Werndorf, Styria, Austria
As a kid growing up in the 80ies I was absolutely fascinated by the first video games and home computers. Back then we were not allowed to spend time in front of a computer while the weather was fine (mum shouting "go play outside with your friends"), so I was occasionally hoping for rainy days to play child-friendly games like Leisure Suit Larry. Inspired by the seemingly endless possibilities of computers, I decided to "do something with computers for a living" later on, and so I attended IT class in high school spending hours and hours of time with coding. Many years later I'm typing the summary for my LinkedIn profile using a smartphone, which has a compute power of many thousands of the 80ies home computers, and I indeed work in IT for a living, though in a way that was unimaginable for an 80ies kid (no internet, computers and screens were ugly, fat and heavy). I joined a Christof company for the first time back in 2008, working in IT support while deepening my knowledge in IT security, networks and (virtual) infrastructure. I soon became Head of IT Infrastructure & Security in 2010, and since then I have deployed many hundreds of virtual machines, configured more firewall rules and group policies than I can remember, checked millions of event logs and maintained our global connectivity and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2020 I was offered to lead the whole IT department, so that's what I do since then - manage IT employees using a smartphone. ;) But - to close the circle to my former 80ies self - I still play videogames when it rains. Besides that, I try to travel a lot, am interested in motorsports like Formula 1 and MotoGP, enjoy listening to music (on vinyl; some things in life are better when they're not reduced to zeros and ones) or read a book (printed editions).