Goals
You need a vision to compare your current situation to. That’s how you find out if you’re moving forward. My vision is running my own successful web design company.
Once you know where the finish line is, you’ve gotta start putting one foot in front of the other. You’ve got to have goals.
GOAL #1 100% Complete:
To learn about web standards and usability, develop a good presentation, and present it to my workgroup.
First goal is complete! I went to a web development conference in June. The week I returned, I presented most everything I learned, plus a lot of the things I had learned in the few months of reading I’d done prior to the conference. Things like web design, usability, and scripting.
I want to work in a group to appreciates making quality products and I believe I do. So beyond the presentation, one of my next goals will be to help my workgroup transform into a more design-process oriented group (and by design, I’m talking about Goal-Oriented software development, not just graphics).
GOAL #2 60% Complete:
Turn my work group into a slick web application developing machine.
By enforcing the implementation of standards compliant design and a more rigorous research and planning phase to all future projects, we can become a better team, capable of creating more professional products. I don’t just want some clients to be satisfied; I want them to be in awe.
GOAL #3 5% Complete:
Start a business.
I’m currently involved in two start-ups. Whether they take-off or not is not as important as actually getting in the habit of taking risks instead of sitting on my ideas and not doing anything. One of the critical things I’ll learn out of these ventures is how to do market research, which I believe is vital to the success of our products.
I’ve got a handful of other ideas on the back-burners. Best case scenario: we automate our ventures to a degree that I can try these other ideas out without putting myself in the poor house.