The First 500 ...

I like tradition, I must confess. It must be genetic or something … after all, I am English and if there is anything on this earth that we can still claim to be good at, then it’s tradition – we’re certainly better at it than taking penalties, that’s for sure. Anyway, an important part of maintaining tradition is celebrating things that have been achieved as a result of tremendous effort spread over an extended period of time, and just such an achievement is now upon us. Let me explain.

Today, Feb 6th 2008, the 500th MWonline Newsletter goes out to nearly 12.000 readers in the virtual world. The first one was released to an unsuspecting and very small audience on 29th December 1997, just over ten years ago, and with the exception of selected summer holidays and Christmas, it has been produced uninterrupted every week since then. How many internet-based newsletters can claim that kind of consistency and longevity?

This landmark is almost entirely the work of one person, Johannes Thönneßen, also known as the CEO. But since he is not one for self-congratulation (except after tennis) I'm taking the initiative and making our admiration for this achievement public. It takes a rare combination of self-discipline, creativity and an unwavering belief in what you are doing to reach such a milestone and we, his colleagues at MWonline Global Headquarters in Monheim, congratulate and salute him for this.

To honour him today we have decided to have a surprise brunch in our newly appointed and upgraded “lounge” (see a previous blog). Indeed, in view of the classy location and to re-enforce the sense of occasion it had crossed our minds to issue an appropriate dress-code, with suits, ties or cocktail dresses all round. However, we concluded that this would have three distinct disadvantages:
1. It would mean spoiling the surprise, because we would have to tell CEO about the event in advance.
2. Since he doesn’t actually own a tie as far as I know, it would mean he would not actually be able to attend the party being held in his honour, which is a bit too bizarre for even my sometimes rather strange English humour.
3. We all hate wearing ties anyway.

Furthermore, while we were discussing the dress-code issue, the OMM jokingly announced that, after all the food he’d eaten over Christmas, he was not confident he’d be able to squeeze into his favourite “little black cocktail dress” anymore. The stunned silence at the thought of the OMM in a little black dress spoke volumes and this tipped the balance once and for all in favour of staying casual!

So we’re raising our glasses to the CEO in trusty old jeans and sweatshirts as per usual and it feels great. Cheers JT , here’s to you … and here’s to the next 500 Newsletters!