I’ve never been great at keeping (or sometimes even making for that matter) New Year’s Resolutions but as you’ll see by my #1 resolution for 2017, I figured this was as good a place as any to make some! Happy New Year to everyone! And now for my resolutions:
1. Blog more
I really dropped the ball on this one in the 2nd half of last year, I originally set out to do a blog post every 2 weeks and while I did do a couple guest posts for other blogs, I didn’t come close to that mark last year. I’m going to try to be more reasonable this year and try to do 1 blog post per month. We’ll see if I can keep it up!
2. Stay current on Trailhead
I fell way behind on this and lost the top spot on my own leaderboard! While it is ultimately all about learning rather than a competition, I want to make sure I’m staying current on the newest technology (in addition to being #1)
3. Continue learning with more certifications
2016 was an ok year for me (by my standards), certification wise. I upgraded my Advanced Developer cert to Platform Developer I and II and took the first 2 steps in my Technical Architect Journey by achieving Development Lifecycle and Deployment Designer and also the Sharing and Visibility Designer certs! I still have a long way to go though to catch up to some people!
In 2017, I’m going to focus on some of the other Architect Academy certs and also try to actually get into some of the Marketing topics! There are a bunch of Marketing Cloud and Pardot certifications and this is a great incentive for me to learn more about them!
4. Complete additional Technical Architect training
As mentioned, I made some progress in 2016 but I still have 3 more to go and 2 optional ones. I definitely have a lot of additional learning to do on Salesforce Identity and Access Management as well as how to architect Mobile Solutions!
Hoping I should have a good shot at the Data Architecture, Integration Architecture, and Community Cloud Consultant currently with some studying!
5. Build my 1st production Lightning Component
I recently completed a pretty great Trailhead module on Lightning Components but I’ve yet to complete any of these in my day job. This is a little bit out of my control as it depends on the business needs but since some of my peers have been building some of these, and I have a better idea of how these work now, I’m hoping to build one (or at least help build one) myself in 2017!
6. Don’t spend so much time at the office
This is something that as a Type A perfectionist I struggle with, but I definitely want to spend some more time this year making friends and developing some hobbies. I signed up for Gordon Ramsay’s Masterclass so I’m hoping he can teach me how to cook also!
7. Volunteer more
Being in a relatively stable position career wise and financially wise, I feel like as part of the Salesforce Ohana, it’s my duty to help those who haven’t been as privileged as I have. This year I had the pleasure of helping out as the first ever male coach in the RAD Women program teaching women to code as well as helping out an admin as part of Vetforce. I’m still trying to find additional ways to help out though so if anyone has any ideas, feel free to share them!
8. GymForce
Like many people, I have a desire to get in shape without enough motivation to do so. I was having a conversation with some about trying to find a way to make “Trailhead for the gym”. I’m sure there’s an app out there for game-i-fying working out so if anyone has any good suggestions let me know!
17 is my lucky number (in case you were wondering why it’s in my Twitter handle) so here’s to a great ‘17! Feel free to share your goals and feel free to keep up the pressure on me to hold me to mine!
Adam To Architect 
Leave a Reply