Hi, I’m Robin – the new Scrum Master and Team Facilitator at VSHN, where teamwork and self-organization are top priorities.
What immediately impressed me about VSHN was the open, collaborative work environment and the opportunity to combine agile methods with innovative New Work approaches. After many years working in various organizations and projects, where I supported teams in optimizing their processes and fostering self-management, I’ve now landed at VSHN – and it feels just right.
My passion? Communication, coaching, and working with self-organized teams. It’s amazing to see how teams thrive when they are given the space to act autonomously and find their own solutions. My experience with concepts like collegial leadership, New Leadership, and Sociocracy 3.0 has shown me how to foster a true culture of self-organization.
And when I’m not optimizing agile processes, you’ll find me outdoors – often hiking or practicing archery, aiming for new targets.
I’m excited to continue growing at VSHN and to tackle new challenges together with the amazing teams here.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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I’ve joined VSHN as a Product Owner/Product Manager. After almost 10 years in my previous role, I’m very excited about this new challenge! The two main elements that attracted me to VSHN are 1) the opportunity to “own” a product again after enabling customers to build their own for a very long time and 2) the culture.
After my startup days, I identified mid-sized companies with flat to no hierarchies, distributed responsibility and an inspired group of talented individuals as my sweet spot. After a few weeks at VSHN, I can say that my expectations have been fully met! The VSHNeers are a highly skilled and very likeable group and I’m proud to be one of them!
A bit more about me: Professionally, I’ve been doing web-related work for about 25 years. After creating web projects myself, I moved on to conceptualising them, managing projects and marketing all aspects. I’ve worked in agencies, start-ups and a large corporation. I enjoy being at the intersection of people, technology and design, bringing different worlds together.
Privately, I enjoy my family life, various sports and trying to get more in tune with my garden and the plants and animals in it.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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I am excited to join VSHN where I will be helping shape the industry go-to-market for the VSHN platform. Looking at specialized industry vertical use cases for the great suite of products VSHN has built up over the years will help to better showcase many of the great things the team are already doing.
Career wise, I’m a long-time technologist and nerd that has worked for both large and small consultancies across 6 continents (still missing that elusive project in Antarctica) and I have worked with both cloud and cloud native technologies since the early days (before Kubernetes or Docker existed). I’ve also had the pleasure of working with VSHN as a partner in a previous role, and have followed the team as they have grown from strength to strength, so very excited to join and contribute to the company’s journey.
On a more personal note, I’m born in Denmark, and I’m half Danish and half Mexican. After a few other host countries and I’ve now been in Switzerland for over 7 years. My German is finally getting to that stage where I can keep conversations flowing without necessarily being perfect. With High German and later Swiss German, I will reach my 8th and 9th languages, which I’m excited about. Learning languages and cultures is both a passion in my family and also a personal passion, so I don’t plan to stop there. I keep myself busy with various other hobbies, like hiking, reading books or attending meetups. Perhaps I’ll see you at one of the Language or Tech meetups in Zurich, if so, feel free to come and say hello.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hi, I’m Jessica and recently joined VSHN as a Scrum Master and Team Facilitator at Team Polaris.
I grew up in a small Village near Murten. I have moved further and further away from there since then: first I went to Fribourg for my Bachelor in psychology (no worries, fortunately I can’t read thoughts ), followed by Bern for my Master in work- and organizational psychology.
Furthermore, I also had my first employment as an organizational developer at the cantonal informatics department in Bern. As an organizational developer, I was responsible for facilitating management and employees events as well as accompanying the organization through different change phases – for example, establishing agile working structures and methods. After a year in, I got to be part of an agile project where I first took the role as a scrum master and later product owner of a team with the focus on user adoption for Microsoft 365 Apps.
To clean my head after a workday, I design my spare time in diverse ways – there is room for everything from reading books, to traveling with my self-made camper van, to doing sports.
