fkr - exploration is key to excellence

The one with a look into the rearview mirror

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This summer brought a big change for me. After more than 4 1/2 years as an employee with the OSBA, I’m joining Adfinis. On August 10th I started as thcountry managerer for Adfinis Germany. There is a press release by Adfinis on it. I will elaborate on this in a separate post.

Leaving the OSBA was not an easy decision. The past years have been a blast, and I got the chance to move numerous things into the right direction - for SCS, but also overall for the OSBA., likewise I had the chance to make lots of friends through our work, while also having the continous possibility to learn and grow. Today marks my official last day, so a good day to push out this post. ;)

From an idea…

The first time I heard about the idea that would later become the Sovereign Cloud Stack project was in an OSBA Board meeting. Our chairman, Peter Ganten brought the idea to the table, and I still remember how thrilled I was to hear about it. Back then I was still with gridscale. Initially I accompanied the early steps through my volunteer work serving on the extended Board of Directors at the OSBA until I decided that I wanted to play a full-time role in this endeavor. I applied for the role of product owner for the Infrastructure as a Service and Operation part. Alongside Kurt Garloff, Dirk Loßack, Manuela Urban, Eduard Itrich, and Bianca Hollery-Pfister, we took the next steps until further people joined and the team grew to its final size of 14 (Dominik Pataky, Max Wolfs, Alexander Diab, Nadja Schieber, Marc Schöchlin, Friederike Zelke, Artem Goncharov, Regina Metz).

…to something real and relevant

Over the course of three years, we built up an awesome commuity, and welcomed companies to the ranks of the early adopters just as much as various contributors. That we built something to last became even more clear when we approached the final year of the funding project and were looking into sustaining the future of the Sovereign Cloud Stack. Thanks to the 14 founding members of the Forum SCS-Standards, we were able to pull that off, and I had the joy and fun to lead the Forum SCS-Standards from January 2025 on.

In June 2025 Lisa Seifert and Marvin Frommhold joined the team of the Forum SCS-Standards, and together with the many people engaged from our community, we were able to make excellent progress on our ambitious roadmap and assure that the idea of the Forum SCS-Standards was prolonged. We established the Certifications - quiet an important item, since in SCS we always talked about ‘certifiable Standards’. In September 2025, we certified SCS-compatible IaaS cloud offerings as well as Integrators - seven months later, we certified SCS-compatible KaaS already! The whole road to KaaS-certification was only possible because of the cool teamwork within our community.

I’m very proud of what we as a community and in the various teams have achieved over the past years. Even more, I’m genuinely grateful for the support we’ve seen from the various companies in the ecosystem, the members of the OSBA, the executive board of directors of the OSBA, the speakers of the Forum Janis Kemper and Ralph Dehner and many individuals just as much as other important initiatives such as ALASCA. Thanks to this, the Forum is striving and has grown to 20 companies supporting the idea of the Sovereign Cloud Stack Stand.

ECO:DIGIT

Another important part of the last years was the ECO:DIGIT Project. In November 2024 it became clear that I would take over the role leading the OSBA-part of this project until the defined end in May 2026. There have been numerous publications on our efforts with ECO:DIGIT, so I will not go into any technical depth here.

Both projects had in common that I was able to do what I really enjoy: connect people, pave the way, and make sure there is the best environment for others to strive to excel whilst having loads of fun :)

The one with the former Bundestag

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

In September 2026 I joined the SINA Anwendertag by Secunet since I was invited to give a talk on Sovereign Cloud Stack. The event happened on September 9th in Bonn and September 15th in Berlin. In Bonn the event location was the former Bundestag. This was quite an impressive location to give a talk at. The talk itself was together with Peter Rost on the importance of Interoperability for Cloud Infrastructure. As part of this, I gave a-20 minute overviof on our work with the SCS Project.

We gave the same talk a week later at the Berleditionion of the SINA Anwendertag. Thtime it’sime “just” at a hotel, but as one can see from the pictures showing us stage,e - we’ve had fun (and I do thnk, we got our message across as well ;)

For the slides please check this post.

SINA Anwendertag 2026 - "Vortrag - Der Sovereign Cloud Stack als Element der D-Stack-konformen Verwaltungs-Multi-Cloud"

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Beim SINA Anwendertag 2026 (am 9. September in Bonn und am 15. September in Berlin) habe ich zusammen mit Peter Rost den Vortrag “Der Sovereign Cloud Stack als Element der D-Stack-konformen Verwaltungs-Multi-Cloud” gehalten. Im Rahmen des Vortrags habe ich in 20 Minuten einen Überblick zu unserer Arbeit bei SCS gegeben.

Die Folien von meinem Teil des Vortrags gibt es hier.

Ein paar Fotos gibt es in diesem Post.

Transfer-Dialog Bremen - "Keynote - Digitale Souveränität - Unabhängigkeit als Wettbewerbsvorteil"

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Beim zweiten Transfer-Dialog des Starthaus Bremen, welcher unter dem Motto “Handlungsfähigkeit in unsicheren Zeiten” stattfand,habeb ich zum Start der Veranstaltung eine Keynote halten dürfen. Titel der Keynote war: Digitale Souveränität: Unabhängigkeit als Wettbewerbsvorteil.

LinkedIn-Post vom Starthaus im Nachgang.

Die Folien von meinem Teil des Vortrags gibt es hier.

