i love melancholic music. “birth and death of the day” by “explosions in the sky” reminds me of what has happened to this blog.
what happened in 2014
i was lucky to get together with cordula
i stopped coding in php
i co-founded craftworks
i desperately tried to finish my master thesis
looking back now, that was more that i was able to manage. i wanted to invest as much time as possible into my new relationship, i changed my main programming environment, i founded a new company (and wanted to continue being a traveler, musician and super-curious person).
you can guess where the story goes: i did not have enough time to do all this in a proper and satisfying way. believing in the (stupid) assumption that i am only “successful” if i would constantly add directly measurable value to the company, i neglected everything besides work. i felt overwhelmed with the difficulties and obstacles being part of a founders-team. it was very hard for me to find distinction. and with every “big thing” in my life i only came to understand what was beautiful about it, once i didn’t have it anymore.
all in all i had no time to read and write “irrelevant” stuff. it felt as if i personally stabbed Tim-Berners Lee into the back and stopped doing what was the morally right thing to do: publishing my findings and experiences and discussing my opinion about what has to change. in fact i read A LOT of software engineering literature and literally wrote millions of lines of code. today i envision myself working behind a thick opaque curtain of wrong assumptions and client contracts. and it felt as if i did it for nothing (which of course was wrong, the clients were super happy).
and now?
in the end of 2017 i decided i want to leave the private software industry. at first i was only able to articulate the wish to leave “this” behind and start “something” new.
“childish” you may say (as i do now). in fact, that’s totally true. i did not have a clear idea what should come next. i had the feeling that i did something terribly wrong with my life that i had to change. so i wrote down what i am good at and what i am bad at (i changed my decision techniques in the meantime, because i consider this method very, very basic) and decided to continue my studies in computer science.
now i work on disengagement in serious gaming.
i always advocated the position that one can only truly understand something being aware of what does not “work”. being aware that any initial assumption normally is wrong. understanding that “to much a hassle” does not mean “impossible” but evokes a process. also i always wanted to see that design and purpose are considered BEFORE decisions are written in stone (e.g. in form of an individual customer contract).
being an engineer from the heart this field of research is both challenging and interesting for me as i know much about software (and its ecosystem) but only little about human behavior effects and communication. my plan is to find a way to contribute to the field from the perspective of an engineer building awareness for the bigger implications of the use of software and maybe even building new bridges between “hard core” programmers and designers.
le future
so if you want to give this blog a second chance, you might want to do it because i will try to document my findings on my way out of the “garage” of missing purpose and distinction i lived in the last years.
i look forward to a new way of working – the hci at tu wien really is a beautiful place to work at. i will have to shift my metric/output oriented (scrum points, kpi, kloc, jira issues, revenue, …) work style to a more outcome (what am i supporting and why, what am i disapproving on and why, where should the journey go and why) oriented way.
it’ll be beautiful.