Some people retire and plant a garden. I started writing books.
That is perhaps less surprising than it sounds — once you know what came before.
A Life in Systems
For decades, I thought in systems. Studied electronics and computer science in the eighties, when computers still filled entire rooms and software was written on punch cards. Then the industry: code, architectures, teams. At some point the leap into self-employment — companies built, led, sold. Learned that a business plan rarely survives what the market does to it. And that leadership has less to do with knowledge than with the ability to endure uncertainty.
But between the meeting rooms and screens, there was always another life.
Altitude
As an officer in the mountain grenadiers, in the high Alps. As a radio amateur on the airwaves, since I was eighteen. As a dive instructor underwater, since the eighties. And then, somewhere in the nineties, flying.
Not in a Cessna. Not as a passenger.
I built an ultralight aircraft. With my own hands, in a workshop, rivet by rivet. Anyone who has experienced a machine they assembled themselves lifting off for the first time understands why engineers sleep badly and still cannot stop.
And then my son and I flew it to Africa. Video
Over the Alps, along the coast, across the Mediterranean, through desert dust and tropical thunderstorms. In an aircraft that weighs less than a small car. No autopilot, no pressurised cabin, no safety net except your own skill and trust in the construction.
There are experiences that cannot be packed into anecdotes. They need more space. They need a book.
Why Books, Why Now
Some people say they write because they must. That is too dramatic for me. I write because I have learned that the best stories are not found in meeting minutes. They live in the moments between — when the engine sounds different over the Sahara, when a business partner admits after twenty years that he was bluffing, when your own son falls asleep in the cockpit beside you because he trusts you.
Three books are taking shape. About entrepreneurship, about technology, about what happens when systems meet people.
And This Blog?
Books are finished buildings. They stand when you read them. But a blog is a workshop. It is allowed to smell of sawdust here. Ideas emerge before they fit into a book — or even if they never do.
I will write here about:
- Adventures — from the ultralight flight to Africa to the quiet dramas of entrepreneurship
- Technology — what still fascinates me after forty years and what concerns me today
- The craft of writing — how an engineer learns to build sentences instead of software
- Behind the scenes of my books
No promises about frequency. No content plan. Just what is worth writing down.
Welcome.