YearPlanReport

What I have done in 2013

December 29, 2013 YearPlanReport 2 comments

Year 2013 became life changing for me again being the 3rd year in a row, when I say this.

At the beginning of the year I knew that we are waiting for the baby. I decided on changing my job and approximately at the same time when my daughter was born I changed my job. Now I work for UN associated organization and I started working on something interesting – an offline capable web application written with EmberJs.

My plan for the year 2013 was quite extensive and had 21 items. I’ve achieved more than half of that but still much wasn’t done. Interestingly things not done are mostly skills related, which should probably keep me alerted.

Now a bit on each item.

The best thing which could happen. My daughter was born on 10th of June. Here are few pictures.

image

image

Now she occupies tons of my time. But it is not an excuse it rather has to be reason to do more!

Travel a lot. We definitely travelled a lot year. Because now we have small baby at home we are somewhat limited in distances we could travel. Thus year was mostly Austria explorative. My wife writes a blog post for each of our trips to different attractions.

image
Buy a car. I bought Ford Focus Traveller with big boot. Now we need one. It is diesel car so driver experience is somewhat different, but on other hand car proves itself great for long trips. Also I already took car for 5 times to Ukraine this year.
Ski high in the Alps. Not that I skied much this year. But I have a picture that proves that I skied in Alps at hight altitudes. Taken in Obertauern.

image
Learn German for real A2. I think I’ve failed here. No real need in communication in German. But I’ve attended A2 course so maybe I’ve learned something. At least for sure there is improvement when comparing to 2012.
Improve English fluency by applying more synonymous and idioms. Maybe. Now I work at UN where I have to collaborate with different people from all over the world in English, including native speakers.
Perform well & keep being challenged at work. I’ve changed my work. Now I’m self-employed and work by contract for UN associated organization through the other company. I’m happy that I’m quite challenged now, mostly thanks to interesting project and Iraqian boss.
Contribute to open source. Fail. One gist doesn’t count.
Deliver many technical presentations. None delivered. Instead I performed quite few presentations to our users. I even had to wear suite.
Extend social network at work & outside. Mostly failure here. My exposure has changed now. I feel myself somewhat in very closed community of developers.
Write some web project. I do this now at work all days long.
Do programming in other languages than C#. Yes, now I mostly program in javascript.
Take part in one or few programming contests. Fail, except of some TC single round matches.
Visit one or few conferences. Fail.
Improve blog quality. Fail, since nothing has changed on this blog and post frequency is low.
Write at least 41 blog posts. Fail.
Increase community visibility. Fail.
Read as many books as I like. Well, this couldn’t have been a fail.
Consistently do exercises. Fail.
Reach 2013 reputation at stackoverflow. Fail.
Earn 2013 euro outside. Since now I’m self-employed and earn significantly much more than before. I would say that here I’ve oversucceeded here.

Generally it was very good year. I’m very happy because of my born daughter. She is great. Next year we will start learning programming and travel a lot together.

Unfortunately it is very likely that whatever I say is just like on the picture below:

image

Nevertheless, I wish you all

HAPPY NEW YEAR!


2 comments

2013: Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?

January 30, 2013 YearPlanReport 9 comments

Dear Reader,

I always thought that it is important to keep track of things you are doing and also to have a plan so that you know where you are moving and where you want to be.

This is continuation of my year plan/report thread. I had similar plan for 2010, 2011 and for 2012. Completion of 2010 list was almost 100% successful, completion of 2011 list was less successful. 2012 list completion is somewhere in between. Both 2011 and 2012 greatly changed my life. Same is expected in the year 2013.

Here below is my resolution list for 2013

  1. The best thing which could happen
  2. Travel a lot
  3. Buy a car
  4. Ski high in the Alps
  5. Learn German for real A2
  6. Improve English fluency by applying more synonymous and idioms
  7. Perform well & keep being challenged at work
  8. Contribute to open source
  9. Deliver many technical presentations
  10. Extend social network at work & outside
  11. Write some web project
  12. Do programming in other languages than C#
  13. Take part in one or few programming contests
  14. Visit one or few conferences
  15. Improve blog quality
  16. Write at least 41 blog posts
  17. Increase community visibility
  18. Read as many books as I like
  19. Consistently do exercises
  20. Reach 2013 reputation at stackoverflow
  21. Earn 2013 euro outside

I tried to keep each point very concise therefore my list may be lacking some of SMART-iness, but in a light of high unpredictability for a long term it would be much easier to remember and follow such a plan.

