My private memoirs

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Simon Kissel 2016The following text is not only extensive, one could also consider it as an unsparing soul striptease. Many would surely wonder how stupid (and/or narcissistic) one can be, to put one's life in such a detail into the net. Well, since most of my life has played out in data networks, there is nothing to deny - almost everything can be ergoogled. I therefore decided at some point to deal with my life story in a completely transparent way and not to keep any secrets in this respect. The very few things I consider really private are on encrypted hard disks - they are more secure than in my memory, which is extremely bad and unreliable.

Childhood

My childhood was marked by the fact that my parents had to move again and again for various reasons. So over the years I came to about 30 moves, and have already lived in most parts of Germany. In hardly any school have I spent more than a year. Now one would assume that this must be an obstacle to the development of a child, and perhaps that is also true for my siblings. It was a stroke of luck for me - I'll explain that in a moment.

With pronounced (but undiagnosed) autistic trains I could hardly cope with my environment at first. In the kindergarten I was exactly three quarters of a day - after they wanted to take away the wooden railway for lunch (which anyway had too many defects on the wheels and buffers), I went crazy. Even in school I was always an outsider. Even in elementary school regular visits to the principal were called for, and the school system in general was desperate for my character. I made few social contacts and the interests of my classmates were completely alien to me. For example, I did not understand the concept of belonging to different styles of music and fashion until I was 15 years old.

Computer

Thanks to my big brother Stefan Kissel I had access to a computer - a Texas Instruments CC40 - for the first time at the age of 7 years. At the age of 10 he gave me my first computer, a Commodore C16, and I started programming and learning English based on BASIC manuals. In this world I was completely absorbed and felt at home.

As a further hobby I learned by heart from bus and tram timetables. When we lived in Essen in the Ruhr area for a while, we also travelled by tram and metro. At the age of 9, I was travelling alone in trams in the Ruhr area on trams - one of the most beautiful memories of my childhood. It wasn't a safety problem - I can memorize all tracks and timetables.  Straßenbahn Essen

Trial & Error - an iterative learning approach

Why did the constant school changes help me? They laid the foundation for the rest of my life, which consisted of trial and error. I could start again and again from the beginning, after I had manoeuvred myself socially completely into the offside. So I began to draw attention to myself as a clown at an early age, but learned that I was actually laughed at. So I learned to analyse the psychic weaknesses of the strongest in the class (the soccer players, children of rich parents, etc.) and to make it a weapon in the course of the numerous iterations. Now I was able to make them laugh. That made me invulnerable. At some point I started to extend the concept to the faculty. I couldn't see a limit, and I had no sense of hurting other people. At the age of 13 I was ready to become an invulnerable pack leader within a few weeks after entering a new school. When I landed at a somewhat shady grammar school in Wiesbaden after another move, I was surrounded by a lot of violence. At that time I got myself a "gang" and had a personal protector - a big, strong Italian. At that time I had finally become a tyrant. I hunted schoolmates all over the city until they hid in a bakery and fled the backyard - although these students were physically superior to me, they were terrified of my psycho terror. Fearing me, classmates took leave from school. I still didn't understand that other people suffered because of me. They wanted to expel me from school, my parents sued the state of Hesse - but in the end the case was solved by moving to another state.C64