Now I’m in Zurich and very excited to be a part of VSHN, making new experiences and develop myself further.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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I am excited to have just joined VSHN, where I will be leading marketing & PR. I have over 10 years of experience in marketing & technology, and I am very happy to join all of the amazing VSHNeers bringing the Ops to DevOps.
In addition to my day job in the corporate world, I work a lot with technology communities. I have spoken at technology conferences in five different continents (I”m only missing Africa & Antarctica!), for example at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, KubeDay, Microsoft Build & Ignite, and NDC. I have also been a co-organizer of Kubernetes & CNCF Finland meetup since 2017, and have hosted Cloud Native Live, a weekly livestream by CNCF, since 2021. For my work, I have been recognised with the CNCF Ambassador & Azure MVP awards.
I am also hopelessly addicted to comics, movies, reading books, and gaming. If I ever go missing, you will most likely find me from my couch trying to beat an Elden Ring boss fight or endlessly trying to catch all of the Korok seeds in Zelda BotW.
I love meeting new people, so if you ever see me, come and say hi!
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hello everyone! My name is Nick Marti, and I just joined VSHN.
As someone who is just getting started in my professional DevOps journey, I’m thrilled to introduce myself and share a little bit about me and my passions.
I grew up among five siblings at the last stop of Kt. Glarus. I spent half of my childhood in the mountains either on foot, on a bike or on skis/snowboard. The other half was spent building dams, raising frogs and butterflies, as well as exploring mountain streams and ponds for newts and salamanders.
When I wasn’t out exploring, I fell in love with books! What started out with children’s and fantasy books quickly evolved to whatever I could get my hands on. Whether it’s a captivating novel or a helpful technical manual, I find joy in exploring the world of literature. From Donald E. Knuth to Akira Toriyama, I’m always eager to learn new things, and reading has been a great way for me to expand my knowledge and grow as a person.
When it comes to my professional life, during my studies I put the main focus of my elective classes on the world of Cloud Computing, DevOps, and Cloud Native applications. This cumulated in my Bachelor’s Thesis, where I took a deep dive into the optimization of resource allocation in containers on Kubernetes. This further fueled my interest and passion for this field. I’m fascinated by the potential of technology to automate and streamline processes, and I’m eager to learn as much as I can about this exciting field.
While I’m still in the early stages of my career, I’m excited to see where this path takes me. I’m eager to learn from my colleagues and mentor, and to contribute my own unique perspective to the team.
I’m excited to be a part of VSHN as well as Nunki and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Greetings team VSHN! As a DevOps Engineer, I’m thrilled to be part of this incredible team. Allow me to share a little bit about what motivates me!
My life so far has been a cultural potpourri! I’ve lived a pretty diverse life so far, with roots in South Korea, high school memories in New Zealand, and now settled in Canada. This journey has taught me the value of learning from different cultures and people from all walks of life, and I’m excited to bring this mindset to my work at VSHN.
When I’m not knee-deep in code, I’m an avid snowboarder, and fitness enthusiast. There’s nothing like the rush of adrenaline that comes from a good workout or a day on the slopes. And as a newly minted snowboarder, I’m always on the lookout for tips and tricks from the pros 😃
On the professional side of things, I’m passionate about network and security. I love diving into the latest trends and technologies in these fields, and I’m always up for a challenge when it comes to finding innovative solutions to complex problems. Python is also a favorite tool of mine, and I’m always looking for new ways to use it to automate and streamline my work.
When I’m not in work mode or getting my sweat on, I love to immerse myself in the wonders of nature and explore new places. Whether it’s taking in the breathtaking views on a scenic drive with my favorite tunes or getting lost in a captivating documentary or an adrenaline-pumping thriller, I’m always up for an adventure that stimulates my senses and ignites my curiosity. So if you’re looking for a DevOps Engineer who’s just as passionate about exploring the great outdoors as they are about optimizing IT operations, look no further than yours truly!
But above all else, I’m a people person. I value the relationships I form both personally and professionally, and I’m excited to get to know each and every one of you at VSHN. Let’s bring our collective talents together to make amazing things happen and have some fun while we’re at it!