What do you want to do in this year? Any good suggestions for me?


9 comments

What I have done in 2012

January 20, 2013 Success, YearPlanReport 2 comments

I tend to have very ambitious plans and even realizing this I never regret because I believe that the higher you mark the higher you are going to reach. Of course there is some frustration and dissatisfaction when it is time for a review. If it is the case for you just neglect all bad and continue looking forward. Life is too short to spoil it with negative emotions. I visited so many places in the past year I wouldn’t believe if you told me this year before. Great and deep feelings of pleasant moments travelling somewhere in Europe together with my wife is the best thing taken from passed year. I hardly remember last piece of code I worked on, but I clearly see golden sun smoothly going down on the beach of Falassarna.

Overview of 2012

At the beginning of 2012 my life was about to change much once again. I changed my job, but this time it also meant change of a country. While we were finishing relocation paper work I tried to enjoy last month of being unemployed. I went skiing many times and slept well. Besides I released my e-book on design patterns.

Suddenly we appeared in Austria. Here is picture of me in front of my company’s logo at first day of our arrival:

WP_000304

Finding an apartment was a first challenge. After overcoming it and few others we almost stopped worrying. Starting in a completely different country and company with different mindset was extremely interesting and exciting.

After some acclimatization me and wife started to travel. Leveraging Schengen Area we really travelled a lot, I even did not expect that much. You will find complete list later on.

My professional life though did not thrive much in the past year. For sure I’ve improved my skills in many areas. For example my English has improved and a lot of new working experience was gained. I also learned some new to me approaches of delivering software and understood a lot about new company setup and its product available and used by millions. Additionally I introduced myself to few programming languages and did some pet programming.

Year ended with long vacation back in Ukraine together with my parents, friends and relatives. I wish I could be in many places at the same time.

Plan completeness

Now lets look at each of the items I planned year ago in my 2012 “Where do you want to be in a Year?”.

– Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)

Car is a whole separate topic. Turns out that keeping car in Europe is quite expensive. Just mandatory insurance costs close to 100 Euro each month. Of course it depends on car size and your driving experience and can be much decreased if you willing to drive Matiz while having 9 years driving background.

I didn’t buy a car in 2012 for myself, but I bought people carrier for my father. It was first time I really leveraged from duty fee. 20% of taxes were returned when I brought back confirmation of exporting car out of EU. Well registering car in Ukraine is tough task and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with it.

In addition I now hold Austrian driving license and proud to state that I passed an exam with my first try. It might sound ridiculous, but many friends I know here didn’t pass exam immediately, even they had some experience from Ukraine. Even 3 other fellows who tried to pass exam same day with me have failed. One try costs 130, printed license costs 90 and medical check 35. Total 225 euro just to get license if you already hold one from other country. If you want to pass it from scratch it would cost around 1,3K.

If you do the math, renting car is by far more cheaper and preferable over owning one if you only have some weekend trips time-to-time. Unfortunately I cannot drive to Ukraine by hired car. This year I drove Hyundai i40, Hyundai Accent, Opel Corsa, Opel Astra. As of not rented I drove Hyundai i20, Fiat Scudo carrying twice as many people as in normal car and finally I had a chance to drive my Chevrolet before I sold it. I think I like driving.

– Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)

It would be a titanic work to write about all places we visited with my wife during passed 2012 year, but thanks to her there is report on each of our travel. Below is list in chronological order with links to her blog.

I won’t start commenting on those above, because it would take ages. If you can read Ukrainian you have all stories there, otherwise just see some pictures.

– Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)

I don’t have a bike. But you can ride one completely free of charge here in Vienna. You just register with your credit card and whenever you use bike less than 1 hour you are not charged. Me and wife used this to spend many summer days with joy and benefit for health. We also had one hike in Alps Reichenau an der Rax. So far I went skiing only once and not in so distant Alps. Want to ski in some “real” Alps.

Generally I’m not completely satisfied with completeness of this point. But environment in Austria is more suitable for active life. People ride, run, walk really lot in dozen of parks.

– Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)

Ich glaube meine Deutsch ist noch zu schlecht. I attended one intensive course and also joined language courses offered by my company. Placement test reckons me for A2 level. I doubt it being even close to truth, but I will continue with German in 2013.

– Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)

Probably C1 is pre-advance. For sure I’ve improved my English. Online estimation gives me 7.7K known words versus 4.9K in the beginning of the year. But dictionary is very small portion of what can be considered as proficiency in a language. Fluency in speech is very important. Everyday work in English-speaking environment is a great advantage.

