It’s been 366 days since my last post about goals for 2012.  How’d I do on my list for the past year?

1. Juniper – Dropped the ball on this one.  I spent more time seeing Juniper gear being installed all over the place and didn’t get my opportunity to fire up the JNCIA-Junos liked I wanted.  I’m planning to change all that sooner rather than later.  Doug Hanks even gave me a good head start on immersion learning of the MX Series.

2. Data Center – I did get a little more time on some Nexus gear, but not nearly enough to call it good for this goal.  Every time I sat down to start looking at UCS, I kept getting pulled away on some other project.  If the rumblings I’m hearing in the DC arena are close to accurate, I’m going to wish I’d spent more time on this.

3. Advanced Virtualization – While I didn’t get around to taking either of the VCAP tests in 2012, I did spend some more time on virtualization.  I was named a vExpert for 2012, gave a virtualization primer presentation, and even attended my first VMUG meeting.  I also started listening to the vBrownBag podcast put on by ProfessionalVMware.  They have a ton of material that I’m going to start reviewing so I can go out and at least take the DCD test soon.

4. Moving to the Cloud – Ah ha! At last something that I nailed.  I moved a lot of my documents and data into cloud-based storage.  I leveraged Dropbox, Skydrive, and Google Docs to keep my documentation consistent across multiple platforms.  As I continue forward, I’m going to keep storing my stuff in the big scary cloud so I can find it whenever I need it.

Looks like I’ve got two fails, one tie, and one win.  Still not the 50% that I had hoped for, but it’s funny how real life tends to pull you in a different direction that you anticipate.  Beyond attending a few more Tech Field Day events and Cisco Live, I also attended a Cisco Unified Communications Partner Beta Training launch event and the Texas IPv6 Task Force Winter Summit.  It was this last event that really got me thinking about what I wanted to do in the coming year.

I think that 2013 is going to be a huge year for IPv6 adoption on the Internet.  We’ve been living in the final depletion phase of IPv4 for a whole year now.  We can no longer ignore the fact that IPv6 is the future.  I think the major issue with IPv6 adoption is getting the word out to people.  Some of the best and brightest are doing their part to talk to people about enabling IPv6.  The Texas IPv6 Task Force meeting showed me that a lot of great people are putting in the time and effort to try and drive people into the future.  However, a lot of this discussion is happening outside of people’s view.  Mailing lists aren’t exactly browsing-friendly.  Not everyone can drop what they’re doing for a day or two to go to a task force meeting.  However, people do have the spare time to read a blog post on occasion.  That’s where I come in.

In 2013, I’m going to do my part to get the word out about IPv6.  I’m going to spend more time writing about it.  I’m going to write posts about enabling it on all manner of things.  Hypervisors, appliances, firewalls, routers, and even desktops are on the plate.  I want to take the things I’m learning about IPv6 and apply them to the world that I work in.  I don’t know how service providers are going to to enable IPv6.  However, I can talk about enabling CallManager to use IPv6 and register IP phones without IPv4 addresses.  I can work out the hard parts and the gotchas so that you won’t have to.  I’ve already decided that any presentation that I give in 2013 will be focused on IPv6.  I’ve already signed up for one slot later in the year with a possibility of having a second.  I applied for a presentation slot at the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force meeting in April.  I want to hone my skills talking to people about IPv6.  I’m also going to try and make a lot more blog posts about IPv6 in the coming year.  I want to take away all the scary uncertainty behind the protocol and make it more agreeable to people that want to learn about it without getting scared off by the litany of RFCs surrounding it.  To that end, I’m going to start referring to this year as ::2013.  The more we get familiar with seeing IPv6 notation in our world, the better off we’ll be in the long run.  Plus, it gives me a tag that I can use to show how important IPv6 is to me.

A shorter set of goals this year doesn’t mean a more modest one.  Focus is a good thing in the long run for me.  Being an agent of change when it comes to IPv6 is something that I’m passionate about.  Sure, I’m still going to make the occasional NAT post.  I may even have some unnice things to say about vendors and IPv6 support.  The overall idea is that we keep the discussion focused on moving forward and making IPv6 more widely adopted.  It’s the least I can do to try and leave my mark on the Internet in some other way besides posting cat pictures or snarky memes.  It’s also a goal that is going to keep progressing and never really be finished until the lights are turned out on the last IPv4 webserver out there.  Until that fateful day, here’s hoping that ::2013 is a good year for all.