Hamburg, Deutschland :: Winter 2006
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Details aus meinem Lebenslauf (bald auch auf deutsch!)
:: TBM ::
Five month of the winter 01/02 I spent in Bristol, England. I took part in a Student Exchange between the University of the West of England (UWE, Bristol) and my University of Applied Sciences Wedel (FH Wedel).
In Bristol I studied one semester of Time-Based-Media (TBM) at the Faculty of Art, Media and Design. This is an cross-media undergraduate course, in which storytelling in the three strands of Video, Sound and Multimedia is teached. I chose to be part of the video group in a larger cross-media production team.
The team had the task to create a documentary about an appealing character - in the three strands of Video/TV, Radio and Multimedia. This involved finding a suitable person, who has a story to tell, who looks good on TV, who has a good voice for Radio and who has time for a group of students.
Further on we had to interview the person, sketch out the story we want to tell, record interviews and other scenes, edit these on professionall systems (Avid Express) and finally present the finished product. To be able to finish all this, we had to train with smaller tasks in the first two month of the semester.
:: Medieninformatik ::
Since October '98 I study Media Information Science (MI) at the University of Applied Sciences Wedel in Germany. This is a four year course, which ends with a German 'Diplom, FH' (there is an offer at my University, to graduate with a Master of Computer Science with one more year of studying).
The course includes a lot of practical tasks, like writing small programs in C, Java, Object Pascal, Open GL, Tkl, setting up webserver, shooting and editing digital video clips, doing some design and 3D work. Most of this tasks are solved in teams of two students - but the exams have to be written alone ;-)
As being taught a wide variety of media and programming related aspects - instead of specialising - my ideal job position can't be described very easily. I learned the basics of web design and print layout, I learned how to light a scene, record it with professional equipment and edit it digitally, and most of all I learned how to develop in different environments. So the perfect job might contain parts of everything or specialize on one aspect - in both cases I most probably have to pick up some new skills, or improve others. However, due to my intense training I feel well prepared for very different positions.
:: AOL ::
From summer '00 to summer '01 , I had a part-time position at AOL Germany in Hamburg. I worked as a developer in the department IT Solutions. This department was mainly responsible to create internal software solutions (now they also enhance the AOL Client).
As I started to work there, I did some Perl and HTML scripting. Later on I have been a part of the Livelink project team. Our goal was to adapt the knowledge management application Opentext Livelink to then needs and design of AOL. It should substitute the old intranet and function as an information platform, also replacing the used e-Mail system.
In an one week long seminar, we were introduced to the application and to OpenScript - the programming language that is used in Livelink (mainly a mix out of Java, C, Pascal and even Basic). Back in Hamburg our team planned the hardware infrastructure we would need to set up the system for 800 users all over Germany and began to modify the functionality and the look of the system.
My tasks included the programming of some new features, which involved the use of OpenScript, JavaScript and SQL (we were using Oracle Server). But most of the time I was responsible to adapt the AOL CI to Livelink. Working close together with an Art Director, I modified HTML templates, created new pages and mediated the demands of the marketing department, the designer and the development team.
:: Zivildienst ::
After highschool I refused to join the Bundeswehr (German Army) and attended to a year of full time Social Services instead (about 50% of German males choose to do social work instead joining the mandatory Army).
So I worked for one year as a male nurse's aid in a retirement home in the Black Forest (Wohnstift Augustinum, Freiburg, Germany). Working so close to old, disabled and sick people, was a very intense experience. Helping old people doing the - for young and healthy people - most normal and most simpel things, like dressing up, washing yourself, going to the toilet - and not for last the circumstance of dealing with death - greatly influenced my awareness of life.
As you easily can imagine, helping people doing - often most intimate - things, which they were used to do alone, demands highly developed inter social skills. Further I was working shifts in a team of circa 20 nurses - this helped to strengthen my team working skills.