Why My 2014 Won't be Like 2014?

I want to make this year, the year 2014, a different year!

What is a "different" year?

For many years now, I have been a "one thing per year" sort of person. Some people like this attitude and call it "being focused", others may describe it in a whole different way. For me, I really don't know yet but it has worked out fine hitherto.

Let me quickly recap my last 5 years.

Year 2009

Back in 2009 when three of us (Casey, Nabeel and I) started Xnews, a news network for students. Xnews started off as a SMS-based news service with a subscriber base of just 17 people (mostly our class fellows) but within one year our subscriber base grew to more than 15,000 (and in two years we had a reach of more than 200,000!). In 2009, Xnews was my core focus (and it remained so till 2011) "that"one thing for me.

Year 2010

In 2010 I and some other tech enthusiasts from my university held a 3-day long event called "The WebX." It was Pakistan's biggest gathering of social media and tech entrepreneurs. We had Google, P@SHA and more than 30 CEOs Pakistani tech industry. We also had WebX 2.0 the following year but in 2010 it was "that" one thing for me that year.

Year 2011

In 2011 I graduated from Bahria and joined Bramerz (one of the biggest digital agencies in Pakistan). While at Bramerz I was not part of their regular client-service business, instead I was tasked to "come up with a product." I was a Product Manager with just one team member and no product! It was like a tech startup and I felt like a founder! In 2011, joining a startup was "that" one thing for me!

Year 2012

Shipping a good solid product was going to be "that" one thing of year 2012 so my all focus was on building "Olaround" and making it a product that people and business would love to use! Olaround turned out to be the first commercial venture by a Pakistani company to be associated by Google! It was thrilling to have Google on-board Olaround! Oh, and a month after the launch of the product in Pakistan, Olaround ranked number 1 on AppStore and number 3 on Google Play.

Year 2013

In 2013, I wanted to continue my education and enrolled for masters program at Technical University Munich, Germany. Joining TUM was "that" one thing!

Now 2014!

This is the year of change! I want to do something different and try to do more than just one thing! It doesn't really matter for me to do something big or small but whatever I do, I want to enjoy it and learn something new. And for that precise reason, I have made a list of things that I would do in this year and I think 2014 won't be like 2014!

"... 2014 won't be like 2014"

One main reason of starting this blog is to share my experience with the rest of the world and as I progress through my "list" I would share that here on the blog!

oh, starting a blog was one of the tasks in my list.

Regards,

Shoaib Khan