For the past few months I've been involved in a case study project with some colleagues at Cisco where we've been researching what the most relevant software skills are that Cisco's pre-sales engineers could benefit from. We're all freaking experts at Outlook of course (that's a joke ?) but we were interested in the areas of programming, automation, orchestration, databases, analytics, and so on. The end goal of the project was to identify what those relevant skills are, have a plan to identify the current skillset in the field, do that gap analysis and then put forward recommendations on how to close the gap.

This probably sounds really boring and dry, and I don't blame you for thinking that, but I actually chose this case study topic from a list of 8 or so. My motivation was largely selfish: I wanted to see first-hand the outcome of this project because I wanted to know how best to align my own training, study, and career in the software arena. I already believed that to stay relevant as my career moves along that software skills would be essential. It was just a question of what type of skills and in which specific areas.

Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I've again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I'm not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the "me" behind the scenes.

Let's go through the list!

This post has been sitting in the "drafts" folder for a while now. Clearly, since it's August and is therefore a little late to be deciding on a plan that is supposed to carry through all 12 months of 2017. Regardless, I think it's still worth sharing how I've attempted to increase the frequency of my blogging. My basic goal for 2017 is:

Create more content in 12 months than I ever have before in order to a) significantly build up the depth and breadth of knowledge on my blog, b) increase my skills as a writer, and c) continue to build this blog and the readership as a key part of my online persona and brand.

In order to achieve this goal, I've identified a couple of tactical objectives:

1. Reduce the friction between me and the keyboard; make it possible to "just write".
2. Be able to "just write" anywhere. At home. On vacation. In a waiting room. On an airplane. I should also be able to start a post in one location and pick it up again in another. Indirectly this means I need to be able to write on any of my computers or mobile devices.

In order to meet these goals, I needed to improve my tools and come up with a better workflow.

Well, I got to tick a big item off my list of goals last week. I successfully delivered a presentation at Cisco Live! in front of a large group of people. It didn't kill me and I didn't trip over anything and embarrass myself so no matter what, I have those two points to feel good about :-)

All joking aside, it actually went a whole lot better than that.

This past June when I was in North Carolina at Cisco's CPOC lab, I learned that there was a chance-albeit a slim one, but a chance nonetheless-that a position would be opening up on the CPOC team in the fall. By that point I had been to CPOC three times and knew many of the engineers who worked there. I spoke to them to get their feedback, met with the newly-hired manager of the team, and just generally did all the things I thought I should be doing to take advantage of my time being face to face with these folks.

I haven't ever written a "year in review" type of post before. Sure, I do a post to summarize how the blog has done over the year but I've never done a personal look back. Last night-New Years Eve-I was thinking about everything that I was involved in during 2016 and I realized "I should write this down! I was involved in or a participant of some amazing things last year!"

So here we go. In an effort to show a more personal side and not just my geeky side, here is my personal 2016 year in review.