Adaptive Path has a tradition of putting personal and professional resolutions into a combined essay for the public. I contributed mine and in the interest of keeping myself honest, I wanted to re-post them here for more people to see.

#1: Start Writing

In 2008, I will stop simply observing the world around me and I will start commenting on it. I’ll write to my personal blog every (work)day and write to the Adaptive Path blog every week. I will take all of this writing and work it into two or three essays for the year. I want my voice to be a larger (though still comparatively tiny) part of the online community. I also want to develop a stronger writing style and the act of writing is the best way to accomplish this. Sometimes my writing will have humor, often it will be tedious, and if I am lucky, every now and then it’ll be clever, perhaps even poignant.

#2: Join an Open-source Project

I’ve been a consumer of open-source software for years. When I need to solve some problem, I first turn to free and often open-sourced software. Sometimes it’s a web application. Sometimes it’s server software. Sometimes it’s a desktop application. Often the software is quite simply: AWESOME. Yet despite frequently using many open-source tools I have yet to contribute my time back into the community. For 2008, I will find an open-source project and participate in improving the software. I will not just visit the forums, filing feature-and-bug requests, but I will strive to really add value through code, documentation and/or design.