First contact with the demoscene

At that time I first came into contact with the demoscene. At the time, the few existing computer freaks in the schoolyard were exchanging floppy disks. Most of them were about games. These games had often been robbed of their copy protection by cracking groups, and instead they had an intro called "Intro". With music, a logo, a scroll text and maybe some animations the crackers indicated how good they were at removing copy protectors. Over time, this competition of crackers shifted to whoever programmed the most beautiful lead-in. In the next step, newly programmed opening credits began to be exchanged via floppy disks without a cracked game. And finally, the games were left out and shifted entirely to programming real-time animations with music and effects, an early C64 cracktro and playing against other groups as a group to advance to the "elite". The works were now called "Demos"because they demonstrated what the author could do, the groups had cool names, and all the members of this community were just as cool nicknames,"handles" - also because they were still connected to the illegal cracker community and therefore had to remain anonymous. The works were exchanged via "traders", who spent all their pocket money copying floppy disks and sending them to their contacts around the world. As the scene continued to grow, a hundred disks came together every month. They also worked with fake stamps and anonymous post boxes. At some point, the members of the scene began to meet at different places in Europe over weekends. At the beginning this was called "Copyparty", because the whole weekend floppy disks were copied. With time, however, they also began to present new works to others at these parties themselves. And so the "demoparty" was born - they spent the weekend finishing their productions and then showing them to the others. Later on, there were also competitions where the actors and their demos competed against each other this weekend. The average age at that time was 16-17 years. Ein frühes C64-Cracktro

When I immersed myself in this world, at the age of 13, I was still too young to go to these parties myself. But a classmate who was active as a trader got out and bequeathed me his floppy disk collection with demos, as well as his trading contacts. I started programming my first own little demos and swapping disks.

Mind the gap

I had already proved on my day at kindergarten as well as my unaccompanied tram tours through the Ruhr area that I was strongly interested in railways. When my father joined the Wiesbadener Nassauische Touristikbahn - a steam train museum railway which was plagued by misfortunes - as a member, he fulfilled a long cherished dream: Becoming a train driver. DampfzugI was just as enthusiastic, and at the age of 13 I became the youngest active member of the association. My vocation as a computer freak was joined by another hobby: rail games on a scale of 1:1, and as a train driver I was of course still too young. But the club bought a big mini-bar-trolley (much more powerful than the children's stuff that is used in airplanes...) and from then on I took care of the catering on the train weekend after weekend. That was a lot of fun for me, and as I looked so cute with my railway uniform, there was also a lot of tips. This was accompanied by the first television appearance of my life: I had a short appearance in a report of the television programme "Eisenbahn-Romantik". Even when we moved from Wiesbaden to Bingen a little later, I had to accept the quite long journey to Wiesbaden for another year on the weekend in order to be able to participate. Because of recognizable similarities in our character traits, my father quarrels with the association, with which the chapter Railway was finished first for him, and not long after that also for me. Dampfzug

The school rebel

At school, my interests were now focused exclusively on power and rebellion. I founded school newspapers, let myself be elected as a class president and later as a school spokesman with an intensive election campaign, and tried to fight against it wherever I felt wrong (and there are plenty of them in schools). In the end, I took the entire school system as an enemy was. After all, at that time I had made lasting friends for the first time, and I found the older schoolmates who came to my school newspaper team to be intellectually stimulating. After a rather successful student internship, I became a part-time reporter for the local newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung.

Modems, mailboxes and data networks

Mein erstes eigenes Intro zur Demoparty UC2eIn the meantime I had arrived in the world of data networks. In 1993 a patron gave me my first modem and I started dialing into so-called mailbox systems (BBS). I used it to produce gigantic phone bills. So I became part of the FidoNet, a worldwide network of mailboxes, which could be used to send something similar to emails and discuss in a kind of forum. In 1994 I founded my own forum on the topic of demoscene in Germany, and as a moderator I showed tyrannical traits there as well. Nevertheless, the forum was extremely successful. I also participated in regional meetings of operators and users of mailboxes and got to know more people here. I had finally found a home in the data networks. At the end of 1994 I had access to the young Internet via ISDN for the first time, which was not very spectacular at that time - the FidoNet was even more interesting. By the way, my digital identity has been publicly documented since then. One of the first search engines, Altavista, had gained access to and indexed an archive of all FidoNet messages. When Google opened in 1995, Google took over this archive again. That's why you can find very bad and embarrassing love poems from this time of mine at Google today, more than 20 years later. It's better not to.

My first demo party and my first business

1995 was finally the year: I attended my first demo party. Some rather anarchic demosceners had arranged this little party called "Underground Conference" in Southern Germany, which could be understood as a parody of existing big demoparties (which had been commercialized in the meantime. It was a great experience. The demoparty fever had gripped me, so I visited "Wired" in Belgium and "The Party" in Denmark the same year.

