A Roundup of New Year's Predictions, Resolutions, and Best Of 2008

Flickr Photo from Bearman 2007

It's that quiet week between Christmas and New Years.  Lots of time for reflection and to write that end of year post.   Ah, but what format to use.  It boils down to two choices:  gaze into your crystal ball and predict the future or look back at the year just ending for the best (or worst) moments. 

Last year, I couldn't decide and ended up writing the look back as a lessons learned, a personal New Year's resolution post, and a round up of what nonprofit folks had on their minds as they entered 2008:

• Four Lessons Learned: Social Media and Nonprofits Meme:  I listed four lessons learned and tagged four other people.

• New Year's Resolution:  Get Rid of that Pile of E-Waste:  I researched the best ways to recycle the pile of computers and geeky stuff lying around my office and cleaned my desk.

• Round up of New Year's Reflections, Best Ofs, and Predictions for 2008

This year, I decided to create a New Year's post that looks at both format and content so I have a handy reference for my year-end post for 2009!

1.    Best of Social Media,  Nonprofits, and Social Actions for 2008:       

You'll find a couple of "best of social media 2008" lists around from social media gurus.  The list can be general, looking at strategy, tools, and developments like this one from Paul Gillin or go narrow like  Mashable's "The Year in Tweets."

In the nonprofit space, Joe Solomon (@engagejoe) has written about ten best social action platforms.  Over at change.org, Nathaniel Whittmore has an post about online social action platforms looking ahead into 2009 and for mobile platforms.  Britt Bravo has an annual list of favorite books.  Lucy Bernholz takes a look at buzzwords in philanthropy in 2008.

You can pick out the best content on your blog, other people's blogs, or ask your readers.  Michelle Murrain has a top ten list from her blog. (The Wild Apricot Blog has some tips for tracking your top ten posts)  Others scan their bookmarks or twitter networks and pull out their favorites for the year, like Marion Conway's post listing her favorite blog posts      Mashable has asked its readers to share their Best Blog Post.   Another approach is to keep a scorecard based on an analysis using an outside service compete as Alan Benamer has done with his 25 Top Nonprofit Web Sites for December 2008 or just share a list of your top ten favorite blogs.

Rather than construct your own top ten list, you can aggregate ten other top ten lists - here's Social Citizen's Top Ten Top Ten Lists for 2008. 

And, if you rather focus on people than content, write a post about the people who most inspired you during the year past like Dr. Mani.

2.     Predictions for 2009

If you don't feel in a reflective mood, then get out your crystal ball and predict the future.  You can focus on your industry

Alan Levine, in his post, "Tis the Season for Predictions" tells why people like to predict the future.  The big prediction in social media circles seems to focus on Twitter - and that it will go mainstream in 2009.    I did a round up of social media predictions from the gurus, picking a few trends that had implications for nonprofits. 

Alex Steed offers his connective predictions for 2009 at the NetSquared blog.  Lucy Bernholz is the queen of of social actions predictions.  The nonprofit law blog offers its gloomy predictions for 2009, as does The Philanthropic Family Blog

3.  Goal Setting

These are the New Year's resolutions posts and take several formats.   They can be personal goals, blog goals, or business goals.   If you're thinking about sharing some of your personal resolutions, here's an excellent over of some personal social actions that you can take courtesy of the Case Foundation blog.

You don't always have to what you intend to do, you can also look at what you might stop doing.  

How do you mark the end of the year? What resolutions will you make for 2009?

Comments

[Jen Chiu]

Hi Beth,

Thanks for sharing these links. I discovered your blog pretty recently and am trying to absorb everything! Do you have any "best of" recommendations from your own blog?

Thanks!
Jen

[Hal]

Howdy. Thanks for sharing the links, too. I've been trying to be reflective this week so that's how I happened here. One of the thing that keeps coming to my years the last several days is how bad it is for non-profits so I'm not surprised to see that on your list. My thoughts have been turning to how to protect what money I have and I'm real worried about the dollar.

I just finished watching the I.O. USA video and it scares me quite a bit as we go into the new year.

I think a lot of people are going to be turning toward saving money. And gold probably will be one of the modes to that end because I think the dollar will be toast. I see from ExactPrice that gold is taking off after close today and is at 883.90 right now. Given it all I am beginning to wonder if Peter Schiff's prediction isn’t right about it going through the roof in ‘09. He claims $2,000 an ounce will likely be hit.

Anyway one of my predictions is that we will see a major inflation this coming year. probably mid to late. So I intend to save as much as I can. So I guess that's my prediction and resolution all in one :-)

[Marion Conway]

Hi Beth,

Thanks for this post with great links. I am putting together a post on resolutions for nonprofits in 2009 and this is a great resource. Thanks for mentioning my list of favorite blog posts also - it was fun to write and easy to do with bookmarking favorites at Twitter. Thanks for introducing me to Twitter.

Marion

[Amy Sample Ward]

Great, Beth! I put up my predictions and had some very good comments here: http://www.amysampleward.org/2008/12/12/predictions-for-2009