Christian Dedek
@ Trivadis

I was born in the exact minutes when Germany became football world champion in 1974. Funnily enough, I never really warmed up to German football culture; instead, I'm an even bigger ice hockey fan. Jaromir Jagr, Ivan Hlinka and the Nagano miracle mean more to me than Beckenbauer, Breitner and Müller in Munich. Might have something to do with my childhood as an offspring of German-speaking Bohemian refugees behind the Iron Curtain.

At that time, very few families in the GDR could afford their own computer. The only time I came into contact with computers was at school – where I belonged to the "nerd kids" who used them to program their first games in assembler or hex code. With the transition to the Abitur and the resulting choice of studies, however, computer science was no longer on the table. In fact, the state career counselling service pointed out that this was only something for the best of the best and that the necessary potential for skilled workers was sufficiently available, especially at US-companies like Microsoft. So, I began to study chemistry. That interested me more – but, at that time in Germany, it was likewise a direct path to unemployment. Fortunately, the internet came along in the mid-90s and the world looked different at the end of the millennium. I dropped out of my breadless chemistry studies after four years and switched to business informatics. While I was still a student, I worked (for pay, rather exceptional at the time) for my future employer and stayed on when the company merged with Trivadis 20 years later.

At Trivadis, from the very beginning, I appreciated the five cultural values – of which I would like to emphasise two: on the one hand, the fact that we are very free in what we do and how we want to do it. On the other hand, that we are "doers". If we have a goal, we find a way and get it done. I learned from a management consultant friend of mine: "Software developers are called developers because they like to develop, especially themselves." I would sign off on that. You are constantly learning on a wide variety of levels, which is what I like about this job, especially in the area of new technologies.

Nevertheless, I am someone who particularly enjoys keeping systems of my parents' generation running and making them fit for the future. Aspects such as performance optimisation, modern interfaces or security are topics that I have always enjoyed dealing with in this context.

The fascination for the maintenance and optimisation of "historical" technology extends into my free time. A 125 cc motorbike of the Swabian brand "Maico", which was successfully used in the Road Motorcycle World Championship between 1969-1973, is still raced by me today in the German Historic Motorcycle Championship.

Still, I am not a lonely, death-defying "Silver Dream Racer", but rather a quiet family man with a fast hobby that smells of 2-stroke oil. Currently, I particularly miss the direct contact with my colleagues in the office. Before these home office times, I was an avowed passive smoker, often standing (coffee in hand) at the ashtray with my smoking colleagues. The conversations there are more meaningful than many believe, the boss, colleague or customer probably nowhere quite as relaxed. The pull towards smoking groups – perhaps also a remnant from childhood days. I don't miss excessive smoking, but I do wish back the normality of being able to meet in the office. Until then, I'll just wallow in memories here at home, in the gap between creative chaos (desk 1) and order (desk 2) on my two desks and with my dozen coffees a day.

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