2025 in review

I understand this might be a bit late for a year in review. We’ve had a lot of Touch stuff going on here in Taipei for the last couple of weeks, and tonight is my first chance to sit down with the cat and get this written.

2025 was a year on the go, with (mostly work related) travel throughout the year. It was also a year of catching up with old friends from Taiwan in their new homes overseas, and meeting a whole bunch of internet friends for the first time at conferences and events. Unlike 2024, which was a World Cup year, Touch took a bit of a back seat for most of the year and with it so did whatever fitness I’d build up in the year prior.

Personal

Once again on the personal front 2025 was a quiet year, which bodes well … right? For family, my sister got married earlier in the year, which gave our family a chance to be together for a few days for the first time in a while. On the other end of the spectrum, the year ended with the passing of my partner’s grandmother. She was 101 years old, and had moved to Taiwan in the 1940s from Fujian province. We’ve spent the time with family, helping prepare items for the ceremonies that are performed per the Taoist tradition.

Travel

Places I visited in 2025 (in no order): Sydney, Katoomba, Mudgee, Orange, Melbourne, Singapore, Zurich, Lucerne, Munich, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Chiba, Hiroshima, Kurashiki, Kyoto, Kinosaki Onsen, Tottori, Matsue, Izumo, Taichung, Nantou, Bangkok.

I am way behind on getting the rolls of film I shot in all these places developed. There’s some colour stuff from Switzerland and Australia, as well as some black and whites from Tokyo up on https://film.fershad.com, but still a heap more to come. I’ve put a few into this post though.

Meeting friends old and new

A big part of traveling this year was attending various conferences to speak about Grid-aware Websites. Other trips included time in Europe with the Green Web Foundation team, and TPAC 2025.

The time in Europe was definitely a highlight, where I spent time in Zurich, Munich, and the Netherlands. During 3 weeks on the road, I was able to catch up with a few old friends, meet a few internet friends IRL, and making some new friends as well.

Many of the highlights came from the summer in Europe, during a pleasant heat wave (pleasant for someone coming from East Asia). Spending a few days in Zurich catching up with two former colleagues and their new born was by far the best of the bunch. Meeting Romain Jacob, Michael Oghia, as well as Hidde de Vries and family in person were all great times. And, of course, catching up with all the folks I work with at the Green Web Foundation for a few amazing days in Munich was very special.

Finally, no trip to Europe would be complete without some Touch. I spent a week bouncing around the Netherlands doing some work and mixing in training sessions with the Dutch Mens National Team and clubs in Amsterdam, Den Haag, and Rotterdam.

Work

There’s been a lot happening in Green Web Foundation land this year, and I’ve been lucky to be part of a nice chunk of it.

Grid-aware Websites

Most of my year was spent working on the Grid-aware Websites project. I’m really pleased with what we were able to achieve with the help of our funding from SIDN. We were able to work on delivering a core code library, and starters for working with both Cloudflare Workers and Netlify Edge Functions.

Most pleasing was being able to deploy grid-awareness to the Branch magazine website as part of a design refresh. It was a really stressful time getting the redesign planned, implemented, and tested while balancing travel and conference speaking. Probably not something we’d want to try again (he says now), but definitely worth the hard yards.

Through the year, I also gave three talks promoting the project in Singapore, Melbourne, and Amsterdam. Although we weren’t finished with the project at the time I did those talks, they presented a great chance for me to refine my thinking about the project and to hear the thoughts for new audiences.

2026

2026 is shaping up as a landmark year for Touch in Taiwan. We are in the process of preparing to send two teams to an international tournament for the first time - with plans for a Womens and Mens Open teams to travel to Australia for a tournament in April. This will take up a lot of my spare time through the first half of the year, as I’ll be coaching (and maybe playing for) the Mens Open team.

On the work front, we’re working our way through finalising some important updates to our provider verification process which we plan to get public feedback on shortly. Besides that, we’re also continuing to work on the carbon.txt project, and I’ll be involved with that in a variety of ways.

I also might have been bitten by the TPAC bug following the recent session in Kobe. It’s a long way away, but I’m wondering if a trip to Dublin might be on the cards for TPAC 2026 😅.

As always, if you’re visiting Taiwan for work or play, let me know. There’s so much to do, see, and eat (mostly eat, though) here. I’d love to show you around!