All in all, 1995 was the year in which it all started in a hurry. I set up a computer shop (the part is described under Business). My father supported me to the best of his ability. At the same time, I had finally reached something similar to puberty and developed into a rather unpleasant person. Meanwhile, the school system was finally desperate for me and I for him. For a while I went to school while working in my computer shop, but then read it. Since my parents were already moving again, but I felt rooted in Bingen in the meantime, I moved from home to my first own place.

The first self-organized event

Mein erste Demoparty: UC2e Mein erste Demoparty: UC2e Already one year later I decided to organize a demo party myself - quite a mammoth task. I decided that the concept of the anarchist and rebellious demoparty could be further developed by moving the whole thing into a tent in the forest - the contrast between computer freaks and nature couldn't be greater. I took over the name "Underground Conference"and some organizers of the first UC supported me. A sudden onset of winter in May made this party a survival training for its visitors, who came in smaller numbers than expected. I had miscalculated my financial situation and was totally indebted after the event. For weeks I ate from the leftover frozen French fries (I thought it was fun to deep-fry in the forest). At the same time, I am making my first experiences with the female gender. On the Internet, I discovered Internet Relay Chat and moved my social life to chatting for the most part.

Puberty and crash

United Cracking ForceA rather gloomy phase of my youth began. My father could no longer bear the losses of the computer shop, my place was extremely dirty and I suffered from depression. My second relationship broke up with almost fanatical jealousy and fear of loss on my part. I turned away from the demoscene for a good two years. In keeping with my dark mood, I turned to the cracking scene instead of the demoscene - as their activities were illegal, the participants were much more conspiratorial. Personal meetings were out of the question, everything was anonymous. I became a member of the United Cracking Force, a leading group at the time. For the use of this cracking scene I developed a chat system, which for the first time created a bridge between the IRC and the World Wide Web (WWW). This later formed the basis for my commercial product "Chatjet". Thanks to a patron from my days as a computer technician, I had the capital to transform the failed computer shop into a limited liability company specializing in software development. An acquaintance from IRC moved to Bingen to work for my company. I brought a friendly cracker from Russia to Germany to be there, too. The rest of the team consisted of local friends and family. Commercial things went a little better now, and it was enough to feed the team for a few years.



Back to the demoscene

UC4GWUC4GWAfter I had gone up again with myself and puberty and depression were mostly gone, I returned to the demoscene in 1998. In 1998 I hosted another Underground Conference. Although this was again subject to losses, it went much better and was perceived by everyone as a great success. In 1999 the next party followed immediately, which had become known as unique in style.

Excursion: The Women and the Nerds

Women were the absolute exception in the demoscene and the data networks at that time - at the biggest demopartys a maximum of two females per 500 male youths. They were double exotics: They were not only of the opposite sex, but were also not themselves creatively active. They had simply been brought by the few male nerds who had a girlfriend.

Female computer freaks were thus a myth. From today's point of view, this reality is misunderstood: One wonders why there are so few women in the IT professions and often suspects sexism of the male nerds behind it. The opposite is true. At that time, nerds were simply perceived as unattractive wizards, outsiders and losers, the lower end of any social scale. It wasn't something you would choose voluntarily. Girls who might have had the potential to become a nerd as a child will have been suppressed by their parents and environment. There is still the potential for those who can't be talked out of being nerd: Autistic. Now, however, autism occurs four times as often in men genetically as in women. The conditions for the emergence of female demosceners were therefore quite bad.

