Disruptive Conversations

As we enter 2010, I've long been a fan of Chris Brogan's approach of sharing his "three words" for the coming year (and have enjoyed his postings on the topic over the last few years)... and this year thought that, in keeping with one of my own goals, I would share my three words for 2010:

---

WRITE

May 2010 marks my tenth year of blogging across the various sites I have, yet 2009 was a challenging year for my writing.

Sure, I wrote many posts here, on Disruptive Telephony, on Voxeo's weblogs and other places. But nowhere near the number of posts I wanted to write - and not with the regularity I desired. My queue of post ideas is up in the hundreds at this point... and as usual I wake up each morning with my head exploding with stories to tell.

Now, 2009 did have some unusual challenges for me personally. For starters, at the beginning of March, I took on a new role at Voxeo heading up all of our external communications. No longer was I just our "lead blogger", but now I also had responsibility for all marketing, PR, analyst relations, collateral, trade shows / events and everything else in "communications". Plus I now had a team of 4.5 people scattered across two continents. There was admittedly a good bit of a learning curve on all the broader pieces of how we were telling our story, how to bring that all together into a cohesive plan, and how to work with a new team. The second factor was that in late April, our second daughter entered the world bringing with her all that glorious joy... as well as all the intense sleep deprivation... these two factors together meant that making time for writing (and being able to do so coherently!) was challenging at best.

But as 2010 dawns, the story is different. Sure, it's shaping up to be an absolutely crazy-busy year at Voxeo with all the great work we have underway, but I've got an outstanding (and growing) team and we're working together real well now... and the daughter? Well, at 8 months she's still not sleeping through the night all the time, but I'm either getting more sleep or just getting used to sleep deprivation.

So my big personal goal for 2010 is to return to telling more stories... writing about the changes happening all around us... chronicling the revolution we are in the midst of ... in the ways and means through which we communicate... that is the story of our time... and I want to get back to doing my part in telling that story.

INTERACT

As much as I want to write more myself, I also recognize that there are a great many other people out there weaving together the threads of this larger story. In 2010, I want to interact more with others... pointing to their stories... commenting on their posts... sharing their work with others. Sure, I've tweeted out many links, because that's easy, but this year I want to be a bit better about engaging in deeper conversations, either through actual comments or responding through blog posts, podcasts, video, whatever...

HEALTH

I'm 42 years old. I have 7-year-old and 8-month-old daughters, an awesome wife and great family and friends in my life. I also have a job that I love and a passion and drive to succeed and do ever more. I work long hours and travel a fairly significant amount... and I love what I do. The downside is that in recent years I haven't been paying enough attention to keeping the body in the best shape... I want to be around for a good long while, and this year needs to be one in which I make some changes. Not just in dropping some weight, but in integrating physical activity on a regular basis. As a home office worker, it's easy not to... but I need to... and maybe by publicly stating it here I'll actually get my tail in gear this year to make it happen. ;-)

---

So that's my list.... Write. Interact. Health.

2009 was a great year... 2010 looks even better... what are you going to do with this precious year? What are your three words?

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either subscribing to the RSS feed or following me on Twitter or identi.ca.

---