2011-12-31: Be Häppy, Healthy, Open & Successful in 2012 (short version)

The Thoeny Family (2011-06-07)

Address: 1022 Belvedere Ln, San Jose, CA 95129, USA phone +1-408-255-1477

From Peter

2011 was eventful and somewhat stressful at the same time for us. The family is doing well. Ladina continues to play Guzheng and dances Chinese dance. She is now 16 and is already driving a car. Time flies so fast! Alexis is trying various types of hobbies. Son and dad continue building/repairing rockets. Alexis likes golf and other sports. He is now into airsoft. It is a good hobby to learn about mechanics -- he modifies the guns to make them perform better, but I dislike very much the concept of first person shooting games played in real life. We had Judith Mahler, an exchange student from Germany/Austria with us for 3 month -- we enjoyed her company very much.

In summer we drove all the way up to Vancouver Island in BC, Canada. I met Miwa Fujimoto again after over 10 years. A friend from our time in Nagoya lives now in Cortes island, a small and isolated island off of Vancouver Island. This is very much nature -- beautiful nature. Her husband takes care of an Indian reservation. She is now a Buddhist priest of Mikkyo, the "secret teachings" arm of the Shingon Buddhist school. The Buddhist priest group of Daikokuji, Kagoshima, Japan, came to Vancouver Island, and then to Saratoga in the Silicon Valley. While in Japan I already learned a bit about Buddhism and Shintoism. In Saratoga I received the ordination (Tokudo) from the chief priest Kawakami-sensei. I do not consider myself religious, but the spirituality and tolerance of Buddhism is intriguing me.

My mom Elke Thöny and partner Otto Müller come to visit us from Switzerland over Christmas and New Years. This is the second time she is in the USA. They run a nice Bed & Breakfast in our hometown in the Swiss Alps.

The TWiki community made good progress and released a new TWiki-5.1 with main focus on usability. This release was the most stable for the last 6 years, attributable to the quality focus of our community with release manager George Trubisky. TWiki looks now completely different than just a few years ago; it is growing up so to speak. We are still too small. Are you interested in open source software? I invite you to get involved with the community, or to spread the word that the community is looking for additional contributors.

We refocused the Twiki Inc business. The Red Hat open source business model did not work out that well for us, mainly because the customer acquisition cost compared to the revenue was unfavorable. We now offer Twiki Workspaces in the cloud; it is a open source TWiki based platform tailored for small and medium businesses that adds project and task tracking, team dashboards, document management and more. In addition to working for TWiki Inc I am also doing consulting on the side.

I wish you all a successful 2012! As Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world. Take good care of the new year!

From Shona

We had full house in December. 2 VIP guests from Switzerland, my mother-in-law Elke and Otto. My nephew Ringo is here. Ladina was happy with her best friend in Beijing & Souzhou for 2 weeks (2011/12/16 - 2012/01/01). This is the first time I stayed home alone for 3 days. Elke & Otto went to San Francisco for 3 days, Peter & 2 boys went skiing for 4 days, Ladina was in China.

Happy New Year 2012! Good health and all the best.

From Ladina (16 years)

I thoroughly enjoyed my two week trip to China, and am now going to refocus on school. I wish everyone a successful 2012.

From Alexis (almost 15 years)

I hope everybody had a wonderful and successful 2011. I also wish everybody a prosperous 2012!

Photos from 2011

Please see our 2011-12-31 letter with many photos from 2011 at
http://thoeny.org/letter_2011-12-31.html