The demoscene, on the other hand, has been trying to attract more women for years at the earliest. Women were not treated with sexism, but with respect (or even fear). It was a good decade of tradition that women had free access to demoparties because they wanted to promote their appearance (although this was certainly also the hope of being able to get in touch with women through this channel at all).


scamp coded auf Underground Conferencescamp's dirty Keyboard - das originalThe Internet and the Internet Relay Chat had become relatively well known by then, however, and already had over a hundred thousand participants. Thus, despite all the statistical improbability, women appear there for the first time, and among them were some nerds who came into contact with the demoscene through this channel. For the first time at the turn of the millennium, female nerds were present at demoparties for the first time. The result was a new problem: There were now two types of women at parties. On the one hand, the girlfriends dragged along by demoscene people, who in part welcomed the fact that they were seen by several hundred boys as an object of desire. On the other hand, there were also active creative female nerds. They did not want to be seen as a hunting object, but rather - like the male sceneries - they wanted to be judged on their skills and creative achievements. To look good made this distinction even more complicated. When in 1999 a female nerd appeared in the German-speaking IRC channels of the demoscene, who was both creatively active as a graphic designer and also very good-looking, the excitement was of course great.

UC6.22 UC5.25

I get to know my spouse - over the internet!

The young lady and I started talking more and more in IRC and we got along well. At the Demoparty Mecca & Symposium 1999 I met her personally for the first time. My appearance must have been confusing: I had brought along a trailer load of straw bales to the party, which I distributed around my computer place, and an exaggeratedly huge sound system. And finally, I had hung a quake t-shirted and stabbed sex doll from the ceiling - this should be a protest against the fact that more and more players turned up at the creativity-dedicated demoparties. Add to that my black dyed hair, which was rightly called by other scenes as "Wischmob", sunglasses and Fila sneakers - a really strange figure. After all, there was a spark between us. A short time later we were in love and found ourselves in a long-distance and weekend relationship. At the third "Underground Conference" we appeared as a couple and have remained so ever since.

My first trade fair appearances and the dot-com bubble

Erster Messestand - Systems 2000 in MünchenAt that time, the "Dot Com Bubble" was in the process of bloating. Suddenly, Internet companies were totally hip. For the first time, nerds were no longer perceived as mere outsiders, but for the first time it was recognized in the beginning that they might have been in the process of reshaping the future of humanity. With my chat system I am exhibiting at several computer fairs during these years, among them the Systems in Munich, the Internet World in Berlin. I was supported by two good friends from Bingen. They are still my closest friends and they also work for Viprinet.

I had found my great love, I was successful and respected in the demoscene, and business was pretty good. Life was good. I organized further editions of the Underground Conference, as well as other demos and tools. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, it hardly affected me at all - an investor who entered my company shortly before the bubble burst went bankrupt, but we were allowed to keep the invested money. My biggest expense item was a dedicated line with 2 MBit/s, at that time an insane speed - but also incredibly expensive.

The train is coming, fourth act

Fahrgäste Simon steuert Zug At that time, my father fulfilled a dream that was absolutely equal to my madness: he bought an old rail car from Esslingen from the 1950s together with a sidecar and founded a railway company - the "Rheinhessische Eisenbahn"(Rhine-Hessian Railway). The aim was to offer excursions on the railway line from Bingen to the Hunsrück mountains, which had been shut down for a long time. This was not an easy goal, because Deutsche Bahn tried to prevent this by every means possible - legally speaking, it should not have allowed the track to deteriorate, but would have been legally obliged to maintain it. But even my father was not reluctant to have a good quarrel and brought Deutsche Bahn to its knees in court. And so indeed some of the special trips took place, and our whole family helped us. Within this framework, I took the train driver's examination at my father's company and was now allowed to drive the railcar myself. The whole thing culminated in a completely crazy adventure - the hack train.

