Vorpa Bunny

Since I never keep them I don’t really worry about New Years Resolutions. But I do like to set goals for the new year to gauge where I am at after each year. I have found that there are definitely some do’s and don’ts for setting goals though. For example, broad sweeping resolutions like “lose weight” just don’t work because they aren’t specific enough. You don’t know where to start so you don’t end up doing them. Setting something more specific like “don’t eat red meat” is a whole lot easier. But it is good not to get to specific so you at least have some room in case you need to pivot somewhere along the way. With that said it is time to get started!

My overall goal for 2010 was to recharge and de-stress, and I think I did fairly well at least on the recharge part.  So for 2011 I think I will shoot for finding the something that sparks my professional curiosity.

Here are some more detailed goals for 2011:

1) Help others to work with the tech community more

Towards the end of the year we had the Southeast Area User Group Leader Conference and one of the things I took away was the need to get more people involved in the communities and do a better job of motivating current community members. This is also something I have noticed that needs to happen in many of the small local tech conferences (aka. Barcamp, Wordcamp, etc) This really comes down to working with other people in the community to have more forward facing and inclusive roles in the current tech communities. We are both keen to have me work with some other Canonical staff members to have a more forward facing and inclusive community role with our community. Another big part of this is to find ways to motivate the members of these groups to be more active and help make the experience better for everyone.

2) Write Daily

Over the past year I have gotten back in the habit of doing a lot of reading again. To complement this I want to try to do more writing. Sadly I used to do write a lot but just got out of the habit so blogging is a good way to get back into it. At this point I have 2 active blogs: BonsaiHacker and BonsaiHackerLite that I can use. Along with this I can also write things for the Ignite site and a few others so hopefully it should be a fairly easy goal in the end. I’d like to write a post for one of them every day, meaning each blog will get one, maybe two/three posts a week, depending on the blog. Writing every day will help me to write better, think of new things to write about, and further my goals as a blogger. Here’s the specifics.

• At least 5 posts a week on one of the blogs I am associated with
• Length of the posts don’t matter.
• Posts should be finished before I go to sleep (so, I can finish after midnight, but should finish before I go to sleep).
• The night before, I should plan / outline possible posts for the next day.

3) Manage my productivity time better

Like many other people, I work a long week, but I feel like I can better tune my time. I spend huge amounts of time processing email and doing useless firefighting, and I feel like I need to protect more of my time so I can be working on projects and working with specific folks.

Other Things I Already Do but needs improvements…

There’s a lot of other things I already do – it’s so important to always be improving yourself (and others around you, if you can) all the time and every day. Improvements don’t come suddenly, they take a long time. So, creating habits that will improve yourself in the long run are good too. Things I’m already doing, and would like to continue doing are…

• Help grow the Ignite Birmingham Event and Community
• Help Grow the local *Camp’s in Birmingham
• Spend more quality time with the family
• Invest in a few Key startups if possible
• Read more

There’s so much more, I’m sure, but one person can only do so much. We’ll see how it goes, when 2012 has hit.

The quick and dirty discription of a a Jelly is an every-so-often casual coworking session. Which is basically a group of various devs, designers and freelancers getting together and working from the same locaton in a collaborative model. Anyone is welcome to come, bring a laptop, and work alongside other creative, fun people.  See workatjelly.com and this blog post for more background on the history and background of jellys. Go here for Birmingham Jelly info.

This week our friends over at Sparkbox Coworking have invited us to have a jelly at their facility on Friday. There will be snacks and refreshments at the Jelly. For more info check out the facebook event. It doesn’t matter who you work for, or what you do, if you think that working with smart and friendly people would benefit. Then join our facebook group or come to one of our meetings.

The event again brought together community leaders from throughout the southeast for a day of networking and brainstorming with other community leaders. 20+ user groups (listed here) were represented this year including people from Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Greenville-Spartanburg, and Augusta.

So what is the reason behind this event you ask? Well many tech community groups face similar challenges such as “Where can we meet?” “How to get Sponsors”, and “How to maintain and Grow membership” So why not get those groups together to share solutions and best practices with each other to help better the tech community as a whole? Well that is just what we did.

Since the goal was to make connections and share ideas/best-practices we started with a game like last year. Everyone was encouraged to sit next to someone they didn’t know and each lunch while we worked on the game, and afterwards the group with the most correct answers got prizes.

The event itself was run like a traditional “unconference”, and the schedule was not fixed. So after lunch and the * activity we started by soliciting topics from the leaders, and setting up breakout sessions to discuss each of the topics. After each hour of breakouts, each group gave a summary to the others of their conclusions, salient points and next steps.

The main breakout topics this time included “Alternative Meeting Formats”,  “Incorporating and Non-Profit Formation”,  “Cross Group Interactions”, and “Member Motivation, Participation, and Continuous interaction”.  We put notes and summaries of the conversations on the wiki to make sure the information is accessible to others. You can click on the topics above to get to the notes. We are still working on adding notes for some sessions.

After the event we enjoyed a catered dinner and then finished it off with some XBOX gaming (Halo: Reach and Rock Band), and some good old-fashioned socializing over beer.

I really enjoyed the event again this year and it always helps to see user groups from all over have the same issues we do. We heard a lot good ideas and learned from all sorts of various situations others have had. Hopefully we will be able to keep this group engaged and make the User Groups in the Southeast second to none.

This is what got me interested in bringing Ignite to Birmingham. I knew there were lots of people in Birmingham who have great ideas and alot of people who could help each other out greatly that just don’t know about each other. And Ignite and other unconferences are a great way to bridge this gap in new and interesting ways. Through Ignite I had already had the chance to meet people I would not normally have had the chance to meet, and be influenced by some of there great ideas.

So based on that I ask you, the reader, to ask yourself this question “Who would I like to see speak at Ignite?”. If you know the person then consider recommending they propose a talk for ignite, and if not feel free to add there name here so we know who might be good to approach. You can direct them to http://www.ignitebirmingham.com for more info and here is link to the proposal form http://www.ignitebirmingham.com/proposals/

Along the way I’ve tried to help with a lot of events that also helped grow the community such as: Barcamp, Wordcamp, Alabama LugFest, and other events. And I have met lots of great people, lots of characters, and been continuously impressed with the caliber of people in the Metro Area. While many people are pessimistic about the area I believe we have the pieces to build a vibrant and prosperous creative community in the area. And I want to do everything I can to help the city see the possibilites.

Last year I was lucky enough to get to attend a few Ignite events in cities I traveled to due to work and it got me thinking. I had been previously exposed the the quick talk format through “lightning talks” at events like OSCON and I thought it was an easy yet powerful format. So I started to think since there are so many cool groups, conferences, organizations, and people in Birmingham that that it would be awesome to have a night once every few months where we can all get together and share all of those ideas that are burning inside us – technology, art, communications, or whatever the topic. Since most of the events I have been involved with have been very tech heavy , this would provide an opportunity to get a wider audience and hopefully get them excited about the City/Metro Area again.

The goal was for Ignite Birmingham to be a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea, concept, or passion — and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. It is about democratizing the tech discussion, sharing ideas, and their free exchange . So in essence Ignite Birmingham was started to spark a discussion. These discussions will hopefully help the area grow and prosper by making a closer creative community. So let’s get out there and spark a discussion, share an idea, and help each other out!