Certainly this has been a good year. My friend Arcadi Espada has made some good remarks trying to hammer the point home.
Good overall collectively doesn't mean good throughout personally though. In 2011 I have endured my first major sentimental loss. My father, Enrique, passed away in June. His illness gave us the chance to mentally prepare for that final goodbye, but, in retrospect, I now feel you can not really prepare for something as bitter as that, can you?
On the positive front we have become a 'familia numerosa'. With the birth of Rosario (Rorró), the offspring count reached three. A good number to call it a day, we feel. We are tremendously lucky and look forward to life as a tightly-knit, loving and respect-driven family. Some dear friends have gone through rocky times this year. Luckily the worst seems to be behind for all of them.
Professionally, 2011 has been very interesting. I have complemented my traditional financial advisory activities with a much deeper inroad into early stage technology investing. I hope 2012 will be the year when I can establish a true position as a professional investment manager. You know what they say: time to put your money where your mouth is!
This has also been a year to develop a deeper understanding of open data and big data, with all their implications. I feel CIVIO (more to be announced soon) will be the most fascinating project in which I have embarked myself to date. My buddies in this adventure are really top class. CIVIO combines a number of dear and old passions: civic and political engagement, transparency and facts as a quasi-comprehensive world view, web technology as the great enabler, and a penchant for the generation of quality visual and analytical contents.
But to be able to avoid past mistakes, we will need to think long and hard about entrepreneurship and financial sustainability. Can we pool all the relevant skills or do we need to find more partners? Individual or institutional? For-profit or non-for-profit? This means that the picture will still need some redrawing. Be sure to find more on this and other topics here in 2012!
