I just published the last quarter follow up of the year, and together with the Q1, Q2 and Q3 it’s time to reflect on the entire year as a whole. When the year started I was really inspired by the idea of writing down my goals like this and perhaps even got a bit carried away in my planning. However, as the year passed it got more and more obvious to me that this felt like a great way to organize work, but not a pleasant way to feel inspired on my spare time.
Getting myself the physical overview gave me a bit of renewed energy level, but it wasn’t enough.
This should have been obvious to me since I already know myself to be really lust driven in my creative projects. Usually it is more about seizing the opportunity and ride along with the the flow than forcing myself along a path. So this gives my some ideas for how to go about 2026. But before we go there, let’s try to make an overview.
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Sustainability
Wikimedians for sustainable development
🟢
🔴
🔴
🟡
Office of Carbon Omission
🟡
🔴
🟡
🔴
Openness advocacy
Open By Default
🟢
🟢
🟢
🟢
Govdirectory
🟢
🟡
🔴
🔴
Wikipediapodden
🟢
🟢
🟡
🟡
Book project
🟡
🟡
🟡
🔴
Learning
German
🔴
🟢
🔴
🟡
Climate change
🟢
🔴
–
–
AI
–
🔴
–
🟢
Health
Running and hiking
🟢
🟢
🟢
🟢
Eating
🟢
🟢
🟢
🟢
The table shows it more clearly that the first half of the year went slightly better, and that some goals were better suited for me than others. For more details, see each quarterly review, linked above. My two main takeaways are these:
I need fewer goals to make it easier for myself, and
I need less detailed goals to make it possible to find inspiration within a theme rather than having a huge to-do list hanging over me.
When it comes to what I had in my goals, I am rather pleased with my themes even though I had such variation in my successes. All of the things above are things that I somehow feel are important, even though I must say that the more I learned about AI this year, and especially how it is being deployed, the more I felt it important to learn about from a defensive/advocacy perspective rather than using it as a tool.
So even if I care deeply about them, the sheer number made it more of a burden than something joyful to strive for. I don’t think I will give up on anything of the themes as such, but I will more carefully think about how I approach them. These are my overarching thoughts going into 2026, which is coming up next.
Time to review my progress again, and this has been about as a productive quarter as Q3 (which is much less than Q1 and Q2). This quarter was less travel but higher intensity in work which gave kept spare time fairly low. There were also some fun events happening, like the mini hackathon and WikiConNL but that also didn’t make progress on my goals.
The purpose of this review is to give more room for reflections on the themes I chose for 2025. For ease of reference, I have added this quarter’s goal for each theme. I will make an additional blog post for the entire year and reflect on how the system has worked as a whole there. (EDIT: it’s here.)
Sustainability
Wikimedians for Sustainable Development 🟡
Goal: Follow up on all other annual goals and nudge them towards completion.
I did do some nudging on the goals, and even some sprinting on the goals I had advocated for, but there was few people joining in and thus they are mostly far from completion. The collaboration with Klimatkollen on getting emissions data onto Wikidata and Wikipedia made the news, although I am only mentioned in the press release.
Office of Carbon Omission 🔴
Goal: Publish an op-ed on the theme of OCO.
With the misses from last month, not having a clear introduction video nor a social media account, I wasn’t inspired to work on this.
Openness advocacy
Open By Default 🟢
Goal: Learn about and deploy (locally) an open source AI model.
I did quite some research to find something open source that I could run locally. It wasn’t easy, and I am not 100 % sure I succeeded either. In the end, I installed Ollama as a framework, and so far so good. The more challenging part was to find a model that both complies with the OSI AI definition and could be run on Ollama. From what I can figure out, SmolLM v3 does comply even though the training data seems a bit obscure to me. I would have loved to find a model using the CommonCrawl data sets but I couldn’t find a framework / model combination that I could run.
Govdirectory 🔴
Goal: Refine funding ask.
