I've been traveling my entire life. My parents took us kids on trips to the U.S. and across Germany to visit relatives starting when we were just a couple of years old. Since I've been earning money on my own, I've been spending more and more of it on the one thing I think gives you most value: Traveling. In 2015, I went once around the globe for the first time. I write about my trips on Facebook.
This mixes very well with the first, doesn't it? Preparing for a trip means not only booking the flight or buying the train ticket, checking if I need accomodation and my passport; but also thinking about which lenses I want to pack (although the best camera is just whatever one you happen to have with you!). I upload my pictures to my photoblog called Dialog.
I started out teaching myself how to code on my dad's IBM, and earned a surplus to my pocket money by solving math problems for him in code. I've kept that up over all the years, learned new programming languages, to love and hate parts of it; and still regularly spend time coding, mostly for the fun of it! I publish some of the stuff I do on GitHub: @thekid on GitHub
In my job at 1&1 in Karlsruhe, where I've been since 1999, I lead a great team of people devoted to creating internal tools. I've initiated some and supported other great ideas coming from the crew like "Campus" presentations once a week, tec conferences, our own "Innovation Week". Participation is key to making all these work, and is a key to the New Work initiative Augenhöhe Karlsruhe, which I contribute to.
With all that said, one of my core beliefs is that simpler is better: Whether it's the piece of code, the organizational process or the product you're designing — if it's complicated, it's probably going to suck. I believe in lean and agile principles and tweet about that (amongst other things) as @timmfriebe on Twitter