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hello Everyone! My name is Arngard, but Arnie as a nickname is fine too. I joined VSHN to help build the new Customer Support Team.
I grew up on a farm. There, I’ve profoundly learned how to get things done efficiently. I like organizing things, but also like to work hands on. As a young adult, I got to spend time with the CCC Zürich crowd. Ever since, I enjoyed spending time with and listening to all kinds of technically interested and knowledgeable people. Hence, I learned a thing or two on lots of different topics. Sadly, I never got into coding, but I really like the world revolving all around open-source software development.
I started my career as a chef and since moved to customer service 6 years ago. Having gained profound experiences and knowledge in customer support and communications, I am now here to tackle this new challenge with all the wonderful people at VSHN.
Some favourite hobbies and interests of mine include gardening, cooking, reading fantasy and Sci-Fi, watching anime, Gaming and cuddling with my cats. Going to medieval fairs, having board game evenings or grill parties are some of the most appealing activities to get me out and about. I also enjoy hosting and making food for everyone.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hi! I’m Pierre, I’m now part of the Polaris team, as a DevOps engineer. I grew up in France near Grenoble, but my family roots are in Switzerland, and decided to come back to them in 2020.
My background is with Privacy, Infosec and Forensics, but as I found that decent Ops are one of the best tools to improve security, I got sidetracked a bit, and here I am now. I am mostly experienced with Ansible, and most of my previous jobs involved heavy automation of existing infrastructure to reduce incident response time, and sometimes make life easier. I also spent a lot of time maintaining unavoidable legacy, automating and improving reliability as possible. I have been in contact with pretty much all of the important solutions, but I’m looking forward to delve much deeper in some of them, especially K8s.
My hobbies are quite diverse, but here’s a few. As a techie, of course tinkering with a lot of things, but also hiking, skiing, paragliding, everything related to being somewhere in the mountains, usually accompanied by our dog that would prefer to be sleeping somewhere warm. I also spend a lot of time shooting, I used to compete in IPSC, but I’m somewhat out of it lately. I enjoy cooking a lot, and tend to monopolize the kitchen wherever I go.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hoi zemma! I am Patrik (aka blue), and I joined VSHN as a DevOps engineer in team Vega.
I grew up and currently live in Liechtenstein. I love Linux and its philosophy, knowing how things work and what’s happening behind the scenes.
That’s why I have Gentoo as a base system on my computer. It took some time to get a fantastic system, but it was worth it!
Go is my favorite development language, and I love to automate as much as possible. I once wrote a little helper for Microsoft Outlook.
Also, a passion of mine is Cyber Security and CTFs. I’m a trainer of the Cyber Security Liechtenstein Team.
I have four kids, and daily it’s another challenge with fun, issues, and other stuff.
My hobbies are the “5te Session” (Fasnacht) and enjoying snowboarding in winter. In summer, biking or inline skates are fantastic here in Liechtenstein.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hey, I’m Aline. I joined the Aldebaran team (after much deliberation – sorry Vega folks 😉 ) as a DevOps engineer.
I’m a software engineer gone ops, having discovered my interest during my previous employment. After spending some time setting up and maintaining a bespoke Kubernetes environment for a microservices-driven product, I’m now hoping to diversify my knowledge (and find out just how good OpenShift actually is). I’m looking forward to new challenges at VSHN.
My favourite hobby is trying new things, especially if these things allow me to be creative. Most recently I’ve taken up the Ukulele and gotten into sewing. I also play games, both offline and online, but always with friends. Many experiences are so much better when shared!
In that light, I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone at VSHN. Let’s chat sometime, and let me know if you ever want to see copious amounts of cat pictures. 😉
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hey Everyone! My name is Hadar. I joined team Vega as a Product Owner.
I have worked in the Financial sector, and throughout my career, I realized I wanted to switch to Product Management. I’m very excited to join VSHN after gaining experience while volunteering as a Product Manager in the technology team for a human rights NGO. With monetization and social skills in my portfolio, I look forward to contributing to product development.