While I managed to give Govdirectory a lot of time and attention this quarter, I didn’t manage to direct it to the funding ask. However, on the good side, the community is slowly growing and the community call has almost often had guests popping in, some are even new regulars. On Wikidata there has also been increased activity, with some real spikes on certain focus weeks. To top it all out, Govdirectory was presented with the Award for Projects of Social Benefit by FSF.
Wikipediapodden 🟡
Goal: 14 episodes published.
This got fairly close with 11 episodes published, considering we had to take a pause while clearing up the trademark with Wikimedia Foundation.
Book project 🔴
Goal: Book proposal done.
Unfortunately I couldn’t focus anything at all on the book this quarter. I will be giving some talks somewhat related to the general topic next year which at least will keep my research flowing.
Learning
German 🟡
Goal: Reach B1 level in the CERF scale.
I kept using the Nachrichtenleicht which I find really useful. I feel like can follow along really well and would like to find more similar resources. However, I still think I am weak in my grammar and haven’t looked for an actual test yet.
Climate change
Goal: –
While I didn’t have any goals, I kept the article 2025 in climate change on Swedish Wikipedia mostly in sync with the English version, which at least kept me up-to-date on current events and science.
Artificial intelligence 🟢
Goal: Learn about and deploy (locally) an open source AI model.
See Open By Default above.
Health
Running and hiking 🟢
Goal: 912.5 km (averaging 5 km/day)
This quarter went well overall, but in December I did feel some pain in my left leg. A quick pause and keeping it light I think saved me from getting any serious injury. Overall this has been astonishing, and it is the longest distance I have logged running in a year (but I suspect I have some years in my youth when I didn’t keep track that were surpassing this). (Total: 1,365 km (October: 131 km, November: 147 km, December: 134 km))
Eating 🟢
Goal: Average 19 in the Daily Dozen app
As I was mostly home this quarter , this was mostly easy and I feel that this is getting into good habits, and the app still helps me stay motivated and reminded. (October: 22.10, November: 22.37, December: 21.71)
Time to review my progress again, and this has been a less productive quarter than Q1 and Q2. While I have been able to update my goals continuously, it hasn’t been weekly, but on the other hand, I am very happy to have migrated them from GitHub to Codeberg! This quarter has also had some travel, and more work than anticipated which reflects in my progress. Something I should have done earlier was to create a paper version to always have just a glance away. I think I have that to thank for the progress I have been making.
The purpose of this review is to give more room for reflections on the themes I chose for 2025. For ease of reference, I have added this quarter’s goal for each theme.
Sustainability
Wikimedians for Sustainable Development 🔴
Goal: Make podcast about charts and SVG efforts
No podcast has been made yet. I have tried to get in contact with the developers, but no reply so far. On the other hand, my suggestion for a lightning talk about charts at WikiCon NL has been accepted.
Office of Carbon Omission 🟡
Goal: Marketing: set up social media account(s), podcast, video introduction.
I have only started with a script for the video, but I haven’t figured out how to visualize it yet. For social media, I will setup a new Mastodon instance, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. When I wrote the goals, I had the idea of talking about this on somebody else’s podcast, but I don’t know which yet. Ideas are welcome.
Openness advocacy
Open By Default 🟢
Goal: Add more details on offered services on the website.
Goal: Research what framework we could use for the questions.
No deeper research has been done. The thesis is that another Wikibase would be fine, but more requirements and perhaps some tests needs to be done to see if that holds up.
Wikipediapodden 🟡
Goal: 13 episodes published.
I must have planned some extra episodes somehow because while we did miss one regular episode, we still only got to 8. This was a mistake in my planning.
Book project 🟡
Goal: Write one chapter.
While I have most of a chapter done, i think it is too short and need more sources, so I won’t give myself a full pass on it.
Learning
German 🔴
Goal: Finish the grammar book.