HacktrainA well known member of the German hacker community - Enno Lenze - came up with the idea that it would be a great thing to have a special train to the annual hacker congress "Chaos Communication Congress" in Berlin. After he had collected cancellations from all accessible railway companies, he posted in Usenet (a forum system related to FidoNet, which already existed on the internet before the WWW), whether someone had an idea how to realize the whole thing. I read this post again and contacted them. I suggested to carry out the tour with our Esslingen railcar. A completely insane plan was created:

On the second Christmas holiday in 2002, a train full of hackers was supposed to travel from Mainz via the Ruhr area and Hanover to Berlin on an 18-hour journey - and three days later return to Berlin. And all this with a 50-year-old railcar with a top speed of 80 km/h and two Hobbylok drivers (my father and I). But everyone involved was at least as enthusiastic as crazy, and that's how we did it. The age of the train was contrasted with a considerable willingness to innovate. And so there were things that the Deutsche Bahn did not exist until 10 years later, or until today. First of all there was a sophisticated booking system, where you could choose your seat in a graphical overview and also see which other hackers were sitting around you. There was an interactive jukebox system where you could upload your own songs, and then all the passengers could vote online which songs would be played next. Only Internet access was not yet available - unfortunately I had invented the necessary technology only 4 years later....
Hacktrain

The journey itself was not without problems - 50 years earlier, the railcar had not been designed neither for such a long distance nor for such a target audience. We had to carry diesel barrels in the train, and in between we had to refuel the train with them. The power generators, which had to supply the necessary juice for all the technology brought along, were also not completely maintenance-free. The biggest problem, however, was that the heater did not work properly in the rear sidecar. So the heating had to be done with laptop waste heat. Fortunately, the participants were enthusiastic about it and for them, the journey was also part of the goal. As a train driver, my father and I came close to our limits - non-train drivers always massively underestimate how much uninterrupted continuous concentration means driving a fully manned train. All in all, it was another experience that enriched my life incredibly and I wouldn't want to miss it.

One size bigger, please: Breakpoint

Breakpoint HalleIn 2002, the organizers of the demoparty, which at that time was the largest German and meanwhile the second most important demoparty in the world with more than 500 participants, disagreed and announced that the party, which has been taking place since 1996, would not be continued. For the demoscene this was a super-GAU. Although I had only experience in organizing my small Unterground Conference with less than 100 participants, I got in touch with the organizers and offered to set up a follow-up party. The offer was accepted and parts of the previous organisation team changed into my leadership. While the party had taken place in the far north, it was now moved to Bingen - otherwise it would not have been possible for me. For the first edition of this new party "Breakpoint" I had rented a former Bundeswehr depot on a hill above quite adventurous paths. As with my first organized UC, the weather made me forget about it. In the unheated hall it drew like pike soup, the rented gigantic fan heaters had no chance, although they burned thousands of liters of fuel oil (and thus my money) over the weekend. The party got the nickname "Freezepoint", but it was still a success. As with the UC, I had reduced the commercial aspects and made the party "rougher". So meadows were part of the party and there was a big campfire. That was very well received. So the party was still a success.

From 2003 to 2010 I hosted the party every year, and it grew from year to year and was optimized under every aspect. In 2009, for the first time we were in a situation where we could hardly think of anything better to do. With 1100 participants and a budget of over 50,000 euros, the event had become a huge financial risk. 

The further history of Breakpoint can be found at Wikipedia and in more detail on the Breakpoint Website nachlesen.

I invent broadband bundling and found Viprinet

Back to business: DSL was born in 2005. This was too slow and unreliable compared to the upstream leased line, but much cheaper. I therefore invented a technique to interconnect several of these lines. All in all, this would give me more bandwidth and lower costs than stand rental. Together with my team at Computerman and other demosceners I developed it further and implemented it as a hardware router. The funding for this came from friends and demosceners. Viprinet was born. This is described in more detail under Business.

The construction of Viprinet parallel to the huge annual event Breakpoint kept me on my toes, and I was working at full capacity both nervously and financially. In 2006 I also decided to host another Underground Conference, because many of the scenes and myself missed this anarchistic and "raw" demo party. And so I sat there and satirized my own big demoparty, which with its sponsors like Intel and Nvidia as well as the attention of the press had become a little bit commercial and mainstream in the meantime.

