2000 to 2009

Now that another decade comes to an end, it is time for me to see if the ten years really were worth the effort. Overall it seems to have been more pain than was strictly necessary.

2000 - it all started quite nice. I just turned 30 and was living in London, just got together with my girlfriend and working for guideguide a very nice start-up which was going quite well at the time. One highlight of the year was a trip to OSCON in California, where I witnessed the beginning of Perl6, which seemed brilliant at the time and now appears a bit pointless.

2001 - will always be remembered for 9/11, someone in the guideguide office heard about it over IRC and we quickly confirmed it on TV. It was also the year where I bought my first iPod, maybe the only trend I ever spotted early. Nobody at the time imagined how either 9/11 or the iPod would shape the future.

2002 - I split up from my girlfriend for a while and decided that this would be the right moment to start drinking alcohol again after ten years.

2003 - guideguide was scaling down a lot now and I had to fire lots of people, which was probably one of the most stressful episodes of my business life so far.

2004 - with not much left of the company I decided I could as well move to Barcelona and work from there. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a lot more relaxed than London. It was also the year where I got ill and fixed up again.

2005 - a bit of work, a bit of travel, a lot of recovery

2006 - I quit guideguide after lots of years. It was a difficult decision, but nobody of the old gang was still around, so I didn't feel too bad. I was also looking for a local job and just being employed for a change. I used the rest of the year to chill and enjoy Barcelona.

2007 - Found a new job at opus5, learned lots of new stuff. For some reason the founder left after I just started, is it me ?

2008 - whatever happened to 2008?

2009 - I decided to stop drinking again, turned out to not be my thing after all. The economy made this year really interesting and I hope it will turn up some new opportunities in the future. Oh, and I turned 40 and I am looking forward to my mid-life-crisis, but that is the topic of another post.

And finally thanks to everyone who made these years more fun then they sound:

• my girlfriend Cat, who makes everything more lovely
• my family: Kathrin, Thomas, Klaus and Ulla, who helped me through some rubbish
• Mikel, who brought me to London
• the guideguide guys: Andy, Adam, Alex, Marc, Rob, Jasper, Ben, Luke, ..., who made me learn a lot and fast
• The Londoners: Anita, Justin and Graham who made it more fun
• Opus5: Dennis & Pablo, where I learned a lot of stuff I didn't wanted to know

So lets see what the next decade brings, maybe a new start and the opportunity to do completely new mistakes!

Here are some random pictures from the past ten years