Today is a very special day. Excactly ten years ago, on December 15th 2005, I wrote the first post on the mimec.org website. It's become a tradition that I write a short summary of the past year on each anniversary, and I will do it again today, because it was also a very special year for me.
First of all, there were a lot of round anniversaries this year. Almost exactly 10 years ago I graduated from college. WebIssues turned 10 years old in November, although technically it wasn't officially released until September 2006. Fraqtive turned 10 years old in January. And in March it was 10 years since I started my first job - and after those 10 years I still work for the same company, although it grew in size from a few developers to a few hundred, changed its name and relocated its headquarters. Even my primary day job project is still the same after 10 years. So, looking at those numbers, one might think that my life is very stagnant, and I will most likely spend the rest of it in the same place, doing the same things…
But even though a lot of things remained the same for such a long time, the last year also brought a lot of substantial changes. I overcame a serious crisis in my family, and we are back together, although a year ago nothing indicated that this would ever be possible. I think that this is my greatest personal accomplishment, and I simply owed this to my son. Obviously it doesn't mean that it's all a bed of roses now, quite on the contrary, but it was a very valuable lesson for all of us, and I will definitely not let the most important things get out of control again.
Today is also the first anniversary of Bulletcode, a software company founded by me and two of my friends. At the moment it's still more of a hobby than a real business, we put more money into it than we make, and we try to put as much work into it as our day jobs allow. But the whole year was a huge, invaluable experience for us all. We started the company to work on a very promising project, which unfortunately failed miserably for reasons that were beyond our control. So we ended up with a company which generated costs, without any projects, with no business partners, and with no idea what to do next. But instead of shutting it down, we took the challenge and started looking for new ideas and opportunities. I cannot reveal yet what we are working on, it's all a bit of a mistery and conspiracy, but it's definitely the most interesting project I've ever participated in, and we're all waiting impatiently to release our first product.