While people are gearing up for a boozetastic New Year's Eve, I thought it would be a good time to go through a quick year in review; posts I've been particularly proud of in 2008 and a condensed recap. Tomorrow, I'll avoid the trap of making 2009 predictions; I'm a horrible gambler (I don't gamble, maybe that's why) and I can't even predict how many hands I'm going to get in a bridge game. I'll leave that to people a bit more clairvoyant than I am.

We started off the new year with our good friend Michael in New York City, freezing our tushies off on a boat at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. After a fairly eventful trip back home, including an unexpected flight to Boston (to stack up on Celtics gear, maybe?), we moved into our new house in Hertfordshire. In March, I was lucky enough to go to SES in New York City, where among other things, I started Twittering, got myself a blog, and started on this journey. SES NYC was pivotal in a number of ways for me; I networked within the industry, I heard a lot of very intelligent people speak, and I got myself up to date with my pet project; social media.
I dipped my toe in the blogging water very carefully. My first post which dug a little deeper was
Managing Accounts for Multiple Markets, where I discussed overcoming the difficulties in differentiating between English-speaking markets. I asked more experienced folks to collaborate more with newcomers or outsiders in the industry in
Three Requests; unfortunately, making a name for oneself in the United Kingdom seems frustratingly tougher. I think this has a lot to do with the geography of exposure; there aren't a bucketload of European SEM conferences like there are Stateside, and it's one of my goals for 2009 to try to get a bit more exposed and engaged with my peers in the industry. In June,
I spoke at my first SES conference - conveniently held in my hometown of Toronto.
I kind of fell off the blogging horse for a while. Work, life and more work made it difficult to blog as much as I'd like on my personal blog, so I resolved to get
back in the saddle. In December 2008, I actively tried to blog as much as possible, writing posts on the train and then adding some photos and links when I got home in the evening. I made several sarcastic posts about the British government's
VAT reduction (which a bunch of retailers haven't opted into), and looked at how Google was getting into the
holiday spirit.
Not much of a huge post, eh? Tomorrow, some of my goals for 2009. Happy New Year, everyone!