Happy old year

It is customary to wish people a happy new year, to take on new year’s resolutions, and generally to celebrate the upcoming unknown. Rather than do this, I’d like to take a second, for we have an extra one in 2016, to look back on 2016, and thank all the people that have made it what it was: a year I’ll remember with fondness.

This year has been the best in a long time. I’ve relaunched this website, spoke at conferences in many countries on two continents, met hundreds of you, restarted work on both OpenRasta and “the book”, albeit not as much as I’d have liked, launched the httpapis.com chat room, worked with great clients and even greater people, laughed, cried and generally lived. There were a few downs, some friendships disappeared, some people upset unintentionally, some projects didn’t happen, and on my path of self discovery, some cuts and life changes had to be made. So is life, up and downs often feed one another. I wouldn’t have had any of the great times without an amazing group of people around me, and for once I’d like to tell them how much it all means to me. I may edit the post as I remember more names, I do apologise to anyone I forgot, it’s probably only temporary!

Thank you to my family, for having me, being there, inviting me to share your happy and your less happy moments. I’m very glad and very lucky to have such a fulfilling environment. A special thank you to mom, for being there through everything over the past 35 years, such endurance! Than you to Dominique, for making LA peaceful for me; Thank you Nana for organising a surprise birthday dinner, first one I ever had. Thank you to all the others, I love you all, you know who you are.

Thank you to my friends, old and new. Jon and Simon, always there in my life. We’re ageing rather well, and I hope we continue Friday nights for many years to come. Thank you to my favourite BA, Rossana, I’m so glad to see you grow year on year, your strength and determination is a lesson to us all. Thank you to Marion, Pierre, Marie, Christina and Alessandro, for all the good moments we have in Monaco; Colin and Paul, ever present, kindest spirits, Scotland feels at home thanks to you; Didier, you made it in Barcelona, thanks for a great night; Richard, I don’t see enough of you, but you’re with me on all my easyjet flights nevertheless.

I can’t not mention all the geeks I have spent such a good time with, and I am very privileged to call friends: Toby, for being the best maintainer of OpenRasta since ever; Ian for making sure hugs go around, people and repositories alike; Liam without which cheese wouldn’t have the same appeal; Dylan, a rock I have had the privilege of hanging on many times; Ben and Barbara, so many dinners, good times and swimming pool moments, one of you get a ring on it already; Barry and Nikky for being the best hosts in Seattle, the seafood buttered orgy memories will stay with me forever; Glenn, for the great times in Portland, our conversations, and your enormous kindness; Chris and Joao, I wouldn’t enjoy lunches without you, and your work to promote diversity is so badly needed in our industry; Adam, Vancouver wouldn’t be the same without you, and no I won’t switch to Linux in 2017, maybe the year after :-P; Jef, those selfies turned out pretty great, and thank you for making me discover the wonders of Caesar cocktails, they’re pretty awesome.

You spend a lot of time with clients, and I’ve been very lucky to work alongside pretty awesome people: Dave, welcome to adulthood; Nigel and Chris, Brighton was such a fun time, just what I needed to start the year on a high note; Allan, Simon, Atif, Matt, Aaron, Sam and the others, you make that office fun to be in, here’s hoping I spend more time there.

Conferences have been amazing this year, and it wouldn’t happen without organisers sweating their arse off for months to enable us a platform for sharing knowledge. I can’t mention you all, it takes a village, but a few special mentions are in order, in no particular order: Jakob, you make NDC great, and that beach day and dinner was awesome, we should do more of that; Iva for making Las Vegas happen; Dominika and the whole crew at get.net, your dedication and support went well beyond the call of duty, thank you for everything you did; Andreas for tirelessly giving me more speaking space at Oredev, I had such fun in no small parts thanks to you; Anna and Yann, for being the most organised and efficient planners I’ve ever met, and even better skiers, thanks for the opportunity to discover Whistler and Vancouver; Todd for making conferences in pubs possible, I can’t believe you managed to haggle that jumper from that waitress, this is tons of awesome.

Sickness is part of life, and this year has been very tough on the people around me. I’ve done the dryathlon in September, and collected a bit of money for cancer research, because I think of you all often: Laurie, Violaine, Morten, Patrick, Steven and Anthony, your strength of character is enlightening. To those that didn’t pull through, thank you for having been in my life: Mark, I will never look at a Guinness without thinking of you, you would have loved your send off so much; Pieter, you loved your send off, and I’ll always be grateful for your guidance, late night skype sessions, and your guide to psychopaths, I was brought out of the darkness in part thanks to your vision.

Thank you to the people of the two slacks I always stay on, ddd-cqrs-es and httpapis, your insights are humbling, and banter refreshing: Damian, Dan, Joao, Adam Ralph, James G, Mike Amundsen, and all the others. And for those that were in my life and no longer are, I wish you all the best in your endeavours, let your future be bright and your life full of love and happiness.

Happy old year to one and all.