2014-01-14: Cheers to a Prosperous 2014! (short version)

The Thoeny Family on top of the Empire State Building, New York City (2013-04-17)

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

From Peter

I know, I know, we are very late with this year's seasons greetings. I have been sick twice over the holidays, and Alexis and I have been out of town for three weekends in a row.

2013 was a busy and eventful year again. The kids grow up faster than a blink of an eye. Ladina moved to Hong Kong this summer to study at the University of Hong Kong. It was her first choice among all the applications she did. I am so happy for Ladina that she found her passion.

Alexis and I discovered archery in spring. We started slowly with an entry level bow. Alexis is getting serious with archery, he bought a high-end Olympic recurve bow, and is already competing at the California state level. The coaches say that he has potential. I think so too. Archery is 30% technique and 70% psychology. He has pretty much nailed the technique and is learning how to perform under pressure. He got the driving permit and is driving a car with a parent for a few month now. I like the system in the USA where kids can drive early on under supervision.

Shona's sister Iris and daughter came to visit us in early summer. We made a trip to Las Vegas, then a big tour around the Grand Canyon, then to Flagstaff, and finally to Los Angeles. See some of the album photos of this journey to amazing places, such as the Antelope Canyon in Arizona. Iris' son Ringo Leung finished his studies at UCLA.

The open source TWiki is progressing. We had a new TWiki-6.0 release in October. I am very happy that the community continues its quest on creating the best (cough!) collaboration platform for the enterprise. This release was again rock solid, a big change compared to the earlier years prior to the fork. The new dashboard feature lets you create appealing and useful dashboards for your teams. We are now working on a packaging standard for TWiki applications. My vision is to create a marketplace for TWiki app developers so that we can grow the whole open source ecosystem of TWiki. I invite you to join us!

My consulting business is also progressing. Summer was kind of slow, but then it picked up. I am now mainly creating TWiki applications based on customer needs. TWiki applications are really powerful because you are not confined to rows and columns like in a database - you still have the flexibility of a collaborative wiki.

In January I was invited to give a talk to executives of Siemens in Munich on addressing customer value using structured wikis - personas and kanban approach. I took this opportunity to visit my family in Switzerland.

Financially we are still trying to recover from the losses of the TWiki business and the hospital fees of a few years back. The health care system in the USA is tailored to care more for shareholders than patients.

I was always interested in photography. For some time I admired Trey Ratcliff's stunning work on HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Today's cameras, screens and printers cannot capture the dynamic range our eyes can see. HDR photography is a technology to create images that look more natural, in a way the human eyes perceive the world. In spring I bought a good mirror-less camera and took the plunge into creating HDR photos. I post exclusively HDR photos to my Flickr photo stream - I invite you to check it out!

I wish you good health, lots of success & luck, and tons of joy in 2014!

From Shona

Ladina went to Hong Kong to start her college life.

I started to dance on stage again after a ten year break taking care of my kids.

I enjoy my life very much. Having fun with bowling friends 2-3 times a week, good exercise with a Chinese dance group, sometimes enjoying Mahjong, and I like to organize parties.

Wishing all my friends to have good health and a happy life!

From Ladina (18 years)

Wishing everyone a wonderful 2014. Let's make this year a better one than the last!

From Alexis (almost 17 years)

I hope everybody had an amazing 2013, and further hope for a fantastic 2014!

Photos from 2013

Please see our 2014-01-14 letter with many photos from 2013 at
http://thoeny.org/letter_2014-01-14.html