I have extensive blog post on languages I use here in Austria, called “Існує die Frage of Language. Или нет?”.

– Show kick-ass performance at work

For sure I performed really well. Many of my skills were noticed and acknowledged, especially technical ones. On the other hand I’m still lacking in self-confidence and communication skills and maybe some other soft skills. There is already one conference I’m going to visit to improve some of those. But I also doubt that I’m so bad in such things, as I have already been in role of tech lead and it was quite smooth. I think I need more time and motivation which is melting in new company.

– Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)

I think I now have much better idea on career opportunities and raises. It is completely out of synch with what I expected when I just started. Have you seen films in which guys work years to get any promotion meanwhile fighting with others to be pick number one. Of course it is not that severe as in movies, but there are many factors which make it closer to movies than to Ukrainian IT reality.

– In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join

As per me .NET user group here is marketing driven and besides is held in German so not something I can join easily, at least not for first years. Overall IT market is rather small here.

– Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)

I’m too greedy to spend almost 2K euro on conference while videos can be downloaded later. It is exactly what I did. Watched dozen of those. Though I visited small conference kindly offered by company.

– Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions

Many new friends, but I wouldn’t say that I have any Austrian as my real friend. Also by “same opinions” I largely meant interest in technical topics. It is even worse with that. I tried code and beer session and it didn’t go well. I hope it is just matter of time.

– Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace

Nothing in marketplace. Played a bit with couple of ideas, but gave up. Not sure I still want to do this. I wrote couple of Win8Metro applications for fun and also gave up. It would be not fair to say that I competed this point.

– Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so

I’m happy to know that I didn’t leave Ukrainian IT without any of my contribution.

Book has been released and is available on its web site.

– Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)

I read 7 books and have way too many in progress. Us usual there are Book Reviews on my blog.

– Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)

This year I tried many programming languages. Here are my posts on each of the languages from the book:

– Discipline myself to get up at some certain time

We have daily standup meeting at 10:30 so it forces me to be up at latest at 10AM. I cannot say that I failed with this, but also not completely what I wanted.

– Have more public visibility and community impact

This year I had drastically much less public visibility than year before.

More to come

I’m planning to have blog post on working experience here in Austria in general and in comparison with Ukraine as it could be very interesting for many of you.

Next year is promising to be life changing once again!


2 comments

Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?

January 21, 2012 Success, YearPlanReport 7 comments

Dear Reader,
This is continuation of my year plan/report thread. I had similar plan for 2010 and for 2011. Completion of 2010 list was almost 100% successful, and completion of 2011 was much difficult and not so successful, but 2011 brought many life turning events and decisions.
I’m frustrated to admit that my head doesn’t carry this phrase all the time:
Remember, life is limited in time, so if I don’t move in the right direction I will waste it entirely. 
Here below is my resolution list for 2012
  1. Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)
  2. Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)
  3. Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)
  4. Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)
  5. Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)
  6. Show kick-ass performance at work
  7. Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)
  8. In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join
  9. Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)
  10. Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions
  11. Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace
  12. Write couple of Win8Metro applications for fun
  13. Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so
  14. Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)
  15. Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)
  16. Discipline myself to get up at some certain time
  17. Have more public visibility and community impact – my way to MVP
My next annual report should contain evidence in facts to prove completion of above resolution. This resolution is bit smaller than 2011’s one, but as reality shows it should be more achievable because of this.
Please share your year resolution list! I will read with pleasure.


7 comments

What I have done in 2011

January 12, 2012 Revision of my activity, Success, YearPlanReport 1 comment

Looking back at my “Where do you want to be in a year?” blog post for the Jan 9, 2011, I regret that I did not do many things I planned, but I’m also proud about many things I did, because many of them are not small ones, but rather life changing, like marriage and moving to other country.