I am far from having finished the grammar book Modern tysk grammatik. On the upside, I have found Nachrichtenleicht which is easy news in German that I am enjoying a lot. Additionally, Easy German, a Youtube channel I have sporadically enjoyed have launched a new platform where one easier can find material on right level, so I am planning a subscription there. I stopped using Duolingo completely after reaching a 1,500 day streak in August.
Climate change
Goal: –
Artificial intelligence
Goal: –
Health
Running and hiking 🟢
Goal: 682.5 km (averaging 5 km/day)
Even though I had a cold and have been traveling some, I am way ahead. In fact, I have already reached the yearly goal, so if I manage to stay healthy, this can be a record year all-time. (Total: 953 km, (July: 118 km, August: 67 km, September: 99))
Eating 🟢
Goal: Average 19 in the Daily Dozen app
Only in August when I was traveling most, and that is when I usually find it hardest to stay on top of what I eat, I dipped below 19, and otherwise I managed to stay well above it. (July: 21.52, August: 18.55, September: 21.5)
Like the last quarter, I have been updating how it is going with the goals continuously on GitHub. It has not been every week this quarter as the progress have been in a slower pace, but the updates have not been lagging much. Due to some travel with work, it has also been a bit unfocused, but I have made efforts to revisit my goals and keep them in mind.
This review is meant to give more room for reflections on the themes I chose for 2025. For ease of reference, I have added this quarter’s goal for each theme.
Sustainability
Wikimedians for Sustainable Development 🔴
Goal: Establish decision-making process.
Unfortunately we didn’t manage to meet that much this quarter, and it was hard to build momentum and enthusiasm.
Office of Carbon Omission 🔴
Goal: Add more ideas to the library (at least burning, fireworks and public transport).
Even though I clarified in the categories a bit, adding marketing as a topic, I didn’t add any new ideas.
Openness advocacy
Open By Default 🟢
Goal: Establish Fediverse presence.
Not only did I manage to do this, I did it by catching up on last quarter’s goal “Set up a VPS for using open source tools.” by getting a server with Yunohost that I installed Mastodon on. The server is on: social.openbydefau.lt.
Govdirectory 🟡
Goal: Inventorize question types and classify them.
Goal: 🟢 11 episodes published. 🟡 Get access to and start using an automated editing tool.
Due to some travel, we missed one regular episode but made up for it by a special episode in English and exactly 11 episodes were published.
I did try out Descript, but that was not good enough for episodes in Swedish, and even in the English episode, it didn’t help at all. The technology does not seem to be mature enough for my standards.
Book project 🟡
Goal: Full outline and key section done.
I think I have the outline done, but not the entire key section yet.
Learning
German 🟢
Goal: Get a good grammar book.
After a lot of looking I got myself the grammar book Modern tysk grammatik from Liber.
Almost every week, I have been updating how it is going with the goals continuously on GitHub. This review is meant to give more room for reflections on the themes I chose for 2025. For ease of reference, I have added this quarter’s goal for each theme.
Sustainability
Wikimedians for Sustainable Development 🟡
Goal: Create a great yearly report. Draft decision-making process.
The yearly report came together quite nicely, the format from previous years was still helpful, even though that the submission process now already asked questions based on the Affiliate Health Criteria. While that was a bit of a surprise when starting the submission process, thanks to those criteria being in our goals for 2025, we already had a decent baseline to use for the new report style.
When it comes to drafting a new decision-making process, I didn’t get as far as I hoped. I did a review of what other affiliates are using, and found a few models that I think could be useful for our group, but lacking feedback from other members, I didn’t make a proper draft, but I do have good hopes for the next quarter goals still.
Office of Carbon Omission 🟢
Goal: Generalize the landing page and move the form to a “library” of actions.
Early, I started to list a few ideas of a library for more ideas. But then I got stuck on figuring out the overall design. I realized, already with the tiny prototype, that adding content would increase the cost of maintaining this site that didn’t use any tooling to build it. After some research, I decided to try out 11ty to be able to generate the site at least partly automated when adding new content. I did a quick sketch in Excalidraw to help me visualize what parts needed to be reused.
