Christmas Letter 2008

Alan Hodgkinson Reckenbühlstrasse 12 CH-6005 Luzern, Switzerland alan.hodgkinson@alum.mit.edu http://www.softxs.ch/alan

Dear Friends,

Merry Christmas! This year's Christmas card and letter have arrived late, last year's resolutions notwithstanding. In any case, I hope the holiday season finds you in good health and enjoying life; and that the recent economic turmoil hasn't affected you too badly. Here in Switzerland, Sandra and I have had a relatively good year. While we haven't got any exotic holidays to report, I did quite a bit of business travel this year.

The best news from 2008 is that the main concern from last year, Sandra's breast cancer, seems to be solved. Sandra has completed all the treatments. She returned to working 50% from the start of 2007, then moved up to 80% in May and will work full time starting next year. During 2008 Sandra was able to work home, and thankfully, given the long commute, she'll be allowed to continue working one day per week from home. Sandra has also restarted her fitness and yoga programs. Life is returning back to normal again.

Much of our travel this year consisted of short trips to Italy. In February, we had long weekends in Florence and Milan, and were lucky to have sunny and relatively warm weather for both visits. Florence is a beautiful and historic city, being middle of winter, relatively free of tourists. We toured the Uffizi, Florence's main art museum, seeing the work of the great Italian masters, all without having to stand in line or having to look over the shoulders of others. The Milan visit was to meet a university friend and his wife, who were visiting family in the region. We also met a cousin of Sandra's there. In July, we spent a few days in Canale (Piemonte) attending a three-day birthday festival of a good friend. This included visits to Alba, Torino and some local wineries. In the summer we also went a few times to Luino, on Lago Maggorie, from where we made further trips to Locarno and Intra.

Regular readers will note that I have been studying Italian for the past two years. This year also marks the start of my using Italian 'in the field'. I'm pleased to say that I have now advanced to the point where responses are in Italian rather than English (or German). I'm still confused much of the time, but the practice on these trips was a real confidence booster, particularly as I managed nearly an hour of conversation in Italian with Sandra's cousin's husband. That said, Italians are generally pleased to play along and try to communicate in spite of less than perfect language skills.

On the business front, this year marks the proper launch of the marketing and sales effort in my business. After nearly five years of focusing on the technical problems of producing and updating our document and drawing management system (for the construction industry), we have now focused our attention on the marketing and sales. I've managed to convince an old friend, with experience in software sales, to lead the campaign.

Our efforts so far have mainly been at industry conferences. We attended conferences in Helsinki (Finland), Agra (India) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). I presented papers at two on the conferences, and we spent the most of our time networking to get more contacts. These were interesting visits, from both a business and tourism perspective. Our first conference was in May in Helsinki, which is a beautiful city. We were lucky to visit during a period of warm and sunny weather. The conference included a number of 'social' (e.g. networking) events, which were all held at interesting venues in and around Helsinki, the highlight being an evening harbor boat trip around the nearby islands. I visited Agra in September, which was my second time in India, my first visit being in the early 90s. In the meantime everything, but yet nothing, has changed. India is busy, crowded, chaotic, colorful and simply amazing. The food was delicious and everybody was nice and friendly. Curiously, we ended up with lots of contacts from the Nordic lands. In spite of the short and hectic visit we did manage two half-days of tourism and got to see the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort.

I also visited Reykjavik twice this year, the first time in June coinciding with the longest day, and then again in late November, three weeks before the shortest day. The first visit was to introduce our new marketing and sales director to our existing customers. I made the second visit by myself, to install a new system. Yes, that's right, we sold a major system to Iceland, in spite of the economic troubles there. During the second visit, Iceland was undergoing a period of soul searching, trying to understand and hopefully prevent future occurrences of the excesses that have led to the collapse there. Interestingly the people were generally optimistic and seemed assured that things would go well again. Given their pragmatic nature, I think they will too.

Sandra and I wish you all the best for the coming year. Thanks for last's year's cards, and especially letters and photographs. We look forward to hearing from you in the coming year.

Sincerely,