What else can you expect? Unique desserts, which I bake in my spare time and am happy to share, bouldering & travel stories, DIY projects, playing chess, and dog sitting for dogs over 30 Kg 😉
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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Hi, my name is Liene. Feel free to pronounce it as is easier for you. I respond to almost any version.
I am born and raised in Latvia (that is the middle one of the Baltic countries). Later on I found my way to Liechtenstein, where I completed a masters degree, learned skiing and became an outdoors person. I might be one of the rare people who listens to science podcasts during a run or a workout. Always hungry for knowledge and, well, just hungry.
For about 5 years I have been working as a product owner and project manager in a medical software company. I am excited to change the environment and technology by joining VSHN as a product owner. Together we will reach new heights.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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I’m Mia, and I just joined the Atria team as an Account Manager.
The last four years I’ve been dedicated to my own digital marketing/web design business, and before that, I was working as a key account / customer success / customer service manager at different software development companies. Making customers happy is my jam!
I’m 3/4 “Bärnermeitschi” born and raised in our beautiful capital, with 1/4 Hamburger blood, but I lived in many different places over the years, from Siena, to Berlin, to London.
In my free time I love to walk for hours… whatever this is in the woods near my flat in Kloten, over the golf course, or when exploring new places (I love to travel, and my favorite destination is Hawaii). When I’m not walking around, you’ll probably find me cruising with our 62′ Chrysler Newport.
I’m super excited to now be a part of VSHN & looking forward to my first customer meetings.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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In my previous role as an IT project manager, I was working in a delivery role for a large multinational global role across various industries.
I joined the Antares team as VSHN’s Corporate IT Project Manager and I will be leading projects to implement existing systems and tools for VSHN’s business processes.
As a Dutch National, I grew up in Singapore and studied and worked in England and Scotland and across the European Union including Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands as well as the USA, Canada, and Australia. For the past 12 years, I have made Switzerland my home.
I love to travel, swim, scuba dive, and cook whenever I get the opportunity. I like exploring new cities, countries remote places and I am a passionate hobby photographer. My favorite destination is Queenstown, South Island New Zealand where you find friendly locals good wine, and amazing natural scenery. I have an interest in Blockchain and the latest technologies.
I’m delighted to join VSHN and be a part of the Antares team as a Corporate IT Project Manager and I am looking forward to good collaboration with everyone on the team.
Tom Meng
Tom Meng is Corporate IT Project Manager.
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It’s about time to give all of you a short update on what we at VSHN are working on and where we want to lay our focus in the coming months.
Our open employee handbook grew quite a lot since we started it and we received very positive feedback. There are even companies and friends of VSHN using parts of it for themselves and also for people interested in joining VSHN, it’s a great help before your first interview and to get some insights on how we work as an organization.
At that point, we want to thank every VSHNeer for their contribution to our handbook.
VSHN Canada
After our initial VSHN goes to Canada video and quite a delay due to the pandemic, we are happy to announce that VSHN is finally present in Vancouver, Canada.
The idea behind this is a “follow the sun strategy” to make use of different timezones in order to reduce night shifts for our VSHNeers here in Switzerland.
Matthias Indermühle will lead VSHN Canada and together with Tobias Nehrlich and Sandro Kaspar, 3 experienced VSHNeers will be located in Vancouver in the next months to start operations and hiring there.
The VSHN board has appointed Marco Fretz as additional General Manager. The VSHN management now consists of 3 General Managers (“Geschäftsführer”), namely Marco Fretz (COO), Tobias Brunner (CTO) and Markus Speth (CEO), as well as Matthias Indermühle as Member of the Management of VSHN AG in Switzerland and CEO of VSHN Canada. Formerly, Tobias and Markus shared the CEO role as Co-CEOs, but Tobias wants to focus again more on technical aspects while Markus will focus on the exterior, if you want to know more details how the VSHN management is organized, visit this handbook page. We believe that with this setup, we have the force and experience needed to take VSHN to the next level.
