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by Jon Sullivan

So, this is the last KirstenWinkler.com of the first decade of the second Millenium (depending on your calendar, of course).

Funny enough it does not feel like this. There is so much to do and do you remember the overhyped New Year’s Eve 1999 / 2000? I have to say, this was my worst New Year’s Eve party ever .

Anyway, let me take a short moment to wrap up 2009 and to give you a small outlook on my plans for 2010.

It really has been an exciting year for me. Starting this blog here in January changed my life completely and took it to a whole different level. I met so many people, virtually and in real life, in the online education industry who were more than open to share their ideas and visions with me and my readers as well as listening to me and my ideas for the industry. Honestly, I feel really blessed and humbled and as you know, the year and the work on this blog were crowned by winning the Edublog Award in the category “Best New Blog”.

So let me first of all thank Myngle. As it was because of them that I had started this blog and the reason why is in the review not as important as the fact that they gave me the kick to do it, you guys know, what I am talking about . So, thank you Marina Tognetti, Elisa Delaini and all the Myngle team.

Next on the list is of course Jon Bischke and the guys at eduFire especially Koichi and Marco. You’ve supported me from day one. Thank you for that!

Kevin Chen & Eric Pang of italki, Harman Singh of WiZiQ, Jason West of Languages Out There, Shiv Rajendran of LanguageLab, Christopher Grant of Sclipo, Stephan Stephensen of Mingoville, Duane Sider & Reilly Brennan of Rosetta Stone, Steli Efti & Bjoern Lasse Herrmann of Supercool School, August Flanagan and Natalie Gordon of Lenguajero, Gregory Tappero of Edoboard, Kevin Miccalizi of Dimdim, Sean Fee of VidSchool, Stefano Bernardi of Startup Commons, Markus Witte of Babbel, Arkady Zilberman and George Machlan all of you thank you for the great talks, interviews, support and your participation in the E-Teachers Conference!

Bernhard Niesner and Adrian Hilti of Busuu thank you for the drinks at the Europa Awards in London and your strong support, of course!

Heike Philp of Lancelot School for putting me on the list for the course .

Clint Schmidt of Livemocha for your support, the free Italian Course (I need to finish, still) and the exclusive sneak preview.

Andrew Warner of Mixergy thank you for your inspiration, support and advice. Without you, EDUKWEST would not exist.

Thank you of course all the readers of this blog.

Finally, thank you my virtual sister Aniya for your friendship as well as China Mike and Vikrama for your insightful comments and support.

Ok, now on to what you can expect in 2010 from my side. First of all I will go back to my roots and dedicate more time on my online teaching sites. The Deutsch Happen project will get a sister site about French. Both of them will get new topics besides vocabulary and grammar like culture, history and cooking.

Secondly, I will launch a new blog about edupreneurship and relaunch the E-Teachers Academy. And the third big part will be this blog (adding a podcast), the EDUKWEST interview series and E-Teachers Conference. I will go into more detail about that, soon.

Last but not least I would like to mention that I think the first month of 2010 will already be amazing. On January 5th the launch of the Google phone is rumored, then on January 26th we will maybe finally see the Apple tablet. These two devices have the power to make a huge impact on education. But again, more about all that next year .

So, coming to an end: I wish you all and your families a happy and prosper New Year. May your plans become true and let us build a new, better world where education is available to everyone.

See you all in 2010!