2018 was a year full of excitement and fun. And for me, it was a year full of writing quite a bit. Not only did keep up my writing here for my audience but I also wrote quite a few posts for GestaltIT.com. You can find a list of all the stuff I wrote right here. I took a lot of briefings from up-and-coming companies as well as talking to some other great companies and writing a couple of series about SD-WAN.

It was also a big year for the Gestalt IT Rundown. My co-host with most Rich Stroffolino (@MrAnthropology) and I had a lot of fun looking at news from enterprise IT and some other fun chipset and cryptocurrency news. And I’ve probably burned my last few bridges with Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg to boot. I look forward to recording these episodes every Wednesday and I hope that some of you will join us on the Gestalt IT Facebook page at 12:30 EST as well.

Content Coming Your Way

So, what does that leave in store for 2019? Well, since I hate predictions on an industry scale, that means taking a look at what I plan on doing for the next year. For the coming 365 days, that means creating a lot of content for sure. You already know that I’m going to be busy with a variety of fun things like Networking Field Day, Mobility Field Day, and Security Field Day. That’s in addition to all the things that I’m going to be doing with Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe and Cisco Live US in San Diego.

I’m also going to keep writing both here and at Gestalt IT. You probably saw my post last week about how hard it is to hit your deadlines. Well, it’s going to be a lot of writing coming out in both places thanks to coverage of briefings that I’m taking about industry companies as well as a few think pieces about bigger trends going on in the industry.

I’m also going to experiment more with video. One of the inspirations that I’m looking at is none other than my good friend Ethan Banks (@ECBanks). He’s had some amazing videos series that he’s been cranking out on his daily walks. He’s been collecting some of them in the Brain Spasms playlist. It’s a really good listen and he’s tackling some fun topics so far. I think I’m going to try my hand at some solo video content in the future at Gestalt IT. This blog is going to stay written for the time being.

Creating Content Quickly

One of the other things that I’m playing around with is the idea of being able to create content much more quickly and on the spot versus sitting down for long form discussions. You may recall from a post in 2015 that I’ve embraced using Markdown. I’ve been writing pretty consistently in Markdown for the past three years and it’s become second nature to me. That’s a good thing for sure. But for 2019, I’m going to branch out a bit.

The biggest change is that I’m going to try to do the majority of my writing on an iPad instead of my laptop. This means that I can just grab a tablet and type out some words quickly. It also means that I can take notes on my iPad and then immediately translate them into thoughts and words. I’m going to do this using iA Writer as my content creation tool. It’s going to help me with my Markdown as well as helping me keep all the content I’m going to write organized. I’m going to force myself to use this new combination unless there’s no way I can pull it off, such as with my Cisco Live Twitter list. That whole process still relies quite a bit on code and not on Markdown.

As I mentioned in my deadline post, I’m also going to try to move my posting dates back from Friday to Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. That gives me some time to play around with ideas and still have a cushion before I’m late with a post. On the big days I may still have an extra post here or there to talk about some big news that’s breaking. I’m hoping this allows me to get some great content out there and keep the creative juices flowing.

Tom’s Take

2019 is going to be a full year. But it allows me to concentrate on the things that I love and am really good at doing: Writing and leading Tech Field Day. Maybe branching out into video is going to give me a new avenue as well, but for now that’s going to stay pretty secondary to the writing aspect of things. I really hope that having a more mobile writing studio also helps me get my thoughts down quickly and create some more compelling posts in the coming year. Here’s hoping it all works out and I’ve got some great things to look back on in 365 days!