David Kelly

I’ve seen lots of posts reviewing the past year, and predicting what’s likely to happen in the coming year. So I’m jumping on the bandwagon.

For me, 2008 saw a lot of changes, mainly related to work. I reached a big milestone when Ambient Age hit its first birthday in October; at times in the first few months, I wasn’t sure I’d see that day. In November I moved into the GMIT Business Innovation Centre, another big step I was really happy with. The change from working at home has taken some getting use to (no smoking cigs & listening to loud music while I work)…but it’s been really positive so far with some great advice and new found motivation to develop the business. I also learned lots from people, including some great media stuff in a course by Damien, and lots of good stuff during Barcamp in Cork.

So, what’s to come in 2009? Here are a few things high on the list:

1. Complete the development and launch of the BeautyBoss web-app that I’ve been developing. I’m coming into some exciting times as I move from completing development into getting early user feedback on how to improve it further. The support I’ve been getting from GMIT is moving this along.
2. Develop ideas into something usable. I’ve had lots of ideas for apps / services that solve problems over the last year. Time to do anything with them always seems to be a stumbling block, but this year I’m aiming to turn two of them into things that work. One into one working web app, and one site. I read somewhere this year that solving a problem you have yourself is a great place to start with a new service; so somewhere between that, and, as Joe points out, developing something that users need, hopefully I’ll get together a couple of interesting projects.
3. Move along my PhD. This has been more or less shelved as I tried to develop my business over the last year. The academic side of things is always something I loved, but with bills to pay, it’s been taking a back seat. The thoughts of leaving aside 3 years of interesting work doesn’t fill me with any joy.
4. Teach. I spent 3 years lecturing in web development before I started working for myself, and it’s something I miss.  There’s a lot to be said for helping people to learn & develop new skills, so I’d love to put this side of things to use again.
5. Publish more on the blog. I’ve been very poor at writing on both this and my work blog (which I’m rennovating at the moment). I spend quite a bit of time learning from the experiences of lots of people by reading their blogs. Sharing some more of mine is something I plan to do more of.
6. Who knows? This time last year I wouldn’t have forseen all that’s happened, so I’m interested to see what I’ll have to look back on this time next year….time will tell.

Have a great 2009, and if you’re on the fence about starting your own business, or developing something new, you could do a lot worse than have a read of the great blogs written by some of the people whose posts have motivated me this year.