Life at the limit and enemies for life

Simon Kissel auf der Breakpoint-Bühne

Reverberation

All my life I have been analysing myself, talking to myself, and trying to actively change myself. If you start as an autistic social phobia, this is simply necessary to find a good place in society. After the shareholder war was halfway over, it was time for intense self-criticism. As in my school days, I did not pay enough attention to the feelings of my co-partners. If I had reacted less mercilessly, analytically and directly, many conflicts would have been significantly defused. Perhaps even the escalation to a shareholder war could have been prevented somehow, apart from giving up the option of letting me and my friends and family destroy the company I had built up. I realized that I could have a better life if I made fewer enemies by paying more attention to my business partners' sensitivities and that other people, unlike me, were not driven and controlled by logic. Since then I have intensified my efforts to become a better and more socially responsible person. I begin to understand how other people work, what drives them. Instead of identifying weaknesses as I used to do in the past, I now take into account the vulnerabilities of other people.

I feel terrorized

As far as Mr W. is concerned, these findings are of course too late. Unfortunately, however, the attacks of my former co-partner, which were probably driven by vindictive desires, did not end. I had managed to save the company from him and keep him away from my friends, partners and family. But privately, he was able to continue firing against me and did so with the large law firm he hired from old pipes. To this day, he persistently covered me with lawsuits and criminal charges, in many cases freely inventing accusations. In particular, the abuse of criminal law was a very convenient way for him:"It doesn't take much time to file a criminal complaint. To defend oneself against these false suspicions, on the other hand, is. It is generally thought that you don't have to prove your innocence as an accused person if you want to prevent a trial (in which innocence would be investigated), you have to do it after all. In addition, Mr. W. tried to prevent me from reporting the story on the internet and on my homepage with a very large number of complaints. The somewhat provincial District Court of Mainz let him rule over it, and indeed, despite all the fundamental rights that were trampled underfoot, banned me from making both true allegations and expressing opinions. At the same time, however, Mr. W. ran a rush page on which he drew over me. It came down to the fact that I was put in a bad light in public and was not even allowed to defend myself with a counterstatement of my view of things on my own homepage. I couldn't put up with that. He was not held accountable for what Mr. W. did to my company, my employees and my family, and I had to accept that laws are not the same for all people. But I didn't want to see my economic existence and reputation destroyed, so I was forced to defend myself. There was hardly any time left for a private life.

Although I was still active in the demoscene, I was primarily responsible for providing the internet connection for every demo party with Viprinet technology that took place in Germany as well as some international demoparties and acted as a sponsor. However, these activities were only half-private. For years, I had virtually no time left for a private life.

When terror becomes everyday life

After a certain rhythm of "Mr. W. ceases to file criminal charges, I invalidate the accusations, the public prosecutor's office ceases to investigate, Mr. W. lodges a complaint against it, the public prosecutor's office examines and also ceases to investigate", and Mr. W. ceases. Even with his private suits I didn't succeed in a decisive destruction blow, I had arranged myself with these circumstances to such an extent that I was no longer nervously walking on my gums. As far as I could take the liberty, I began to travel more with my partner and to get relaxation and compensation for the stress caused by defending myself against the attacks of my former partner and the parallel management of my now quite large company. I also hoped that if I would just sit out the attacks and not start a counter-attack, Mr. W. might lose interest at some point and return to his own life and business. After he had let the original GERES Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, which was centrally located in his group of companies, go bankrupt, and after all that you could read on the internet, there should have been more urgent tasks in his life than revenge on me.

Getting it off my chest (in front of an audience, obviously)

