Ciconia

Unto Sten <sten.unto@gmail.com> GPG KeyID: 4D26FE3

Ciconia was a company founded by my former girlfriend Kaarina Holma. The company operated way back in the 1980s and it was located in Tampere, southern Finland.

Kaarina's original business idea was to sell natural herbs, conveniently packed for easy distribution and consumption. When I joined the company, I was assigned the task of improving Ciconia's sales figures. To do that, I expanded our product line to include chewing gum. We also dealt with Nintendo Game & Watch handheld electronic games. They were very popular especially in the early 1980s, but when the home computer craze took off, handheld games were no longer hot among the youngsters.

I still remember when I contacted a big marketing company and we reached an agreement about our new advertising campaign. But perhaps I was a little too eager to take action. Ciconia was taking some bold steps as a company and we were expanding, but to my regret I often neglected to inform Kaarina about the new strategic moves I was planning.

My self-centered behaviour caused some friction between us, mainly related to differences about how we should run our company. The situation got worse, and eventually Kaarina and I broke up. Luckily there were no hard feelings, though. Kaarina kept wearing the wrist watch I gave her as a present in Heidelberg in July 6th, 1982. I have also lived in Germany and I had my own company there, too. I have often used alias Udo Stein while in Germany.

Nowadays Ciconia as a company no longer officially exists. But just for the good old times sake, I decided that Kalevi Kolttonen and I could release Untochat together under the spiritually resurrected Ciconia brand.

Let's make it clear that we offer absolutely no commercial support for Untochat, or anything else we might release, nor do we sell any products. We have no customers. You can think of Ciconia as an informal, non-profit, charity organization. There is no hierarchical structure, no bosses, no workers. Just some friends having crazy fun.

In some ways Ciconia is a bit like The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Many people believe that our glory days are over, but that is just ignorance. Ciconia is far from dead, it is still working actively to support global human rights, and Ciconia cherishes every individual's personal freedom to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not hurt others. Like us, Brotherhood is not dead and it never will die as long as we have good people showing them respect and support.

It is my intention to co-operate closely with Kalevi Kolttonen. We share common core beliefs about life. That means our basic values are similar, and we also enjoy working together on small projects like Untochat. Our skill sets complement each other: I know something about one thing, Kalevi knows something about another thing. We are learning all the time and exploring avenues we previously thought were irrelevant or even boring.

People change when they grow older and I hope that for the most part the changes are positive. Wisdom is what we try achieve, taking small steps towards the enlightenment, but never being sure whether we get there or not. There is no pretension. We make no exact future plans or promises to ever deliver anything new. We take life as it comes, and live one day at a time, trying not to worry too much about the future.