Overview of 2011

At the beginning of the year I continued passing my MS exams, which seemed somewhat important and very valuable for me at that moment, also I enjoyed end of winter spending many days at skiing hills in mountains. Near that time me with girlfriend decided to let our parents know our decision about future marriage in summer. They started to be in rush, but not me – at the beginning of sprint I had been thinking more about choosing my first car, which I successfully bought for 7000$. It is used Chevrolet Aveo 2005 of fully equipped, except it has manual transmission. At the day I bought car I did not have place to live in Lviv – me with best friend where looking for new apartment to rent, because of crazy and alcoholic owner of apartment, we rented before.
My blog did not go well previous year. There are couple of months without blog posts. One of them is July. It was very hot month – I got married on 16th of July and while still having vacation we went to Europe trip to see Hungary, Austria and Switzerland the most.
Besides of Europe trip we with my wife visited really many places in Western Ukraine. Now we had car, so travelling was more quick and spontaneous. 
By coincidence I was asked if I’m not interested to pass interview and relocate to other country just before my marriage. It went well and I was asked for other interview which by great coincidence was on-site in Austria when I was there with my wife. She was admiring Belvedere in Vienna, while I had my 1,5 hour interview. So in August I got an offer and accepted it. But as it is relocation to other country it involves lot of paper work to get work permit there, and took almost half a year to get approval.
This year also brought more responsibility for me at work, I had much of Technical Leader responsibilities & activities. I think that I worked in the most amazing and truly collaborative team from all of those I had chance to work in. We worked on WP7 project and challenging Silverlight project. I left those guys just before the winter, hoping to have few weeks of rest before final approval and relocation to Austria.
Before the New Year of 2011 I didn’t get approval so my “vacation” took longer, but I spent it reading a lot, sleeping even more, doing some pet coding and getting extremely lazy. To summarize: you won’t enjoy being unemployed for longer than month, not because of the money, but because of lacking social relations and absence of external challenges.

Was 2011 going according to my year plan?

See plan here.
– Release awesome free Design Patterns book in Ukrainian
I failed to do this in 2011, but I composed book, sent it to people willing to review its raw unedited version. As for now I have 5 our 25 responses on book. I’m going to create small web site for book and publish it there.
– Enterprise certification (finishing with 565 exam, very likely till the end of Winter)
I passed exam and got MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer at the beginning of the year.
– Learn to ski & swim well (I can both, but I want to be good at that)
I’m now above intermediate in skiing, but this is subjective view. Fact is that I can handle most difficult hills in Ukraine, like trostian on picture below and “black” trails in bukovel, can do basic ski-jumps and ski backwards.
image
As of swimming I did complete fail as I’ve been in water only 2 times during the year.
– Show kick-ass performance at work
I did not get official promotion, but I played role of Technical Leader, coded a lot and tried to show best of myself. I think I did great and could have done even better. Leaving this job was not an easy thing to do. I think SS is great Ukrainian company.
– Learn WP7 and Silverlight
Whole year I did coding for WP7 and out of browser application in Silverlight. Also with my friends won at Hackathon event, where we created small game for the WP7.
image
I also introduced weekly discussions around reading “Silverlight in Action” in my team.
– Start working on some “real” book (just collecting ideas on book)
As of now I don’t have any clear idea on “real” book. But the more I think on this matter the more I’m close to something on the edge of technology and people collaboration.
– Read 24 books (this year I will definitely hit this score)
Let’s count: 5 in reviews on blog, 4 more read, but no posts on blog yet. And also 5 in progress, 4 of which are almost read. (I tried hard to read as much as I can before New Year and that lead to 5 in progress).
In total it looks like not more that 13 books, which is even less than previous year report (15). Seems one book a month is my pace.
“Take quick look behind to analyze, don’t stop, think positively, go forward!” – I said to myself on this subject.
– Marriage (yeah, this really is in the list “OMG” I’m saying to myself…)
It is one of the things I’m proud about. Despite this world’s shifted mind I think that two can get married in their twenties and be happy for many years. I was really surprised by marriage statistics in Western countries. For example this statistics show that less people are getting married and along more are getting divorced. And this shows that my country is also at the top of divorce list. Too much about that crap.
Here we are:
image
And here are more of those photos at Picasa:
Wedding-Preview-900px-2
I’m extremely glad that I have so cute and smart wife. Just after marriage we travelled even more than before it. We have been enjoying each moment of being together.
Before I left work, we had been living in separate apartment not far from my friend and team-mate. Each day she prepared awesome breakfast and lunch to take to work. Then I picked up Taras and drove to work. It was routine, but it was great.
– Travel abroad (I’m planning for Europe tourist tour)
I had awesome week travelling though Europe after my wedding. See photos:
2011.07.23-29.Europe.Trip.Honey.Week
– Learn one more programming language (probably everyone heard about learning one language per year, why not?)
I read bits about Haskell and tried F#, but I’m not satisfied with my progress. So will have another try in 2012.
– Frequent dev meetings (this is hard, because preparing takes lot of time for me)
I did probably very few so called “developer’s meetings”, one of which was even paid. Despite this I introduced technical status meeting for my team in addition to scrum standup.
Karpaty alpinism (again health stuff, want to do this with my girlfriend)
We took Hoverla – the highest mountain in Ukraine:
image
Read complete story and see photos at my wife’s blog here.
We also been on hard Pikyj, read here and more enjoying Lopata (read here).
– Became known presenter (couple of outside the company presentations)
– English (watch films, find guys to talk in English)
For anything of video I watched myself I preferred English. Which of course didn’t work for cinema where I go with wife and friends. Also I had to watch amazing “The Big Bang Theory” translated, but some series watched with pleasure in English.
And what is funny now I’m learning German :).
– Start coffee-and-code in Lviv
Fail. I thought about this many times and always lacked confidence in my social skills to do this. Probably it can be as easy as mentioning on blog and in twitter something like “Hey, guys! Tomorrow I will be in the XYZ coffee shop doing some coding. Come along and join.”
– Write couple of personal-small programming projects / contribute to open-source
Not much here – dozen of try-it-out projects, small open-source orm system CustomORM, wp7 project we wrote at Hackathon and maybe 3 wp7 i-started-it-and-left projects, ah and few competition type projects at TopCoder.
– Visit one of the solid conferences
I visited couple of conferences like Uneta Plus and Mobile Professional Days in Kharkiv, and of course many events here in Lviv like LvivIT and regular Lviv User Group events.
– Get money machine / some ideas / investments / whatever
I haven’t invented anything better than deposit accounts, which now don’t work that good as if they worked in 2009 while crisis. Month interest income is enough for one full tank of my car, which usually runs out in 1-1,5 weeks.
– Start some business even small and crappy – but have it to learn
Fail. And even more – complete fail. I didn’t even think about this much. But from other point of view, there must be something exciting me to start with and I haven’t found anything like this. At least I’m happy that I will be eligible to have wp7 developer account in Austria.
Became better-and-better in planning and achieving, continue growing, etc, etc…
Subjective. Isn’t it? I think I did great with this one, but you decide. I move into embrace of 2012 year which will definitely bring me lot of nice surprises, emotions and great time.


