I finished my studies at the faculty of telecommunications and informatics of the Technical University of Budapest in 1992. Thanks to a scholarship I could take part in a telecommunication research project at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in Germany, where at the same time I wrote my diploma work. As a fresh graduate in electrical engineering I started to work at Program and System Engineering (PSE), a software developer company of Siemens AG Austria. At that time I didn’t really perceive how an exciting and challenging world I could start to explore. After working almost a decade in the software development in various positions like developer, team leader, project leader and later line manager of an organizational unit I have faced several times the difficulties of project-, quality- and line management issues. This personal experience triggered me to find ways how to make use of the experiences of individuals and teams in a multinational and multicultural environment. That’s why I joined at end of the 90’s the so called “Support Center Project Experience” within Siemens (at that time led by Mr. Gerhard Ackermann) where I could gain a lot of experiences as a co-facilitator in holding retrospectives, learning moderation and facilitation techniques. Nowadays as a quality manager of a software developer company I have not only the possibility but the responsibility on one hand to offer and use formal methods for preserving the valuable lessons learned from the successes and failures of our projects, on the other hand to improve corporate departmental and project team performances.

Although I have never been a real sportsman but I like traveling around the world, skiing, mountain trekking and gardening. As a father of 2 small children - who are of course for me and my wife the smartest babies in the world - I practically have no additional free time for pleasure and hobbies. We live in a family house in the suburb of Budapest and this is the only one place where I can release and find some relaxing peace. Since my childhood I have been the type who always tried and could get along with almost everyone in his environment to reach success. This helped me a lot as a facilitator in many situations and it took me some time to accept that even conflicts can be fruitful to see the chance of change and improvement.

Some topics I am interested in this year:

• What are the newest good (or best) practices and trends in the retrospective community?
• What are the experiences with virtual retrospectives (distributed teams)? Which tools and methodical settings turned out to be really successful?
• What are the facilitators’ risks and opportunities in challenging times?
• How can facilitators best support in a more “number-oriented” business environment?