7 Years

       ^ That’s me in Providence right around the same time I started working at Newfangled.

Today marks my seventh year working for Newfangled. In some ways, I can’t believe it has already been that long; in others, I can’t believe it has only been that long.

2011 has been a remarkable year for me, one that has probably provided more opportunities for growth, both professional and personal, than any other year I can recall. There have been some incredible highs as well as some lows I hope to not see again. There have been successes and failures, beginnings and endings. At then end of it (and the start of another), I feel weathered and humbled, but also eager and hopeful. I’m excited for what 2011/2012 will bring.

I’m so thankful to be a part of the Newfangled family. The people that make Newfangled more than a place have given me so many gifts over the years. I can trace every lesson learned and every success I have had back to a person who has called Newfangled their professional home at some point since I walked through the doors of our old Providence office in the winter of 2003 (mathy types, I started full-time here on 9/1/04). Thank you all!

Some of the big stuff worth noting:

• I have a book coming out this year. It’s fitting that I delivered the manuscript to my editor at HOW Books just moments ago (I’m not kidding). It’s working title is Thinking Before Doing: A Designer’s Guide to Web Strategy. Right now, it’s about 50k words over 9 chapters—pretty much everything I know about web stuff to this point. I’ll keep you posted on when you’ll see the finished product. Having written it feels like a big accomplishment.
• I’m working on another mixbook—Volume 3 of A Year of Ideas. It will probably be done in early November, just like last year. I have a lot of fun making them and can’t wait to start sending them out to my list of lucky recipients.
• We’re also about due for a third volume of our anthology series, A Newfangled Approach to Your Website. Not sure when I and Justin will squeeze that in. I’ll keep you posted!
• The first annual HOW Interactive Design Conference is in November in San Francisco. Along with some really fantastic people, I’ll be presenting a session on Making Sense of the Data that I’m pretty excited about. I hope to drive home the point that qualitative measurement should take priority over quantitative measurement and provide some guidance on how to make that happen. As we get closer to November, I’ll post some more detail on the session. If you’re interested in attending, I can actually offer you a $50 discount using the code “BUTLER.” Oh, and if you register today, you can get another $100 off with their “Early Bird” special rate. Hope to see you there!

Otherwise, I’m looking forward to slowing down the pace a bit between now and the end of the year. My seventh year at Newfangled gave me plenty of writing to do outside of our normal day-to-day (12 newsletters, ~50 blog posts, 3 articles in Print magazine, 17 posts over at ImPrint, a few posts over at my personal blog, and of course, the book—something in the order of 140k words written, not including my incessant tweeting and commenting), and so I want to take the next few months to think about what my goals are for 2012 and what I need to do to accomplish them.

I also have a ton of reading I’d like to catch up on. I did read some wonderful things this year (besides the scifi), but I’ll save that list for another post…

So glad to be here.