I am a Java programmer, with roots back to 1997 with Java 1.1; before I did quite a few different things ranging from programming devices for measuring and controlling industrial production systems, bug hunting and patching national telecom switches, some years spent as Administrator starting with Novell Netware, than WindowsNT and finally Linux.

That was fun, but not enough, so finally I switched back to programming and with two friends we founded a small software company called »soft::machine«. At that time the hype was ActiveX and MFC, but then came Java and we moved on.

At roughly the same time - together with my partner Stephanie Rauchwarter - we founded »collaction«, to combine her art with my technique to do some little funny projects and websites. Also with her I started to fly kites - she’s doing incredible designs.

The following years I worked mostly for IT departments in banks, developing Java enterprise applications and improving existing software stacks.

Followed by another move into telecommunications, first fixed-line then mobile. My main focus was provisioning – getting your SIM cards to function and enabling all those special features in the core network.

The last years an even more exiting job, replacement of an existing provisioning system for another telco – no longer as developer but as solution designer / architect.

Nevertheless I am a very curious person, so I keep an eye on other things going on in the world of programming, even if they have nothing to do with Java at all, e.g. I played around with Ruby long before the ROR hype, at a time where most of the documentation was only available in Japanese.

email: gkoll/@/collaction.at