Coming Home

Hello world!

A couple of weeks ago, I released an article which had the following headline:

 

Staying open is staying true

Why I left the corporate world, to join the corporate world

 

(you can find the article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/staying-open-true-christopher-branston/)

Today I would like to write about how joining Cloudical wasn’t really like re-joining the corporate world, but it was an awesome form of “coming home”.

 

Leading away from my 7-year engagement at SUSE and speaking with so many recruiters, C-Level execs, hiring managers and other professionals involved in the hiring process I quickly came to a realization:

Most of these people would tell me out of the gate, that we will change the world, that we would make lives better, that the respective product or service will basically re-write our history, present and even the future.

This was really confusing, as I have been in the industry quite some time now and the last time my feelings got hurt, or I received bad news, computers and data bases didn’t come to support me, or wipe away my tears.

The essence here is: “We will change the world… If you do what we say and live the happy little life, that marketing strategized about so much!”

 

And then there was this one guy. Karsten Samaschke. CEO of Cloudical, freedom fighter and awesome human being! What he offered was:

  • Blood, sweat and tears
  • Perfect imperfection
  • The right to be myself

 

First, this left me a bit confused, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Humans aren’t like they display themselves on Instagram. Humans aren’t perfect beings. Being a human is tricky. It’s a challenge and a trip of ups, downs, happiness and sadness flowing into each other. I can try and brute-force a mindset or lifestyle on to people, and with that abolish individuality, or I can use the diversity and wide range of experiences to create great teams that support each other on the way to success. People matter and we are the people

We, the people. We have passions, we have dreams, we have fears, and we have individual challenges. But the most natural form of growing, especially through the challenges, is to connect with others; in communities. Because first and foremost communities deliver a sense of belonging and with that a safe space, to be yourself and grow and create with other like-minded humans. It is this critical mass of people who couldn’t be more different, but believe in the same cause, that leverage the power of diversity to create holistic views and with that, actually start changing the world. It’s perfectly imperfect: The open ethos matters

And finally, the open ethos, which is omnipresent in openSource projects and communities, is a mindset, a way of thinking and working. It will never be a product. It will never be slogan or tagline and it surely will never be the capitalist´s tool, to infiltrate us as humans and our ways of being, thinking and living. This is especially important, with being in the consulting business now, because our customers come to us with individual problems, that need individual solutions. I don’t have SKUs, I don’t have shiny boxshots and I surely won’t try to change the world via my price list!

I have highly passionate, creative and skilled people around me, that I can bring together to collaborate and find tailor made solutions to your challenges. Because here at Cloudcial it’s not the quarterly business review we are working towards, but at the heart of all we do stands your success. Because Customers matter

 

CloudNative.

By Design.

By Approach.

By Mindset.

 

We are changing Mindset and the way IT is thought of and executed.

 

Christopher Branston