It’s a new year, and at the risk of sounding a bit trite, I’ve set some goals for 2011. They’re slightly different than the go-to-the-gym, travel-more, quit-smoking variety. 2010 was monumental, particularly the last 6 months of it. I left my perch at Creative Commons after 4+ years working with incredible folks on the science side of things. I joined a team of heavy hitters to help get a new technology company off the ground, involving a move to London. With the help of a dear friend, we launched a side project that provides us with an outlet for exceptionally geeky and tremendously fun conversation with brilliant folks day in and day out, allowing us to put our own stamp on the London meetup scene. There are no complaints on this end. But, there’s always room for improvement … so for the sake of transparency and knowledge sharing, here are a few things I hope to work on in the new year.
(Also, stay tuned for more on the new company – long overdue – and exciting news about our January sameAs. Coming soon.)
So, here goes:
Write / blog more. Well, off to a good start, at least … //pats self on the back. On to number two.
Learn a new language, or at least give it the old college try. I thought I’d spice things up this year a bit and try to tackle two in this category. Oddly enough, I think I may have better luck with the latter listed.
(1) French – Or at least brushing up on my vocabulary. Thanks to Polyglot for streamlining that into my online activity. Such a smart little Chrome plug in.
(2) Ruby – Yep, you heard me. With my brand new PickAxe by my side and a slew of wacky tutorials involving zombies and cartoon foxes, I’ve taken the plunge. I’m determined to be able to do more than basic arithmetic and page changes. This also means certain male friends of mine will be pestered more with n00b programming questions. They still think it’s charming. They’ll learn soon enough 🙂
Getting better at clearing out my browser windows (current tab count is low, at 34). I think I need to come up with a term for this. Any suggestions? Tabular-info-filter-failure? Tab-ulitis? And this isn’t even touching on the RSS Reader that’s chock full of unread goodies. I’m determined to make my way through it, but in the meantime, some recent links of interest:
* Tim O’Reilly on the Maker Revolution, and how DIY has affected various aspects of our life.
* Clive Thompson on how tweets are stimulating deeper analysis, rather than shortening our attention span / information consumption threshholds.
* Death by Irony: How the Librarians Killed the Academic Library … and more on the differences between (and increase of the former) “Born Digital” and “Born Again” publisher playbooks.
* Why Linked Data is not enough for scientists – Dave de Roure hitting it out of the park again.
* Statistical Zombies – A look at the top 10 mistakes in day-to-day reporting of numerical and statistical info (with a catchy title to get in on the zombie craze. Can’t blame him, really)
And to round it out, some predictions for the New Year. Instead of adding to the deluge of NY related information out there on teh interwebs, here’s a smattering of posts I particularly liked, looking forward to the year ahead.
* Jim Hendler with his Semantic Web flavored New Year’s Resolutions …
* On a broader scale, what to look for in 2011. Sadly, bacon was on the 2010 list … M’mm bacon.
* The Guardian’s take on New Year’s Resolutions and how to be a better person in 2011. This one may surprise you …
* And last but not least, Nico Adams reads the data and technology tea leaves for 2011, taking a stab at some predictions of his own. Ones that I happen to believe wholeheartedly with. Bravo.
That wraps it up for now. There’s much more to write, but the jetlag is kicking in again … Stay tuned. And here’s to 2011.
kaitlin thaney 
Polyglot looks interesting – I’m going to have to try it out. RE the tabs issue, I have the same problem! I think it’s a combination of (i) trying to do too much and (ii) not reading articles completely when I find them. Instead, I skim the first paragraph, think “oh this is interesting, I’ll have to read it later” and then leave it open to read later (but never get around to actually reading it).
I’m trying to use Instapaper and Pinboard to manage this but the results thus far aren’t very encouraging (meaning I still have way too many tabs open!).
Nice to have met you at BeyondthePDF, Kaitlen!
I’m disturbed by the semantics of sameAs (which my inner ear hears as owl:sameAs).
http://www.digital-science.com/ looks interesting — I read your slidedeck but I’m looking forward to the forthcoming details of your work. That was a very good use of the “I think you should be more explicit here in step 2” cartoon!
I concur with Walter about pinboard — I use “read later” pretty often these days. When I go to bookmark something a second time I know it’s time to read it, if I haven’t already. At least it will come up in pinboard full-text search, and with tags, if I’ve had time to tag it. I like Instapaper, but it’s not a major part of my workflow right now.