New Year’s Resolutions 2013

It’s that time of year again - time for a review of 2012 and noting what to resolve to do in 2013.

I say this every year - time flew by!  As my dad just told me, it seems to fly by faster the older you get.  It certainly does!  Today is December 31st and my sister & I are visiting my dad and his wife, and loving the few relaxing days away from home.  Along with relaxing with family, this is my favourite, if not humbling, part of the new year process: reviewing what I said I would do this year!

What happened in 2012?

Well, I started the year resolving to make more reasonable goals… what a cop out eh?  I also thought I’d do monthly resolutions, in an effort to keep them manageable.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I forgot about that by mid-February!

Here’s the quick tally of what I wanted to accomplish and how I fared (hint: not very well!):

• Blog 3 times a month - I finished the year with 26 articles, after writing 28 in 2011.  I’m surprised that I got that many written actually, it felt like I only wrote a dozen or so.
• Read more - the good news is I plowed through a huge pile of magazines so I no longer have a backlog of mags to read; but I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to.  I’ll call this a slight success!
• Re-immerse myself in development - this never got off the ground!
• SQL Reporting Services - I started by installing the Report Builder 3.0 application but other than playing with that a little bit, I really didn’t make much headway on this.

So, what did I accomplish this year?

Under the category of “the 99% complete project”: Hey!  I actually finished my Report Writer series!  Now THAT’s an accomplishment… I’d left it dormant for a few months and was happy to finally dust it off and finish it.

In the “is it me or is the rest of the herd insane?” category: I found a few interesting bugs, here, here and here.  It sounds crazy but part of the fun of being a consultant is troubleshooting issues, and with that, there is just something about the moment when you find you’ve actually discovered a bug and aren’t going crazy!  (Not that bugs are a good thing, but when you don’t get the expected results and are trying to prove that you’re not causing the problem, the validation that it is a bug is kind of nice!)

On the social and learning side of things, I returned to Fargo for my second time, to the Technical Airlift.  I met a bunch more of our fantastic GP community members and had a great time learning about GP2013.  I love putting names to faces, that’s always the best part to me.

Saving the best for last: The best part of 2012 for us in the GP world arguably was the release of GP2013 in December 2012… this was a highly anticipated release with the first web client being introduced.  I’m looking forward to upgrading my environments to play with the new features.

What’s in store for 2013?

As I sit here, I’m not entirely sure what 2013 will look like for me.  The last half of 2012 included some “life changes” and the early part of 2013 will most definitely include continued personal distractions.  One thing is for sure, in 2013 I’ll be moving somewhere, to a location yet to be determined!  I’ve got a house to sell first, which is on the market but not moving as quickly as I would like.

Other than that, this year’s resolutions will be more along the lines of things I’d like to keep doing!

• Upgrade at least one of my environments to Dynamics GP 2013.  This is an easy one, there is no way to learn better than to get your hands on a new product or version.

• Migrate to and learn Management Reporter 2012.  This is also an easy one.  I’ve used MR already, I just haven’t gotten around to playing with the newest version.  Two of my clients use FRx Webport so we’ve been waiting until this MR release with a web client replacement to consider migrating.

• Blog more!  LOL… it wouldn’t be a proper new year’s resolution list without my annual “I’d like to blog more often” entry!  I predict sporadic blogging until I am sorted in a new house/condo/apartment/hole-in-the-wall, at which time one of two things will happen: I’ll be renovating a new place & still randomly blogging or I’ll have more time to blog more often!

• Reading.  I’ll keep this on my list, as there are tons of things I’d like to read both personally and professionally.  I picked up a few GP books from our fine community of authors over at a Packt Publishing sale and look forward to reading them all for the first time.

• Take a Dexterity course.  The good news is this year there are several classes scheduled with either Mariano Gomez and Leslie Vail in early to mid 2013.  I’m not sure yet which one I’d be able to attend but I’d love to get to one of their offerings while the choice of dates and locations is vast.  Personally I’d love to take on the London UK offering from Mariano, which happens to fall the week of my birthday.  How cool would that be?  A good excuse to travel somewhere and celebrate a birthday in style!  I’m not sure the timing works as that coincides with a go-live of a project I’m on, so we’ll have to see about that…

That’s it… kind of a “low-hanging fruit” list of resolutions but hey, at least they are achievable!

Here’s hoping everyone has a happy new year and a fantastic 2013!