll play the game too - and we’ll see how closely I can stick to my 2009 plan.

So as a devout technology enthusiast, my 2009 tech-related resolutions are to:

• Keep better control over my RSS feeds. I subscribe to a few hundred feeds. This is overwhelming, but through batch processing, speed reading, and skimming so quickly that I don’t really gain much, I’ve learned to deal with it quite well. In 2009 I aim to keep my subscription list clean (remove any feed that isn’t providing value) and under the 1000+ line.
• Help at least five people quit AOL. This really should be on everyone’s list this year, as part of making the world a better place. It’s not that I have a problem with AOL, it’s that I have a serious problem with people paying for email. To me this is like paying for air. AOL knows that it needs a new business model and is adapting to keep up. But while it does this, I just can’t go on knowing that people are paying for the service. If you also want to help friends, family, and other loved ones leave AOL, check out AOLeave.com
  
• Make 40-50% of tweets replies. Twitter, by nature, is more communicative than any other social computing form I know (and I know them all…). Instead of just shouting out to the world, Twitter provides the ability to have conversations with many people: ask questions, get help, answer questions, give help. Unfortunately I’ve found that as I’ve started following more people, I’ve lost focus. By reading a lot of tweets, I don’t actually interact with as many any more. So my 2009 resolution is to aim for 40-50% of my tweets to be replies- AND to have them be to more people, not just the same few over and over. I follow so many awesome people - it’s high-time I get to interact with more of them.
• Sign up at least three friends to Twitter. Look, Twitter is going to hit it big in the coming years. Its reach will extend beyond the early adopters (2007) tech and marketing types (2008), in 2009 Twitter is going to reach out to more of the mainstream - and I don’t want my non-early-adopting-tech/marketing friends to be on there too.
• Contribute more in online Forums. I’m pretty active in a number of tech forums (few coding forums, many Windows Mobile forums, and a handful of misc. discussion boards), but in previous years “pretty active” has meant reading a lot… in 2009 I’d like to give more back to the forums that have helped me so much - I’ll do this by answering more questions and contributing where possible.
• Buy ZERO computers. I don’t need another one - but I haven’t needed one in a while and that hasn’t stopped me… so I’m finally to a point where I can no longer justify buying another. In 2009 I will add NO computers to my home collection. You know… unless there’s a really good sale on some netbooks…
• Redesign my website. It’s time for a new look (and possibly has been since I launched this design…). No idea when I’ll actually get around to this one. But in 2009 I will redesign this site, as well as a handful of others that I oversee. Oh, and I want to do it myself - get back into the fun of CSS.
• Use more features of Facebook and LinkedIn. I research social technologies for a living, but use them rather weakly. I’ve still never uploaded pictures to Facebook, or written a recommendation on LinkedIn. In 2009 I want to get better at using both - and connect with more great people on each. Let’s start now: Zach on Facebook - Zach on LinkedIn.
• Write more conversational blog posts. Ok, I’m not going to delude myself into thinking I can write more. I’m just not a high volume poster. I tried that… and it didn’t really work. So in 2009 I want to write better posts - ones that make people think - and then respond. In 2008 my Post-to-Comment ratio was about 1:2.4 - I’m actually pretty happy with that, but I’d like to see it grow to 1:4 by the end of 2009. But of course I can’t do this one without your help.

And that’s it for me. I think that if I complete each of these resolutions by the year’s end I will have had a happy tech year and will be a better person because of it. So what about you? What are your tech resolutions?