5x5 Questions

Antonio Nardella @antonionardella Antonio works at the IOTA Foundation as a community manager, technology consultant, meetup organizer, speaker and leader of the #STODT project. How did you end up with IOTA? I must admit that I came across IOTA quite late. Reading an article in the business paper in South Tyrol, I became aware of Dominik Schiener and IOTA. That‘s when the research and the tinkering with IOTA started. What are you working on at the moment? Currently I am working on some technical “meetup packages“. These are a series of presentations, background information and explanations for starting local and independent IOTA Community meetups from scratch. How do you catch up on news? In the IOTA Foundation‘s internal Slack workspace ;) Apart from that, I use Twitter, several Telegram groups, Reddit, the official Discord or the IOTA Digest app by Rafael Rohden. What do you miss at IOTA? I cannot say that I am really missing anything. Being Italian, I would love to be able to just walk into someone‘s office sometimes and invite them for a coffee. What inspires you most about IOTA? I feel so encouraged by the members of the IOTA Foundation, their vision and their commitment with which they invest into this world-shaking technology every day.

Janna Zielinski @jz_berlin Head of Strategic Projects, IOTA Foundation How did you end up with IOTA? Before I started working with IOTA, I worked as a strategy and digital consultant for three years. Through this job I got to know our IOTA founders during a project at the beginning of 2018. I was thrilled by the innovative capability that both Dominik and David, as well as the team existing at the time, had. What are you working on at the moment? I have various tasks. Among them are acquiring and attending to new industry partners and projects, representing the Foundation at external events, supporting the adoption of the technology by helping to evaluate use and business cases as well as developing new data-driven business models together with internal and external co-workers and partners. How do you catch up on news? At the IOTA Foundation, we manage our information flow mainly on Slack with some topic-oriented channels. Besides that, I follow IOTA on Twitter and LinkedIn. What do you miss at IOTA? We are a completely decentralized organization that offers an innovative workspace with flat hierarchies for over 120 co-workers in more than 23 different countries. The downside of this is that it can lead to increased efforts for communication and coordination at times. What inspires you most about IOTA? For me, the international team and the opportunity to work on disruptive business models with our partners constitute the biggest added value that I get from my work for the Foundation.

Arne Flick @rionord Arne is a digital entrepreneur who runs several digital learning companies in Berlin and Shanghai, namely repeatmobile GmbH and IOT1 Academy. He has entered an exclusive partnership with the IOTA Foundation for IOTA courses. How did you end up with IOTA? In 2016, I organized a status blockchain event for 30 Chinese entrepreneurs, and Regine Haschka-Helmer brought Dom in for an IOTA talk.This awakened my interest in IOTA. What are you working on at the moment? We are currently working on an IOTA onboarding course for managers, which is going to be presented at the IOTA Foundation‘s Xmas Event. We will mainly impart the advantages and benefits of IOTA, including use cases. This is an important course which has stirred worldwide interest already. How do you catch up on news? I use the Discord and Telegram channels and Twitter, but I am also very lucky to have wonderful contacts at the Community and the Foundation. Even in the digital era, personal contacts are crucial for developing new things. What do you miss at IOTA? I think we could use more of the simplest use cases in business environments which demonstrate that IOTA is very well operationally deployable. And of course the Coordicide. ;) What inspires you most about IOTA? How much the Community sticks together and the vibe that it has. This is fantastic and very rare. And of course the great potential of a tecnology that will dwarf everything else, which only a few people will have known from the start. ;)

Hans Moog @hus_qy Hans is a software developer and researcher with the IOTA Foundation. He works on the software that tests the Coordicide solution. How did you end up with IOTA? Before IOTA, I worked in an area using cryptocurrencies for automated micropayments. With the growing popularity and increasing fees, bitcoin beacme too expensive at some point. Looking for alternatives, I came across IOTA and fell in love. What are you working on at the moment? I‘m currently working on goshimmer – a modular IOTA node of the research department, which tries to put the Coordicide concepts (but also topics like sharding, colored coins, reusable addresses etc.) into practice. How do you catch up on news? The crypto field is so short-lived, it gets difficult to stay on top of things all the time. But if someone has a breakthrough somewhere, you usually find out rather quickly via personal contacts. What do you miss at IOTA? I would love IOTA to be a bit more open in their handling of information. For example, we have concrete sharding concepts up our sleeves which will make all the difference between a good DLT and a game changer. What inspires you most about IOTA? The combination of vision and technology! IOTA for me embodies the ideal of a perfect cryptocurrency which connects the right ideals with the right technology.

Thomas Pototschnig @ThomasPototsch1 Thomas is a Linux system administrator who is known for his IOTA hardware, which he makes in his free time. How did you end up with IOTA? Very unspectacularly, through a computer magazine. I was immediately inspired by the concept, because I have known blockchains and their scalability problems since 2011. This is why I never invested in bitcoin, by the way, because I thought, ”This is never going to scale!“ Who could have known that these problems could be delayed for such a long time ;-) What are you working on at the moment? After my Crypto-Core project funded by the Ecosystem finished in August, the task is now to make practical use of this work. This will be done with a Raspberry-Pi HAT used as a development board for the FPGA module, for which there are already some industry customers. How do you catch up on news? I read a lot in the IOTA Discord and on Twitter – but I still miss most of the important things anyway. Big shout-out to vrom, who keeps me updated via Twitter and with the occasional private lesson :-) What do you miss at IOTA? That there is no information about Jinn^^. Hardware developers are especially curious about that. What inspires you most about IOTA? The IOTA Foundation, which has laid very solid foundations, which is absolutely important for IOTA‘s success. And of course the people behind the IOTA Foundation.