goals – Christopher Wink

My 2012 professional resolutions with a focus on RISK; review 2011 goals

A year ago, I felt scattered. I wanted to focus in 2011, and I think, as a full-time employee of my own business with clearer goals and objectives, I have accomplished that.

As detailed below, I feel very proud of the success I had in meeting my professional resolutions for the year. So, it’s important to me that I do so again, which I also did below.

In them, I’d say the theme for my 2012 is RISK.

It’s time to risk fast or succeed for me professionally. I want to be more aggressive in business and outreach, now with a more stable company and clearer focus.

I’ll set goals to do so, but it’s also worth reviewing what has been a wonderful year. Here are some professional milestones not included in my planned resolutions below:

January 2011: Launching Technically Media, a consultancy that publishes Technically Philly and launched that month a new blog strategy for the National Constitution Center.
February 2011: Philadelphia magazine covered a multimillion dollar journalism effort at Temple Unuiversity and referenced that we at Technically Philly helped conceive of its structure. (I offered other strategy around the effort and wrote about a similar effort.)
March 2011: I helped develop the strategy around OpenDataPhilly.org, an open data catalog built by Azavea and unveiled in April during Philly Tech Week.
April 2011: I was invited to attend the Hardly.Strictly.Young conference on news innovation at the University of Missouri.
April 2011: Addressing Philadelphia City Council, regarding Philly Tech Week.
May 2011: NBC 10 listed me as among 20 locals who are worth following on Twitter.
June 2011: I was invited to attend an intimate Aspen Institute roundtable on news innovation.
July 2011: I spoke about technology issues on local NPR affiliate WHYY several times, like here, here, here and here.
August 2011: Alumni magazine or not, I had my first glossy print feature published in the Temple Review.
September 2011: With the generous support of the Center for Public Interest Journalism, I attended the national Online News Association conference in Boston.
October 2011: I released a particularly large piece of journalism around a bottlenecked city data set.
November 2011: Yes, I finally got a smart phone.

Below, see my 2012 resolutions and a review of how I did with my 2011 goals too.

Continue reading My 2012 professional resolutions with a focus on RISK; review 2011 goals

Focus: my goal for 2011; Growth: my experience in 2010

About a year ago, in December 2009, I was sitting in my living room with two friends.

I had no heat, two plastic chairs and a coffee table. I was chasing down the last of that year’s freelancing invoices to make about $16,000.

I was certainly still privileged for an endless list of reasons, but, to put it shortly, for a lot of reasons, 2009 was a miserable year for me. The three of us all had disappointing years. We all agreed that 2010 was going to better. Much, much better.

What I did do last year was reflect on 2009 and decided upon a theme: slow start.

I haven’t paid it much mind until now, but I think that’s a great task, summing up a year and trying to move in the direction of another for the following year. In that post, I suggested 2010 would have to be a year of ‘next steps.’

Basically, I need a thousand flowers to bloom so I could see which one I wanted to pick.

As expected, 2010 was a much, much better year. It was a year of tremendous growth for me, and, yes, next steps, as I’ll reflect upon below.

But now, with all of this growth, it is time to pick. Fitting the professional goals and the personal resolutions I’ve set, my theme or my overarching goal for 2011 is focus.

Continue reading Focus: my goal for 2011; Growth: my experience in 2010

My 2011 Professional Resolutions

Yes, I’m doing a resolutions post. If for no other reason than to hold myself accountable.

Looking at last year’s professional goals, which were much more about staying afloat financially, I think this year, the theme is laying the foundation of sustainability to grow a business and opportunities at journalism and the like.

I broke them out more specifically by month, as I did for last year’s personal resolutions:

Continue reading My 2011 Professional Resolutions

If 2009 was a slow start, then 2010 needs to be next steps

If the theme of my 2009 was slow start, the theme for 2010 needs to be next steps.

This past year wasn’t a great one.

I was blessed with so much (some of which I will be sharing soon), but my first year of freelancing was a struggle (though I remain excited about the freedom). I made less than $20,000 and don’t have enough saved for the taxes I need to pay.

While I think I got some great clips this year, launched a promising technology community blog and was part of a new hyperlocal news site, it’s clear none of those projects are on the verge of keeping me from being tax delinquent or getting into debt.

This year was all about a start.

I started a lot of projects. I learned a lot and wrote a lot. But it certainly all moved slowly.

2010 is going to be a much better year, to be sure. It just needs to be focused on bolstering these opportunities and others. My resolutions reflect just that.

Here’s to 2010.

Professional Resolutions for 2010

Update: Today, Dec. 19, 2010, I’ve gone back and looked at my goals. It’s interesting to see a split and failure to finish most of these. Three of these resolutions I succeeded in meeting definitively and met in spirit a fourth; I outright failed at three, and two became un-applicable as the year wore on.

I also created personal resolutions and goals to manage on my new home in 2010, but with a new year, I want to set goals for my professional self in 2010.

After all, 2009 was a brutal year, so 2010 should be plenty better.

Stabilize my income — Update: I did that in January 2010 in an unexpected way. It’s varied wildly throughout 2009. One way or another, I want to focus it.
A new, solid pitch at least once a week — Update: Did that until I got the above mentioned job. (to buttress other work and those fed to me)
Contact a new client at least once a month — Update: Did that until I got the above mentioned job. In writing, editing, multimedia or other
100 RSS subscribers for this site, up from 60 today — Update: Nope.
1,500 Twitter followers, from the 960 today (I hope a plurality of them can offer value in connecting to sources, ideas and content) — Update: nope, though, at nearly 1400, I got closer.
Distribute remaining 600 business cards — Update: Nope. I still have more than 400.
Bring Technically Philly to profitability — Update: By way of its parent company, we did do that, as I’ve come on full-time.
Earn grant funding for real journalism — Update: Yes, for both NEast and Technically Philly.
Write regularly on this site — Update: check! It’s a place to improve my web writing and connect with audiences. I want to perhaps write a little less but make the product more meaningful.

Professional Resolutions for 2009

It’s a new year, so it’s time for resolutions. Here are my professional ideas, as I shared some more specific personal ones here.

Here are a few I’ve been thinking about:

Write: I want to write more here, journal more, more establish my freelancing career, get pieces into big newspapers and magazines and be part of meaningful journalism. Most important, I want to think I am a better writer, reporter and journalist a year from now than I am now.
Technology: I need to toe more into the obvious steps of tech, multimedia and web design. I want to invest time in using my point and click camera, editing video and audio and move this website maybe to a self-hosted version without the wordpress.com.
I want to make $30,000: Making that pre-tax total would mean I made more than I did as a post-graduate intern and allow me to save a little bit of money. I could do this freelancing, but I also might look for some writing and journalism jobs.
Make a book out of WDSTL: I created a lot of content with the cheap travel video podcast while backpacking in Europe, so I’d like to do something more with it.
I want to say ‘I don’t know’ more: All of us get trapped into making educated guesses and generally trying to answer questions or offer opinions for matters we don’t know. I want to stop that. If I don’t know something, I want to
Frame clips and diploma: I have some great newspaper clips and that diploma I paid so much for, so I’d like to display them to show them off a bit and be reminded of how hard I worked for them.
Update portfolio: I have a print portfolio that I’d like to update.

Those are my clearest objectives for 2009. What are yours?