Where do I want to be in 5 years?

NDE Designs

Where do I want to be in 5 years?

Here’s a question I’ve been asked a few times in the past month or two (mainly in interviews), but its actually got me thinking about where I want to be/what I want to be doing in 5 years or so.

I’m the kind of person who likes to plan ahead, but not that far ahead. Right now 5 years seems like an eternity away, but I know it isn’t.

Originally

The original (pretty open ended) plan after coming out of school was:

Finish uni
Get a job in a web design/development company
Work there for a good number of years gaining a good amount of experience
Possibly start my own web development company with a few others after that

But now? I’m not so sure about that last one, and have a few other things I’d like to do somewhere down the line in my career. I’m not so sure I would be good at owning my own business, even if I were good at the practical side of things, there’s a lot more to owning a business than that.

A few things I would like to do

Now, the plan is pretty similar up until working in a web design company for a good number of years. I still want to work in a web design company (and I do right now), but I’m not sure if that’s where I want my career to end. Obviously I wouldn’t want to stay a junior developer for the rest of my life, I’d like to become a senior developer at some point, if not a lead developer somewhere.

Web Conferences

One thing I really want to start doing is going to a number of web conferences, meeting like-minded people in the industry, making contacts, and of course learning more about current and new technologies related to web design.

(Co) Write a Book

Another thing I would be interested in doing is either writing or co-writing a book about some kind of technology in web design. Even being able to contribute a section or two to a book (again) would be great, but I think co-writing one with someone would be my ideal situation (if I were ever to do it).

Write my own custom CMS

This one will likely happen at some point in the future, but whether it will be any good or not is the real question. I need to learn a lot about current CMS’ to even start this one, but it shouldn’t be that much of a mammoth task.

I just want to be able to have one that I know inside out and can easily apply to websites I create. It’s not like I want to make the next WordPress or anything like that (although that would be nice…realistically its probably not going to happen).

Web Standards Project

I’m all for my web standards, and I would at some point like to work alongside people promoting web standards. Maybe Opera, maybe somewhere else, who knows?

Overall

Overall I’m sure that I want to be a part of the web design and development industry, but I’m not certain where within that I want to be. Hopefully over the next few years I will be able to figure that out and start getting closer to doing some of the things I have mentioned above!

NDE Designs