The VSHN board has also appointed an additional board member with Till Bay, CEO of Comerge, an experienced entrepreneur and long time customer of VSHN to strengthen our outside view. The VSHN board now consists of Till Bay, Aarno Aukia, Patrick Mathers and Bruce Mathers as Chairman of the Board.
Kubernetes First Strategy and APPUiO Cloud
Our Kubernetes First Strategy is well on the way and lots of initiatives have been kickstarted recently. One of the already visible products is APPUiO Cloud.
APPUiO Cloud is our Namespace-as-a-Service offering based on Red Hat OpenShift 4, check out our behind the scenes blog post.
APPUiO Cloud has been possible thanks to the incredible experience of the VSHN team and to their investment in tooling.
In particular, Project Syn enabled the automation of many different tasks in APPUiO Cloud. And of course it is all 100% Open Source, as is the APPUiO Cloud Commodore Component.
We also improved our product docs and want to get even better in documenting for our customers and partners.
Outlook: VSHN AppOps and AppFlow
After agreeing on our Key Drivers and Key Deliverables, we figured out that we as VSHN want to focus even more on Cloud Native Software and want to become the trusted Service Provider for companies that need to run software and the best partner for Software Developers and System Engineers to help them in their daily tasks.
You can see a first outlook in our Product Portfolio, namely VSHN AppFlow and VSHN AppOps will be the new cornerstone of VSHN together with VSHN AppCat and the existing and already well-know APPUiO product suite.
All of this implies a certain change in our organization and team structure, which will follow in the coming months. With this move, we want to focus even more on running our customers’ applications and organize VSHN’s different business units to deliver value end-to-end most effectively. In doing so, our main goal will be to have as few dependencies as possible between our teams and to find the best way to further develop the required expertise in all areas of VSHN, both for our customers and for the continuous personal development of our VSHNeers.
VSHNtower offices in Zurich
In terms of home office vs. office, we have a strong new addition to actually go to the office. It’s called VSHNtower and it’s our newest office space in Neugasse 6 on the top floor.
It used to be Kuoni’s (the travel company) executive board room and we now use it as common room, for events, meetups or to just have a beautiful view over our home town, Zurich.
Grüezi! My name is Oksana Horobinska or in short ‘KG’. From an early age, I was fascinated by computer games, and it was an easy decision to go and study CS.
Code writing is not my core strength, but after being in sales and digital marketing for more than ten years, I certainly appreciate automation and smoothly running operations across platforms and industries. For the last five years, I have been helping mainly financial and IT companies to achieve positive business outcomes using sales and marketing techniques.
I have lived and worked in Cyprus, Israel, England, and now Switzerland, apart from my homeland Ukraine. I love sports and outdoor activities OR discovering new technologies and places.
I’m delighted to join VSHN and be a part of the SOL team as a Business Development Specialist.
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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My name is Sabrina, and I joined team Antares in People Operation and Finance Administration.
In my previous job, I was a supervisor of administration over two business locations. Through this position, I was able to gain a lot of experience in various activities in the administration and the HR area. I am very excited to extend and deepen my knowledge in many areas at VSHN now.
My husband and I run a small organic farm on the side. So, I spend most of my free time on our farm or with our animals. Since the job and our farm keep me on my toes, I like to spend the rest of my free time with family and friends or participate in our village life.
I am looking forward to meeting you all in person and working alongside you.
Sabrina
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
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My name is Colin and I’m glad to join the Sirius team as a DevOps Engineer.
After my information technology apprenticeship focusing on “system and network technology” I went through various positions as Network/Security Engineering, Linux Engineering, and DevOps Engineering. In the past few years, I was mainly working on Kubernetes relation topics.
If I need a break from the computer I like to spend time outdoors doing sports – if the weather is not too bad 🙂
Since I have known VSHN for several years I’m now even happier to be a VSHNeer.
Aarno Aukia
Aarno is Co-Founder of VSHN AG and provides technical enthusiasm as a Service as CTO.
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