1 comment

Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?

January 8, 2011 Success, YearPlanReport 9 comments

So time for new year resolution has came.
I created similar list last year and wrote why I really think that having list of things you want to do during the year is very important. I listened to many of time management books, especially I like those recommendations that includes all aspects of the life.
Accordingly that their point of view life consists with following set of aspects: health, relations, finances, emotions, work. If at least one of this aspects lame you wouldn’t enjoy your life entirely since other aspects will suffer. I found that in recent time I neglected my health. Yeah, I’m young so I do not feel myself completely crappy, but anyway I don’t like situation in which I’m now. That is why I’m planning to have some activities in list that should help me with my health. In this country you have to work half of your life to get apartments to live in… wtf? yeah, that’s truth, so there have to be some better ways to earn more money, not only sweatshoping work. To enjoy my life it would be perfect to travel abroad with middle-low budget.
Here below is my resolution list for 2011 

  1. Release awesome free Design Patterns book in Ukrainian (somewhen in Spring)
  2. Enterprise certification (finishing with 565 exam, very likely till the end of Winter)
  3. Learn to ski & swim well (I can both, but I want to be good at that)
  4. Show kick-ass performance at work (just MUST do this, I see this as key for moving forward)
  5. Learn WP7 and Silverlight
  6. Start working on some “real” book (just collecting ideas on book)
  7. Read 24 books (this year I will definitely hit this score)
  8. Travel abroad (I’m planning for Europe tourist tour)
  9. Marriage (yeah, this really is in the list “OMG” I’m saying to myself…)
  10. Learn one more programming language (probably everyone heard about learning one language per year, why not?)
  11. Frequent dev meetings (this is hard, because preparing takes lot of time for me)
  12. Karpaty alpinism (again health stuff, want to do this with my girlfriend)
  13. Became known presenter (couple of outside the company presentations)
  14. English (watch films, find guys to talk in English)
  15. Start coffee-and-code in Lviv
  16. Write couple of personal-small programming projects / contribute to open-source
  17. Visit one of the solid conferences
  18. Get money machine / some ideas / investments / whatever
  19. Start some business even small and crappy – but have it to learn
  20. Became better-and-better in planning and achieving, continue growing, etc, etc…

(list above is not ordered in any way…)
Do you have your plan for this year? If you don’t better think about it, because “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
Ok list looks large but fair enough to achieve this in year term. Thank you for reading my resolutions and please share yours!


