As a freelancer or self employed person, you are your most valuable asset. It is vital you invest in yourself by developing your own skills and ability whether through formal training or more informal ‘on-the-job’ training.
The start of a year is of course a great time to look forward and think about how you would like to better yourself. In this unashamedly self-focused blog post, I list a few areas I am planning to focus my attentions on, and how I’m intending to do so. If nothing else, this article will be useful to refer back to in six months time to evaluate how well I’m developing.
1. Getting comfortable with Ruby on Rails
I haven’t blogged about it until now, but for the past 12 months I have been teaching myself Ruby on Rails. Initially I struggled with Rails and got massively frustrated by the many out of date and inaccurate tutorials available online. The breakthrough came last summer when I purchased the Patrick Lens book, Simply Rails 2 – a very ‘entry level’ guide to Ruby on Rails but at the time is was exactly what I needed.
Since then I’ve got to the point where things have clicked into place, I’m ready to put the books down and I’m starting to feel dangerous. So dangerous, I’ve even landed my first Rails gig. Starting later this month I’m well and truly jumping in at the deep end and begin a 12 month assignment maintaining and developing an existing Rails site.
Clearly I’m confident enough with Rails to apply for and be offered jobs, but the truth is I know I’ve got a lot to learn and it’s going to come thick and fast. Getting comfortable with Ruby on Rails is priority numero uno for 2009.
2. Learning ExpressionEngine
Lots of people say lots of good things about ExpressionEngine. Curiosity has caused me to install it on my development servers and have a play with it, but this isn’t an ideal way to learn a new platform. What I need is a good juicy project so I can well and truly get my teeth stuck in to ExpressionEngine and learn by just doing it.
It’s always risky using a platform you’ve never used before with a live client project, and it’s tempting to just stick to what you know. I know WordPress inside out so it’s difficult to justify using anything else when costing out projects – especially in an economic environment where there’s always someone willing to out-price you.
I have two options. Either bite the bullet and use ExpressionEngine with a client’s project, and accept that I am going to spend twice as long on the project as I am going to get paid for. In truth, this is a small price to pay for self development. My other option is to redevelop my own site using ExpressionEngine. A redesign is on the cards anyway, so I may kill two birds with one stone.
3. Learning Magento ecommerce
I’ve used a few different ecommerce platforms, and it has to be said, “THEY ALL SUCK!”. The ecommerce platforms I have tried my hand at have all been horrible to work with and develop, and fundamentally all of them are have provided a user experience that stinks!
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding Magento and it has to be said, it certainly looks the part. Magento remains my beacon of hope in the belief that not all ecommerce platforms are bad. But there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to get stuck in and use it.
As with my ExpressionEngine predicament, I have to throw a live project at Magento knowing that the learning curve will take me longer than I’m going to get paid for. You also need the right kind of project where there isn’t too much pressure and your client is fully aware that they are being used as guinea pig of sorts.
Luckily I have such a client and project, and touching lots of wood I hope to start my first Magento project in February or March.
How do you intend to develop yourself in 2009?
I’ve done a lot of talking about me in this article, but I’m genuinely interested to hear about you too. What are your self development aims for 2009 and how are you going about achieving them?
7 fantastic comments
despite being an “unashamedly self-focused blog post” (you said that, not me 
I found it to be very interesting. I too was wondering if I should check out Expression Engine, as you said, there’s lots of buzz around that software. I think I will try it with one of my own projects this year.
Like you, I’m looking for a perfect (if there is such) e-commerce platform. I look forward to reading thoughts on your experience with Magento.
Good for your for teaching yourself Ruby On Rails. It has crossed my mind a couple of times, but I just don’t have time for that much learning. I’m considering though learning Joomla, that would add to my knowledge of other CMS applications ( eZ Publish, Drupal, Wordpress). There’s a pretty active Joomla community here, in Vancouver, and I’ve got friends who are willing to help me with the learning curve, so I might just as well learn it 
However it all depends on how much time I’ll have left for personal development.
Good luck to you. Congrats with the new gigs!
@Vivien – Glad you find my self indulgent ramblings interesting I spent a year working with Joomla in a previous job of mine and have subsequently put a couple of clients on to Joomla based sites. I like it. The templating system in Joomla 1.5 is really flexible, although can be a bit clunky to develop with. As with all these CMS’, Joomla has its own quirks and nuances, but it’s certainly worth adding it to your arsenal of weapons.
I came very close to choosing Expression Engine as the first CMS to teach myself how to use, based on the enthusiasm showed about it. Instead I chose Wordpress and I am happy with that choice but I remain interested by Expression Engine.
I hope you’ll blog about your experience in coming to grips with Rails, EE and Magento over the next few months – they will provide a great insight.
My personal development goals for 2009 are centred around refining my illustration-based design work and developing an illustration style that I’ve been working on over the past twelve months or so. I am planning to dedicate more time in the next few months for this purpose.
@Tracey – Hi, apologies for taking so long to personally respond. I’ll be sure to start documenting my experiences with Ruby on Rails – I’m two weeks into that job now and I haven’t broken the site yet! Likewise, good luck with your aims for 2009 – I look forward to reading about your illustrating, and probably getting quite envious whilst I’m at it (I draw like a 4 year old).
I’d like to get into Expression Engine more too; most of my work comes from WordPress and knowing that platform best, it’s also the case for me that it’s quicker and so more economical for clients for me to use WP. I also use Drupal quite a bit, and so it’s also a case of ‘can I really keep up?’ with the rapid developments across 3 different CMS communities.
But that said I used EE briefly while working for an agency last year where it’s the CMS of choice; it’s a lot of fun to use and arguably more flexible than WP. Maybe when v2.0 is finally out I’ll bite the bullet as it seems a tease to learn the current version when there’s new features (and a nice Veerle Pieters designed interface) to get stuck into around the corner.
My other area for improvement this year is Illustrator – I WILL master that damn pen tool.
@Luke – Hi Luke, thanks for stopping by and commenting. Yeah I think that’s a fair point about how much one people can realistically keep up to speed with? I certainly think it’s worth being an expert in one or two systems rather than average in four or five. I’ve been waiting for EE2 as well, although I’m sure this time last year they were talking about v2 being just round the corner – do you know when it’s genuine release date is?
Not sure, seems to have been ‘nearly ready’ for so long, and with the repeated delays it’s probably another factor that’s put me off taking it up properly as an option. I know with experience of Drupal, even when a major release of a CMS is made available, bugs/plugin upgrade delays can put me off updating straight away in any case.
But still, a solid system that’s ready is better than an early, broken one; if the EE people want v2 to be competitive with WP and other CMS, it’s got to be spot on. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait – also it would be interesting to see how they might restructure the license fee system for a full version of the earlier system once v2 is out – it’s a barrier when WP, Drupal etc are completely free.
What are your thoughts?
