2016 goals

Each year I spend some time around January thinking about and setting some goals for the year. I don't usually share these publicly but there is some appeal to writing them down, Making them public and eventually being held accountable (in December?). I find goals exciting and fun to begin,  the real trick is finishing or completing them. A real sense of achievement comes when they are done and I can tick them off my list. Here's my list ...

Redevelop the Spinnaker website

Some of the folks out there who know about our software, Spinnaker, don't know much about our company, Spiral, and vice versa. Time to overhaul the Spinnaker website and get clear on all our messages. We already have design concepts for the new website so this goal is underway.  As part of this process the Spinnaker logo has been reworked to reflect a fresher, more confident product and we have started using the new logo.

The new objectives for the website are:

• to have content that accurately reflects our work and helps people understand what we do
• to be a resources for clients, including videos, and how-to's
• to be responsive and display nicely across all devices
• to make connections across to the Spiral website, to tell the story of our history and out team

Which brings me to my next goal ...

Update the content on the Spiral website

Our company website has been in its current form for around 4 years. The design is still relevant but the content is very out of date. In the interests of keeping life a simple as possible I have elected to retain the existing layout/design and rewrite the content. Still a big job but a job that can be actioned incrementally.  During the year each part of the website will have a content audit and overhaul.  My next goal relates to the previous two goals ...

Create a video resource for Spinnaker

Along with videos about how to use Spinnaker and how Spinnaker works there will be interviews with clients, friends and team members. The response I have received from the short instructional video's I have created so far suggests this is a great medium for training.  The video's will also be a part of telling our story so people know more about us, decide if they want to work with us or find out more. Part of telling our story is writing more so the next goal addresses this ...

Create a content calendar for the whole year

Our approach to content has typically been haphazard and reactionary. Not only will I have a content calendar, to drive our writing for the year, we will be efficient and reuse our content across multiple media. For example when we write a blog post we will re-use that same material for videos, twitter etc.

Along with these promotional related goals we will deliver on all our projects and ...

Continue to improve Spinnaker

We are  fortunate to work with some talented, thoughtful people who have given us really useful feedback on how they work, how they use Spinnaker and what they wish it had! As soon as we get any downtime we use that feedback to improve Spinnaker and ultimately bring out a new version for the next clinical trial we are work on. This year we will bring out at least one new version of Spinnaker. My next goal relates to the new project that will use the next version of Spinnaker ...

Work on another project in Melbourne

Ive enjoyed my visits to Melbourne this year, working with the team at Monash. This goal is simply to have another project, based out of Melbourne and continue those visits. There is something about Melbourne. My final goal is around delivery of our projects ...

Document our QA testing process

We have some great tools that help us to test that our software does the job it was designed to do. How we do that mostly resides in one persons head. It's time we documented how, what and where we test. Its time to spread the load with testing and involve more heads.

So thats it, thanks for being interested and reading my goals. I am looking forward to an interesting year. I hope you have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2016.

Audrey
twitter.com/nzaudrey