Welcome back to a year divisible by 2! 2018 is going to be a good year through the power of positive thinking. It’s going to be a fun year for everyone. And I’m going to do my best to have fun in 2018 as well.

Per my tradition, today is a day to look at what is going to be coming in 2018. I don’t make predictions, even if I take some shots at people that do. I also try not to look back to heavily on the things I’ve done over the past year. Google and blog searches are your friend there. Likely as not, you’ve read what I wrote this year and found one or two things useful, insightful, or amusing. What I want to do is set up what the next 52 weeks are going to look like for everyone that comes to this blog to find content.

Wearing Out The Keyboard

The past couple of years has shown me that the written word is starting to lose a bit of luster for content consumers. There’s been a bit push to video. Friends like Keith Townsend, Robb Boardman, and Rowell Dionicio have started making more video content to capture people’s eyes and ears. I myself have even noticed that I spend more time listening to 10-minute video recaps of things as opposed to reading 500-600 words on the subject.

I believe that my strengths lie in my writing. I’m going to continue to produce content around that here for the foreseeable future. But that’s not so say that I can’t dabble. With the help of my media-minded co-worker Rich Stroffolino, we’ve created a weekly video discussion called the Gestalt IT Rundown. It’s mostly what you would expect from a weekly video series. Rich and I find 2-3 tech news articles and make fun of them while imparting some knowledge and perspective. We’ve been having a blast recording them and we’re going to be bringing you more of them every Wednesday in 2018.

That’s not to say that my only forays on GestaltIT.com are going to be video focused. I’m also going to be writing more there as well. I’ve had some articles go up there this year that talked about some of the briefings that I’ve been taking from networking companies. That is going to continue through 2018 as well. I’ve also had some great long form writing, including my favorite article from last year about vendors and VARs. I’m going to continue to post articles on Gestalt IT in 2018 as well as posting them here. I’m going to need to figure out the right mix of what to put up for my day job and what to put up here for my Batman job. If there’s a kind of article you prefer to see here please make sure to let me know so I can find a way to make more of them.

Lastly, in 2018 I’m going to try some new things as well with regard to my writing. I’m going to write more coverage of the events I attend. Things like Cisco Live, WLPC, and other industry events will have some discussions of what goes on there for people that can’t go or are looking for the kind of information that you can’t get from an event website. I’m also going to try to find a way to incorporate some of my more detailed pieces together as reports for consumption. I’m not sure how this is going to happen, but I figured if I put it down here as a goal then I would be required to make it happen next year.

Tom’s Take

I like writing. I like teaching and informing and telling the occasional bad joke about BGP. It’s all because I get regular readers that want to hear what I have to say that I continue to do what I do. Rather than worry about the lack of content and coverage that I’m seeing in the community, I’ve decided to do my part to put out more. It is a challenging exercise to come up with new ideas every week and put them out for the world to see. But as long as folks like you keep reading what I have to say I’ll keep writing it all down.