2009-01-04: Joy, Success, Peace and Good Health in 2009 (short version)

The Thoeny Family (2008-07-05)

From Peter

2008 went by quickly. It was again quite an eventful year. In June/July we visited our home in Switzerland. My brother Christian got married in Piemonte, a beautiful region in Italy with many vineyards located between Milano and Torino. We enjoyed the best weather. Lucky, him, he postponed the wedding by one week to fit the school schedule of our kids. One week earlier it was pouring with rain in the Piemonte region. Please enjoy the photos of our trip.

Ladina loves Chinese dance and the Guzheng. She enjoys practicing the Chinese harp several times a week. She applied to participate in the first international Guzheng competition in Hong Kong in May this year; knock on wood that she gets accepted.

Alexis continues his career as a rocket scientist. We had tons of wine corks at home that we collected over time and we did not know what to do with them. We decided to build a mid-powered rocket out of corks. This time we designed the rocket without the rocket simulation software. Using a Swiss army knife, we cut wedges out of the corks, then glued rings of corks using the rocket engine casing as a template. In its maiden flight it went up about 900 feet (300 m), the parachute jammed and did not eject, the rocket came down on the ground with high speed, and bounced back about 10 feet (3 m). Cork is very compressible, the rocket was undamaged! We shortened the shock cord, which solved the ejection problem. I also got the L1 certification so that Alexis can launch high powered rockets (he is still too young).

Incredibly, the open source TWiki project is now 10 years young. Although I started TWiki in 1998, the oldest TWiki distribution I found is TWiki19990120.zip, e.g. from 20 Jan 1999. TWiki re-defined the wiki space from a shared publishing platform, to an enterprise wiki, and to a web application platform. JotSpot copied the application wiki concept, but was later relaunched as Google Sites with stripped-out application programmability. Other wikis followed the TWiki foot-steps, such as XWiki and TikiWiki.

In October last year we relaunched the TWiki.org project to expand it to cover the needs of enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration (not just the wiki), to set clear open standards that encourage 3rd party contribution, and to expanded enterprise features. We also defined a new governance structure and code of conduct that is heavily modeled after the successful Ubuntu Linux community. I believe that the twiki.org project can build up on its success with clear leadership and a clearly defined code of conduct. A number of contributors who disagreed left the project and created a fork. We had lot's of friction within the community in the last three years, caused mainly by a ring of consultants who created a closed community within the open source community, pushing their own commercial agenda onto the TWiki community. Now with the new code of conduct we are in a much better position to enhance TWiki; and we are looking for additional contributors to join the open source TWiki community. I am very thankful to all who helped advance TWiki to this point!

We are making progress with TWIKI.NET. My business partner Rod Beckstrom got a once-in-a-lifetime offer from the US government. He left TWIKI.NET in spring to head the newly created National Cyber Security Center within the Department of Homeland Security. He is reporting to Michael Chertoff, who in turn reports to the president of the United States. It has been a blessing and privilege to get mentored my Rod. I wish him best of luck in his new career. Tom Barton stepped in as Chairman and Interim CEO of TWIKI.NET. He is a serial entrepreneur with open source business experience.

Starting a company is always faced with many challenges, and we feel the economic downturn in the USA and abroad. We were not able to secure a Venture Capital seed round this summer as planned. Unfortunately we had to lay off three people this year to lower our burn rate. Nevertheless we were able to expand our product lines. We offer now support for Certified TWiki deployed at a customer site, Certified TWiki hosting solutions, TWiki applications, as well as training and webinar programs. Last year we closed deals with some major organizations, such as Allergan, BroadCom, Dimension Data, US Federal Reserve Bank, Financial Times Business, Oracle, Sony, Tele2 and United States Coast Guard. 2009 will be a critical year; depending if we get Venture Capital money we can grow and gain market share, or we need to continue in slow growth mode. My preference is to "pedal to the metal"; knock on wood to get funded!

It is difficult to keep in touch with friends spread all around the world. Come visit us in San Jose, and we try to get in touch when we travel. I found Facebook, a social networking website, good to keep in touch with friends and business associates. You can find Shona and me (and more photos) on Facebook.

I wish all of you a prosperous, peaceful and healthy new year! Life is colorful, make it happen!

From Shona

I wish you all good health, happy life forever!

From Ladina (13 years)

I wish everyone a Happy New Year!

From Alexis (almost 12 years)

I wish you all a very happy new year!!

Photos from 2008

Please see our 2009-01-04 letter with many photos from 2008 at
http://thoeny.org/letter_2009-01-04.html