Fuckup Night FrankfurtAs early as 2012, a rough manuscript circulated within the company on the adventurous story. At the time I heard more often that the material was suitable for filming, but I didn't follow it any further. In fact, however, I found ways to process the history and the traumas suffered: On the one hand there is this website here (respectively its forerunner, which Mr. W. had censored by way of legal action and erased from the Google index), on the other hand there are lectures in the context of the "FuckUp Nights". The FuckUp Nights are a global movement born in Mexico in 2012 to spread the word that failure and resurrection is not a shame, but a virtue. In the course of short presentations, entrepreneurs report on how they built up rubbish and then get back on their feet. Especially in Germany, a country where one is branded with a terrible stigma after an insolvency, there was and still is a great need for such clarification. My best friend was a leading member of the organisation team of the first FuckUp Night in Frankfurt, which took place at the beginning of 2015. When she asked me if I was interested in telling my story there, I immediately agreed. It was liberating to be able to share the experienced suffering with an audience that hung on my lips. As a result, I held a comparable lecture in the middle of 2015 at the Innovation Forum at Villa Bosch in Heidelberg. Once again, the topic was so well received there that I was invited by the University of Heidelberg in the autumn of this year to tell my story again in front of the full house. When I was in South Africa for the Viprinet roadshow in 2016, I told the story at a Johannesburg University. And in the fall of 2016 I returned to Frankfurt with another aspect of the story. In front of more than 1,000 spectators I was able to convey the problems I had suffered in life by having, as a nerd, all my analytical and logical observations and conclusions in people's faces all my life, and how I learned from them.

Mr W. just does not stop

After Mr W. had once again filed another extremely disgusting criminal complaint against me, aimed below the belt - and pulled to my hair - I decided at the end of 2016 that I would no longer allow myself to be disparaged. Even though I would rather start my spare time with so many things, I have decided to put my energy back into it and take the money in my hands to put a stop to Mr W. at last, and to give me peace. I have also not escaped the fact that Mr W. has built up further hostilities. One reads of threatened environmentalists and cheating wind power investors. If the victims of Mr W. join forces, perhaps it will still be possible to take Mr W. to the place where, according to my sense of justice, he should have been sitting for years: to prison.

Viprinet has grown up

Im Silicon Valley After having had to make a few significant corrections to Viprinet's course in 2015 and the associated tough cuts in management, I managed to solve many of the company's problems in the course of 2016. Above all, I managed to build up and strengthen a management team in such a way that everything no longer has to wander over my boss's table. This is also important to me personally, because I gained an important insight about a year ago: I don't really enjoy the operational management of larger groups of people, and if you look at my life story, you wouldn't necessarily assume that this could be my calling. What fulfills me in my work is analyzing and inventing, developing strategies and recognizing future opportunities. On the other hand, if you have to manage 50 employees, you can become a zookeeper just as well - communication problems, emotions and sensitivities are always at stake. Bureaucracy comes with a certain size of company. It matured in me the realization that there was actually only one reason why I had become the operative boss and clung to it: My traits of a control freak. So I had to change this property, and the key to giving up control is trust. After the assembled management team had been "round" for me since the beginning of 2016, I started to hand over responsibility and decision-making authority to it step by step. With this I create a little free space and air for myself to breathe.

Back to the future

My aim for the near future is to slowly withdraw from the operating business of Viprinet. For the first time in my life, I now voluntarily give up power and control. As soon as I am no longer required for the operative management of day-to-day business, I want to become more creative and inventive again. I also want to have a more personal life with more time for my friends, family and the demoscene. At Viprinet, of course, I want to continue to create meaning and strategy for Viprinet and help with the analysis and alignment, and I also want to continue to be in the spotlight as a front man, so that it benefits the company (my ego is no longer dependent on it). At the same time, however, I also want to launch some of my new inventions in the form of start-ups and finally implement my plans for the Bingen Innovation Park. So I don't think it's going to be boring.

Interim conclusion

When I think of where I started as a child - as a socially intolerable and isolated nerd, completely alien to man, I can be satisfied with where I am today. I consider myself to be a good person, whose aim is to make at least a tiny contribution to the advancement of humanity in its development. Of course, I wish myself luck, and I've also worked hard for it. I was able to remain true to my roots as a nerd despite my commercial success. Where I have changed, these are useful changes from which I and others have benefited. I didn't have to sell my soul to anyone or anything.

If I continue to work on myself and optimize myself, I can achieve even greater things. I'm pretty sure I'll succeed. My ego will see to it that you learn about it. :)
"I can't remember any great wisdom from my mouth. Whether it's my mouth or my brain who's to blame, I can't say, no, I can't figure." -- Simon Kissel