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• 23-01-2020: Panta Rhei - A small piece of furniture revolutionising Pair Programming

About me:

I was born in Hessen in 1967 and grew up to be an engineer of electrotechnology. Already since my courses of study in both Kassel and Massachussetts (USA) I have acted as consultant within the at that time fairly young IT sector. I have indeed preserved my pioneering spirit since those beginning days.

In 1997 in collaboration with a few comrads-in-arms I founded the Micromata Association for Network Technologies, which later on became the registered company Micromata GmbH which I have been directing since 1998.

I have alsways been fascinated by technology because it creates an element of ambition within myself, plus it encourages social advancement. I decided to turn this passion into my profession.

"Some consider the entrepreneur as mangy wolf that should be killed; others believe that he is a cow that must be milked continuously; only few esteem him to be the a horse that pulls the carriage."
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

As for me, I consider myself neither as a predator nor as a productive livestock. For me business management is a mix of all positive attributes of both creatures: courage, composure, endurance. And with growing experience another aspect distinctive of birds of prey can be added to the list: foresight.

Inspiration USA

In 1991 I spent 6 months in Massachusetts, which back then was 'the place to be' for everyone who was committed to the technological revolution of the Internet. Here in Massachusetts the pioneers of the World Wide Web gave everything to speed up this revolution. In fact, only four years later this new technology began its triumphal procession around the globe. For a student of electro-technology like myself, the US state of Massachusetts always seemed to me like the El Dorado of electro-technical infrastructure. Broadband networking was a matter of course and emails constituted the number one form of communication. Apart from that the GNU project was in full swing, which developed splendidly under the aegis of Richard Stallman.
You can only imagine how appreciative I felt to be right where everything happened. Upon my return to Germany I was holding a firm vision of a global networking in my mind, and after the completion of my course of studies I put all my efforts into turning my IT passion into a professional career - as quickly as possible!

On-line elections

The subject of on-line election is of special importance to me because I have been actively involved since the beginning. In 1996 we realised an on-line election for 60,000 adolescents in Finland. Most obstacles we encountered were of technical nature. How do you accomplish an on-line election on a system that possessed one tenth of the capacity that an iPhone today disposes of? Still today we are very proud of having overcome the technical obstacles that had presented themselves, because the election turned out to be a huge success.

Today's obstacles to on-line elections are more of social nature: the acceptance of internet-based technologies hugely depends on whether users consider their privacy to be protected within the Internet. With regards to elections and votes this protection is of particular importance because a democratic election has to be free, equal and confidential. To be able to conform to these axioms to me is one of the most fascinating tasks in my workaday life.

The direct result of this work is the on-line election system POLYAS, which closely links me with the projects 'Junior Elections' and the 'Initiative D21'. Both initiatives have promoted democracy and technological progress in this country.

My passion for Java

In 1996 two approaches to the implementation of complex applications fascinated me: John Ousterhout's idea to interfuse an interpreter with a compiled code and James Gosling's simplification of the OO-Paradigm. That combined with the old idea of generating P code instead of a machine code. The P-code became the precursor of today's Java Virtual Machine.

In order to counteract the PC hype of the 90s, I became a proud owner of a Sun- SPARC-Station. Back then Sun Microsystems were at the height of their innovation and Sun supporters were eagerly awaiting each new technological sketch that came from Santa Clara.

Consequently, I have already been part of all this movement since the introduction of JDK1.0. The year 2000 was of particular suspense because now even Micromata's clients slowly began to discover Java for themselves. Today our developmental proccesses are inconceivable without Java technology.