9 comments

What has been done during last year?

January 5, 2011 Revision of my activity, Success, YearPlanReport No comments

Looking back at my “Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?” blog post for the Jan 2, 2010 I want to  summarize for myself if I stand where I wanted to stand and what else could be done to improve my position. I would recommend to all of you to execute same reviewing and realize if you are moving in the right direction or not.
For the previous year I wrote 156 blog posts, read many books, performed dozen presentations, became Senior developer, passed few ms exams, decided to start my first book and did many other hopefully right things.
Remember, life is limited in time, so if you don’t move in the right direction you might waste it entirely.

So the list I had in the beginning of 2010:

By the end of 2010 I want:

1. Get Microsoft Certification:
  * MCTS (Exams: 70-536 and 70-505) SUCCESS
  * MCPD 70-563 and 70-565 (this one is big fish, but I need such!) FAIL
Ok, so I went very good with this item. I successfully passed 536, 505 and 503 exams, they lead me for passing exam 565, passing which credits Enterprise Application Developer 3.5 certification.

2. Read at least 24 books. 62,5% SUCCESS :) 37,5% FAIL
Ok, so counting only programming-related books I have 15 books read. You can see their reviews on my blog just follow this link.
I do not think that I’ve completely failed this item, since I have couple of books in progress and their review will reveal shortly on this blog.

3. Become known employee in my company, sharing knowledge and doing presentations, so will have much more authority among co-workers. SUCCESS
I took few good steps here. I performed company-wide presentation on Domain-Driven Design and of course I performed many so called developers meetings for my guys from my division.
I also performed 4 presentations outside of my company – two at Lviv .Net UG, one at Java UG and one at IT-Jam in Kharkiv.
Visited MS SWIT Conference in Kyiv.

4. Familiarize with Java and contribute research and development work to Kohonen Maps world. SUCCESS
By this link you can find out that I did some research on this matter and I’m almost 100% sure that I was first in the world who wrote parallelized algorithm for Kohonen maps with .net framework version 4.0. I even utilized some of the new concepts introduced regarding multithreading in .net 4.0. Along with this I spent some time writing same project with Java.

5. to be Senior Developer and continue growing… SUCCESS
Done! Read Friday 13th blog post. As of growing I slowed down slightly as per me. Maybe I got tired, but I developed my career plan.

6. Improve my English skills to have at least upper-intermediate strong level (according to my company graduating) SUCCESS
Definitely improved my English skills. My official level as of now is “upper-intermediate”. It might be that shortly will get “+strong” since my English course is not finished yet. But honestly I feel that I lack a lot to speak fluently. But now I can easily watch films without translation, listen podcasts, etc…

7. Gather good capital and looking for investments of money. SUCCESS
Ah! This progresses hardly, but I do a lot here. At least I got higher salary rate because of my promotion, but I started spending more money. I have to work on this more. Btw, my blog earned 4,81$ for the year, but we all know that it pays me differently.

Next thing I will create blog post “Where do you want to be in a Year?” for the 2011.
Till next time.


No comments

Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?

January 1, 2010 Success, YearPlanReport 3 comments

Right now is the first time in this year when I opened google reader and found one interesting post Where Do You Want to Be In a Year? by Tim Barcz. When I read it I realized that I had read book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also.

In general all books on Success says that you need to “Begin with the end in mind“, this means that you must have your plan.

At first you need to find out you goal for whole life. That is your target and main thing you need to get. Then you need to do breakdown of tasks you need to accomplish in your life, having them in few levels of term scope like 10 years term, 5 years term and 1 year term… and so on. So question:

Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?

My answer: 

By the end of 2010 I want:

1. Get Microsoft Certification:
  * MCTS (Exams: 70-536 and 70-505)
  * MCPD 70-563 and 70-565 (this one is big fish, but I need such!)
2. Read at least 24 books.
3. Become known employee in my company, sharing knowledge and doing presentations, so will have much more authority among co-workers.
4. Familiarize with Java and contribute research and development work to Kohonen Maps world.
5. to be Senior Developer and continue growing…
6. Improve my English skills to have at least upper-intermediate strong level (according to my company graduating)
7. Gather good capital and looking for investments of money.

Write down your answer in comments or give me link to your blog!


3 comments