Computer Scientist (Dipl. Inf.), graduated at University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Active in the Free Software movement for over 25 years.
Long-term volunteer at FSFE and member of the General Assembly.
Co-founder and PreSales-Lead of Nextcloud.
"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
Jane Goodall
Summary
As a child science kits were always one of my favorite toys. This way I discovered already early in my life the world of biology, chemistry, electronics and other exiting stuff. I was always driven by the childlike curiosity to understand how things work instead of just using it. Today I’m still like that. That’s probably also the reason why my first computer soon lead me down the rabbit hole in the world of programming and Free Software (aka Open Source).
During my education and professional career I collected deep knowledge about programming and the design and architecture of software systems. After I graduated I joined the university as a researcher in the area of Cloud Robotics. During this time I learned a lot about academic research and writing and enjoyed the challenge to solve complex tasks. After University I joined ownCloud for four years before I co-founded Nextcloud. After almost seven years as a Software Engineer, designing and developing technologies like Cloud Federated or the Global Scale architecture I work now as a Sales Engineer. Using my deep technical knowledge about free, decentralized and open collaboration platforms, I strive for designing the best possible solutions for our customers.
Being involved in the Free Software movement for over 20 years lead to a deep knowledge about Free Software, Open Standards and software licenses. Today I’m fascinated about how technology shapes our society and how society can shape technology. Free Software is not just a black-box people can use, instead it enables everyone to understand it and adapt it to their needs. In a world driven by technology this are important rights for individuals, organisations and big enterprises. I love to discuss this new possibilities, attend related trade shows and think about how Free Software can enable a business to grow and adapt to the future.
If I look back at the end of a working day I want to have the feeling that I did something useful for my company, our customers and for the society as a whole. That’s why I love working with people from all over the world in a open and collaborative environment, driven by Free Software and Open Standards.
Education
Skills
- Free Software / Open Source
- Software Licenses
- Software communities
- Free Software / Open Source business models
- Software Engineering
- Sales Engineering
- Cloud Computing
- Distributed and Federated Systems
- Web Applications
- GNU/Linux
- speaking at coferences
- communication
- understand and explain complex technical systems/solutions
- problem solving
- solution finding
- leading international teams
Experience
As the team lead of the pre-sales department I'm in charge of a growing and international team of Sales Engineers. In order to empower my team, I work closely together with all other departments (Engineering, Support, Product Management, Marketing and Sales) to make sure that we have all the tools, knowledge and support necessary to be successful.
Success, as I define it, means happy and long lasting Nextcloud customers and users. As a powerful and flexible on-premises solution Nextcloud provides a lot of options, therefore it is crucial to understand all the possibilities and to create the right connection to your daily needs and work-flows. That's exactly where my team and I help people interested in our solution. Together with the prospect we develop the best possible architecture, helping them to integrate Nextcloud in their existing infrastructure and in the daily work of their employees, customers or end-users.
I use my experience of developing various components of Nextcloud for almost seven years to provide the best possible solutions for our customers. As a Sales Engineer I'm acting as a broker between the customer, sales and the engineering team. Working with our customers and partners, listen to their needs and design an architecture together with them which meets their requirements, well integrated in their existing infrastructure and workflows is my passion. I always aim for a system which is as complex as needed and as simple as possible. In case of custom development I oversee the whole process from requirement analyses, feasibility study, project management until the final solution is deployed at the customers side.
Responsibilities of my daily work include but are not limited to: Product demos, requirement analysis, understand customer’s needs and develop the right solution for them, running proof-of-concepts, writing SoW’s and managing customer projects, presenting the product and company in front of an international audience at conferences or webinars, work with large companies and their representatives and decision makers, discuss legal/licensing topics with the customers legal department if needed.
Technologies and platforms I get regularly in touch with as a Sales Engineer: Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, SLES, RedHat, CentOS), Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, MariaDB/MySQL, PostgreSQL, various storage solutions such as Amazon S3, OTC, CephFS, NetApp, IBM COS, and identity management systems like Keycloak, ADFS, Okta, Auth0, OneLogin.
Open Source Contributions
My GitHub-profile and OpenHub gives a nice overview over my Free Software contributions, both as a volunteer and as a employee.
Voluntary Work
Activities
- Jury Member of the Vertical Innovation Hackathon at the Souht Tyrol Free Software Conference 2017
- Member of the organizing committee of the Autonomous Mobile Systems (AMS) 2012 in Stuttgart
- Member of the RoboCup Team 1. RFC Stuttgart, Department Image Understanding (Institute of Parallel and Distributed Systems) at the University of Stuttgart, Germany (2008 - 2012)
Publications
A selected list of publications, for a full overview look here.
- Herausforderungen für Open-Source-Geschäftsmodelle - Erschienen im Linux-Magazin 10/2019 - Freie Software gibt es seit über 30 Jahren. In dieser Zeit haben sich viele Geschäftsmodelle rund um freie Software herausgebildet und immer wieder verändert. Doch die vielleicht größte Herausforderung steht gerade jetzt an. Neben der Wissenschaft bezieht auch die FSFE dazu Stellung.
- Die Abkehr von freier und unabhängiger Software in München wäre falsch - Kommentar auf Netzpolitik.org (2017)
- Werkzeugkasten Freie Software - Einführung in die Grundlagen Freier Software zusammen mit einer Sammlung von sinnvoller Software, mit der Unterricht in einem digitalen Zeitalter gestaltet werden kann. Autoren: Volker Grassmuck, Daniel Rohde-Kage, Björn Schießle, Stefan Schober, Sebastian Seitz, Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann (2016)
- Software Heritage – Erhalt eines Kulturerbes - Gastbeitrag auf Netzpolitik.org (2016)
- 10 Jahre Sony Rootkit – ein fragwürdiges Jubiläum - Gastbeitrag auf Netzpolitik.org (2015)
- User Data Manifesto 2.0 - Gastbeitrag auf Netzpolitik.org (2015)
- Defensive Publication: Cloud file syncing encryption system. Hugo Roy and Björn Schießle (2014)
- Freie Software – Ein wachsender Faktor in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Erschienen im Handbuch der Unternehmensberatung, 2013, Band 2, Kennzahl 3410, Erich Schmidt Verlag
- Free Software, Open Source, FOSS, FLOSS – Same same but different - Article about the differences and history of the various terms used in the Free Software movement.
- Creating and using roboearth object models. CRA, pages 3549–3550, 2012. Daniel Di Marco, Andreas Koch, Oliver Zweigle, Kai Häussermann, Björn Schiessle, Paul Levi, Dorian Gálvez-López, Luis Riazuelo, Javier Civera, J. M. M. Montiel, Moritz Tenorth, Alexander Clifford Perzylo, Markus Waibel, and René van de Molengraft
- Server-sided automatic map transformation in roboearth. AMS, pages 203–216, 2012. Alexander Clifford Perzylo, Björn Schießle, Kai Häussermann, Oliver Zweigle, Paul Levi, and Alois Knoll.
- RoboEarth - A World Wide Web for Robots. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (Special Issue Towards a WWW for Robots), 2011. Accepted - Waibel, M., Beetz, M., D’Andrea, R., Janssen, R., Tenorth, M., Civera, J., Elfring, J., Galvez-Lopez, D., Häussermann, K., Montiel, J.M.M., Perzylo, A., Schießle, B., Zweigle, O., and van de Molengraft, R. (2011)
- Using Situation Analysis Techniques with Bayesian Networks for Recognizing Hardware Errors on Mobile Robots - Oliver Zweigle, Kai Häussermann, Björn Schiessle and Paul Levi (ICRA 2011)
Affiliation
