How time flies

Hello again. Yes, I know it's been a while since I last posted. In part it's because I 'discovered' Twitter and decided to experiment there; in part it's because (apparently) there's a recession, and I figured that people had quite enough on their plate without worrying about whether I'd blogged or not.

But not blogging became a slippery slope ... and the things is, we've had rather a lot to celebrate of late, which has started making me suffer 'Blogger's Guilt' for not writing. So in an attempt to make amends, here's a quick list of the little victories we've enjoyed ... as well as a hearty promise to blog more in future!

10 reasons to smile if you're an Alphabetter:

1. We won an award for the best B2B online publication (for FutureGov.net) by the Magazine Publishers' Association of Singapore
2. We had another beach volleyball tournament - and this time nobody left in tears. Okay, well we had one person leave in tears - but as a proportion of the expanded team, this is still an improvement!
3. We had two really successful events in Singapore (economic crisis? where?): FutureCCTV Forum - and the absolutely rocking Government Information Forum (228 government delegates!)
4. We discovered that nerf guns can be a great way to get your point across in internal meetings
5. We launched a Chinese-language version of FutureGov! Hen hao!
6. We opened an office in Hong Kong!
7. We welcomed two of Singapore's best trade media sales ladies into the Alphabet family (poor old Questex!)
8. We launched 'FutureGov Research' and are currently delivering custom research into the attitudes of senior public sector officials for our friends at EMC, Kodak, Juniper Networks, Fuji Xerox, and a few others!
9. I was invited over to Putrajaya by the Malaysian government to speak at their National ICT Conference - and despite there being 650 delegates, managed not to get stage fright (there's hope for me yet)
10. Jeremy Godfrey, Hong Kong's Government CIO, kindly agreed to open our Government Information Forum Hong Kong conference (poor old Questex!)
11. We're imminently to launch FutureGov TV
12. We had another Doughnut Day!
13. Not content with having random Doughnut Days, we've supplemented that with the occasional 'Cupcake Day', just to mix things up a little bit
14. We're going to have our first Alphabet baby in October - May Yee is going to have a girl :-)
15. The Head of IT for China's (and the world's!) largest hospital became one of our new bloggers at FutureGov.cn - and helped us with our new Chinese healthcare conference!
16. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, subscribed to our FutureGov e-newsletter!
17. We went bowling - and crowned J2 the Alphabet Media bowling champion for 2009
18. Alphabet went crazy and got itself a corporate yacht (well, Tim kindly allowed to take clients and staff out on his wife's yacht - the well-appointed 'Swiss Marigold', a 36ft Jeanneau Sundance)
19. Ellen made it to the last round of 'My Lovely Mum 09', before being beaten by a transexual
20. Robin was appointed to be a judge for the BBC's annual development projects competition: The World Challenge
21. We have successfully increased the ratio of girls to boys - we're now 50/50!
22. I met many world leaders this year
23. I got tickets to see Blur's Hyde Park gig

Okay, that's it. I'm scraping the barrel a bit now. But I promise to report back again soon!