Visualizing it like this helped me a lot to get things organized. While there are more to polish on, and a lot more content to add, I feel that I succeeded in my goal to create the framework to build upon at the updated site.
Openness advocacy
Open By Default 🔴
Goal: Set up a VPS for using open source tools.
I did some research and found a few providers that could give me a server with Cloudron which in turn enables many open source tools. But Cloudron itself is not open source so I would prefer something similar to Yunohost. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a provider that seems to come with that in an easy ready-to-run package. I’ll do some more research, but if I don’t find a good alternative soon, I will go with Cloudron.
While not part of the goal, I did give a presentation at FOSS Backstage, Using the Commons without causing a tragedy, which I think is worth mentioning here as it was both on the theme and gave some visibility for me and the company.
Govdirectory 🟡
Goal: Publish previously submitted fund applications and add a way to ask for funding for them.
The previous fund applications have been published as sub-pages on Wikidata, so they are fairly easy to reuse now. One plan was to adapt them for the floss.fund but the format it had was not well suited as there we have no formal organization and the community is so open and inclusive. So we still haven’t figured out a really explicit nor easy way to ask for funding.
Wikipediapodden 🟢
Goal: 12 episodes published.
This ticked on like a clock in terms of episode production and exactly 12 episodes were published.
Last year I found a platform for streaming to Fediverse, but unfortunately over the holidays, that instance went offline. Recently I found another suitable instance, and we have streamed one episode over there.
I also started on next quarter’s goal, trying out an automated editing tool (Descript), but so far nothing worth continuing with as it couldn’t handle our Swedish at all.
Book project 🟡
Goal: Research.
This was too vague of a goal. Still, while the research has been successful in the sense that I have located and acquired a lot of material to read, the sheer amount left me unfinished. But at least of what I did read, I feel I am on the right track.
Learning
German 🔴
Goal: Find a good app alternative to Duolingo.
Unfortunately, I am still stuck in Duolingo. I tried another app, DW Learn German, but it was a bit buggy so I got frustrated with it. If you have any tips, I am all ears.
Climate change 🟢
Goal: Pass the course Climate Leadership in the Private Sector.
No goals for the quarter, and of top of that I feel like I have stayed reasonably up-to-date with news. I did apply to an introductory course for the summer at Linköping University and one for the fall at Halmstad University, focused on ethics.
Health
Running and hiking 🟢
Goal: 225 km (averaging 5 km/day)
Here I am crushing it (January: 129 km, February: 100 km, March: 106 km). I have got myself a good habit of running almost every day. In January, I had a small pain in my calf, similar to my injury last year, so I did make the distances a little bit shorter each day, but the consistency still makes the average be higher than the target.
Eating 🟢
Goal: Average 19 in the Daily Dozen app
At home, checking the boxes is easy and have become a habit (January: 20.55, February: 20.64, March: 20.74). On my trip to FOSDEM in Brussels, I managed to plan meals pretty well to not loose out too much, but the FOSS Backstage in Berlin was harder. Even though the food was of unusually high quality, it was not checking the nutritional boxes to a desired extent.
With some irregularities, I have had some New Year’s resolutions. Since 2021, these have been inspired by Daniel Mietchen, not only publishing them publicly, but also doing continuous follow-up. This year, I had the basics done on the Eve, but at the last minute, decided to go into more details, with quarterly goals, and that took some more time. But now I am done, and have even done my weekly documentation twice. Perhaps it is not really resolutions in the traditional sense, but more of themes and projects fitting in them.
My themes for the year will be Sustainability, Openness Advocacy, Learning and Health. Each of them has several and more specific sub-themes, and each of those are broken down with quarterly goals. Find the full breakdown and dashboard on Codeberg.
The documentation will be different from last year. Instead of monthly updates here, I will try to update the dashboard weekly (and as much as I can, with details in the code commits) and for each quarter write one summary blog post here with reflections and possibly even course corrections.
