What a wild ride of a year it has been. As the last twelve months leap to a speedy crescendo we could torment ourselves with umpteen questions about how effective was our business communications strategy. We could ask ourselves, ad naseum whether or not we communicated effectively with our staff and management teams and in the same breath torture ourselves with the resounding negative answer we hear.

We could obsess over the wording of the last long-winded and nonsensical e-mail message we dispatched to our co-worker (instead of picking up the telephone and calling her) and mentally kick ourselves for not having included our newly invented word in the epistle.

But let’s not go there. Let us look back on the top ten of everything that happened in 2010. Mine goes from the sublime to the ridiculous, interspersed with slices of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Everything 2010 list as well as Jamaica’s happenings. What’s on your list?

Anyone who has had to hear, write or read a public apology at anytime knows the pain of that experience. It is humbling, humiliating and tests every fiber of your being. So, imagine the angst of the public figure who has to bare his soul to a disapproving and unforgiving public on whose toes he has just stepped, usually repeatedly. Time named the world’s richest and most ‘out-ed’ cheater, Tiger Woods’ apologies to his former wife, Elin Nordegren (and everyone else) as one of the year’s top ten apologies. Reported Time: “It wasn’t the most fluent of apologies: “I’m embarrassed. That I have put you. In this position” – and the setting, in front of a strange blue velvet curtain, looked like that of a magic show. Still didn’t do the trick, though. Tiger Woods and Nordegren divorced six months later. ” Ouch.

Following closely on the list of top apologies was the one from Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, to Toyota buyers. “The CEO apologized in 2009 to shareholders for a laundry list of things. He apologized earlier in 2010 in Japan. But in late February, Akio Toyoda brought his remorse for his company’s handling of the sudden-acceleration problem in its cars to Washington and apologized to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.” After a while the apologies began to sound hollow.

Among the fifty best inventions for 2010 was the Ipad which one analyst dubbed, “the fastest-selling non-phone gizmo in consumer-electronics history”. Then there was Square. Square is a payment platform created by Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey. “With the aid of a tiny magnetic card reader that attaches to a smart phone, Square lets anyone process credit cards.” You don’t need to wait for a receipt, just sign on the screen, and Square sends a copy straight to e-mail.

There is also a list of top ten websites for the year. Vimeo, a video-streaming service of choice for creative types – was the winner. Second on the list was Movieclips .With more than 12,000 film snippets it is said to be one of the most comprehensive film collections available on the Web.

One of the top ten business deals that went down during the year happened in the airline industry. In May, United and Continental announced a $3.2 billion hookup creating the largest airline. Time reports that when the integration is completed, the company will serve 378 airports with hubs in 10 cities. It will have 5,811 daily departures and an estimated 144 million passengers a year. The combination could also produce more than $30 billion in revenue a year, or nearly 50per cent more than its nearest competitor, American Airlines. Second on the list of 2010 most humongous biz deals was the acquisition of Burger King by a Brazilian private equity firm 3G which paid $3.3 billion to acquire the fast food staple.

Here at home on our top ten list of excellent ventures an investment savvy Digicel pumped over $100 million into the redevelopment of downtown Kingston. Water-front real estate prices are set to zoom and we hope that this will definitely change the face of Kingston Harbour, one of the world’s largest, natural well protected harbours. Here’s looking at a change in scenery that will diminish the number of shelled out buildings and the homeless in downtown Kingston.

This was the year when the Oracle/Sage of Omaha, the now 80-year old Warren Buffet, our world’s greatest investor, named his successor. Who is the man? Thirty-nine year old -hedge fund manager, Todd Combs will leave his job at hedge fund Castle Point Capital Management in Greenwich Conn., at the end of the year to join Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway where Buffett is the Chief Executive Officer and top investment officer. How do you get picked for a job like that? I mean, how do you network that job title of a life-time? Note to self – include in 2011 plans to drastically change personal net-working datebook to include big named sages.

When we survey the scene in our local garden there is not much by way of succession planning that is prevalent. Within the last few years, a young and bright, Gen-Y, Mark Croskery of Stocks and Securities has been slipping seamlessly into the shoes of his pater familias and shaking things up in the stock brokerage industry.

Television and its skanky reality shows were not left untouched. Leading the list of Dancing With the Stars top ten worse dancers was reality-television mom/alum Kate Gosselin who did not last very long. Then there was poor Michael (looking for a comeback?) Bolton . In the second week of the show’s season’s he performed a jive dance to “Hound Dog”. According to Time it “was so awful, one judge said it was the worst jive in the show’s 11 seasons, before sending him “back to the dog house.” Bolton took offense and demanded an apology.” And how was your year?

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specializing in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.