As 2015 is coming to its end and a new year is beginning, I find myself looking back, counting my successes and failures. I was very optimistic for this year, and indeed, it did not disappoint.

The year started just after I was awarded my Oracle ACE Associate in November 2014, so obviously I felt this year is going to be awesome in that field but I think I’ll need some goal setting if I want to get where I want to be next year. So here are some of my (professional) year summary and my New Year resolutions.

My main goal for next year is upgrading my Oracle ACE title and I hope these will help me achieve it.

I’m publicly posting them so I can check if I followed through, on January 1, 2017… 🙂

Public Speaking

Few years ago, I used to be very shy and got anxious whenever I needed to talk to a crowd of people. One day, I decided that I want to change that, and I worked very hard to speak MORE. This way I reduced my stress level and become less anxious. Not long after that, I got the hang of it and started to ENJOY giving lectures. To my amazement, I found that I’m quite good at talking and teaching, and my feedbacks are usually very good. It became something I really love to do.

This year was really good in terms of “major” speaking events – I presented in Israel’s largest Oracle convention (the Oracle Week) and got the two largest day long sessions of the week – Advanced SQL and Advanced PL/SQL. I also presented in other events about Oracle 12c new features, Oracle in memory option, and SQLcl. I even talked about Big Data (Hadoop, NoSQL, etc.) in several smaller events and private sessions.

My problem was that most (if not all) of my public speaking opportunities were in Hebrew. In the beginning of 2015 I decided I need break my internal fear of talking a different language and have go do some English ones as well. I submitted my abstracts to several convention and waited.

In June, I was accepted to speak at UKOUG Scotland event and went on my first abroad session – I talked about the In Memory Option and it was awesome (until the fire alarm went off) and about SQLcl (a session which ACE Director Oded Raz later presented at a bigger event: DOAG). Since then I submitted my sessions to several other OUG and even to the Oracle Open World but I unfortunately wasn’t accepted to any of them.

In 2016, I would like to set myself a goal: I want to present at (at least) 4 events (one of which will hopefully be OOW16) – in English. I know I am not well-known so my sessions have to be better (and my abstracts even better since I feel that is what holding me back) so I hope to find a good new niche to call me own to make it a reality.

Blogging and Writing

When I started this Blog in 2010, I did it so I can save my notes and general thoughts in a place I can reach when I needed it. Since then I saw that many people are enjoying the content (they are not commenting much, but I can see the daily traffic) so I wrote posts I thought people would want to read.

I don’t feel this is working very well. I find myself delaying writing assignments since I’m just not in the mood. My Hebrew blogging has come to a complete stop. I’m not sure that writing just for the sake of having things “current” or “cool” is enough. I need to go back to my old writing habits and write on stuff I find interesting. Hopefully readers will find it insightful as well.

In 2016, I want to write things I find interesting and that I want to keep notes on. My goal is to write around 25-30 new blog posts on technological topics and have some of them published in the Oracle ACE newsletter.

Another goal I want to set for myself is publishing an article on the OTN. This is a bit harder, I think, but I will do my best to find a topic and write something interesting that will be accepted. This is something I was thinking about for a long time and I hope it will be possible this year.

Community Involvement

One of my professional highlights this year was meeting some of my professional role model in the ILOUG technology day back in June. In that event, which was cut short for me because it collided with UKOUG I was presenting on, I got to meet some amazing people: Heli Helskyaho (@HeliFromFinland), Bryn Llewellyn (@BrynLite), Joze Senegacnik (@joc1954), Jonathan Lewis (@JLOracle), and Tom Kyte (to name a few). It was more than just meeting them for couple of minutes in an event – ILOUG organized a daylong tour in Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee – and I was invited to join them.

My goal in the ACE community involvement is to get to know as many ACEs as I can and take part at least one Oracle ACE dinner (I haven’t yet, but I hear it’s hilarious).

In regards to my local community…. Even though I am well-known in my Israeli user group community (it’s basically connected to the last two parts – the public appearance and the blog posting), I kind of feel that is not really enough. In the past, I was playing around with the idea of participating in the ILOUG elections and trying to become a part of its management team. I never went through for various reasons.

In 2016, if I’m not mistaken, there should be an elections and this time I am planning in participating. I hope that I will be elected and have the privilege of contributing to the community in that fashion.

Learning New Stuff

This year I got really interested in the SQLcl and I hope that will become even more popular next year. I will probably finish writing my posts on that this year since I find this tool so cool and helpful.  For next year, I hope to get into some new stuff.

When Oracle 12cR2 comes out, I will invest some time in learning the new features. For some reason I got out of the loop and I’m not sure what to expect so that’s definitely something I need to work more on. I’m also planning to get into knowing Oracle Cloud solutions better and maybe start testing them in the near future.

I’m also interested in expanding my knowledge and experience on non-Oracle database technologies. I’m working and presenting a lot about Big Data solutions (Hadoop, Spark, etc.) and NoSQL but I would like to deepen my knowledge and experience.

I’m also thinking of learning some more MySQL but we’ll see if it’s not too much for one year.. J

Summary

I tried to set reasonable goals for the next year. As I said in the beginning, my main goal is to replace my Oracle ACE Associate with a “regular” Oracle ACE but I know I will have to continue to work hard for it.

I wish you all a happy new year!