FOSDEM 2026, some Univention Summit and Building Europe's Public Digital Infrastructure

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

FOSDEM 2026 is already more than a week old, currently tons of stuff going on. Like every year FOSDEM was a blast. Before heading to FOSDEM another “like every year”-experience was on: Univention Summit. It was the 18th Univention Summit and once again increased in size of attendees. The UV Summit switch to a two day programm (in the past the second day was not really conference programm, but workshops). Together with Jutta Horstmann (CO-CEO Heinlein Group / WG Public Affairs OSBA), Dirk Gernhardt (City of Munich), Dr. Martin Hagen (City of Bremen), Leonhard Kugler (ZenDiS) and I were part of a panel on the “Deutschland-Stack” on the second day and I represented the SCS views in the round. See this post.

For many years, I referred to the Univention Summit as the “New Years Reception of the german open source business scene”. This I need to revise. For once, it is not only the “german” (or for that matter DACH) region anymore. Some talks and even the panel on the first day were in english (and the whole event was live translated iinto english) - BUT it has become a hotspot for all and everything “digital sovereign” (in a positiv sense).

At FOSDEM we (SCS) organized the Devroom “Building Europe’s Public Digital Infrastructure” together with the ZenDiS. This was the second year that we did a joint devroom and it was a blast. A short roundup can be found on LinkedIn. We’ve had excellent talks in the room. You should watch all of them. If you can only watch one of them, watch this.

What I find mind boggling: The topic of Digital Sovereignty is so often still seen only under the aspects of current geo politics. While this of course makes the giant dependence on US companies and technology visible the striving for digital sovereignty is about so much more. This episode of the Cloud Cast is a good example for the - imho - short comings of the discussion.

Principles matter or on the importance of a mission statement

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Through some conversations in the last few weeks, it became important to me to write a few sentences on principles. While often people differentiate between work and private life, I’m in the camp that when it comes to certain things there is no business or work side of things. It is the same person that acts, and I’m always acting within the context of the person that I am. Just as with purpose, I hold it with the following quote of Henry Rollins:

No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go.

My set of principles has accompanied me for a long time already. From very early on we had a “No Bullshit Policy” at the first company (bytemine GmbH) I founded. The “No Bullshit Policy” was to make sure, that we’re always transparent and honest to our customers. For our customers it meant, that they could trust our statements - even if we made mistakes. For the people working at bytemine it meant a healthy culture and psychological safety.

About ten years ago I wrote them down for the first time. I actually do have a copy in my wallet as well as on my desk. They serve well in difficult decision-making, as small reminders in daily life or reminding me to stick to them no matter how hard it seems. Since I wrote them down for the first time they’ve seen some small refinements in wording and additions (for example, when my son was born). In the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey (personally, I find it is a terrible title for the book. Since the title can be interpreted as some kind of “highly optimize your life”-bullshit, which the book definitely is not!) principles or mission statements are considered a flight corridor that airplanes have. When an commercial airplanes travels from London to New York, it has a fairly definite course, but within this course (the flight corridor) it moves a bit left and right / up and down. The original variant is in German. The wording is on purpose, straightforward, and simple.

I am committed

I am an idealist

I have time

I smile

I create added value

I live sustainably and economically

I live consciously

I am well-read

I am confident

I understand before I form an opinion

I see my fellow human beings as a whole and not just their actions

I have my own opinion and stand up for it

I am reliable and honest

I am a loving father and husband

I make time for my family

I am respectful and appreciative

I am grateful

I am open to feedback and listen

I don’t do things to please others, I do them right

I am aware of the consequences of my actions

The talk that Rosanna Sibora gave in the “Building Europe’s Public Digital Infrastructure” devroom at FOSDEM 2026 reminded me, that it is an important time right now to be verbose on these topics. It is a good time to talk more publically about the importance of having a backbone.

Univention Summit 2026 - "Panel - Anforderungen an den Deutschland Stack"

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Im Rahmen des Univention Summit 2026 habe ich den Sovereign Cloud Stack bei der Panel-Diskussion “Anforderungen an den Deutschland Stack” vertreten.

Aufzeichnung auf Youtube

Alternativer Download des Videos (ohne youtube)

Keeping things simple - even if introducing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Every now and then situations require a slim way of introducing documented processes to assure reproduceable outcomes and to achieve a certain quality. Yes - this is a discipline for which there are tons of frameworks, even more books and you can hire highly certified consultants ;) If the scope is to assist your team with its growth, it might be enough to just keep it very simple and just give a little guidance. A client of mine asked me last year to write them a small framework to get started with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). I’ve worked with SOPs a lot in the past and at one point we even aligned an ISO 27001 process along well defined SOPs. Yet, in its most basic ways all that is needed are simple, well-defined templates and some examples.

Simple SOP framework

I’ve assembled a very simple set of templates with some examples. Those are available in english and german. The work is MIT licensed.

Repository: https://git.sr.ht/~fkr/sop.

You can easily throw it in the wiki of your choice or just directly work within a git repository with it.

However when working with this and the client, I wanted to make it even more accessable. Accessable for people who don’t want to fiddle with git AND at the same time have it in the best accessable way for the tech-savy people in the team (eg. in a git repository).

Gollum-SOP

Gollum is a git-based Wiki. Gollum-SOP is an opinionated setup of Gollum in order to provide a lean and simple way of documenting Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

Gollum-SOP bundles gollum-auth with a custom patch to make it working with Gollum version 6. Furthermore some custom additions are added through config.ru.

To get started, you place a clone of the SOP repository as wiki into the Gollum-SOP checkout before starting it. Gollum-SOP comes with a dockerfile to get easily started.

2026 - CW 03 - The one that really kicked of the year 2026

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

This was the first complete work week of 2027 for me. Last week we had our (from within the OSBA ECO:DIGIT Team) green coding workshop with the BMKUKN and University of applied science of Bremerhaven. A comprehensive summary in german by the HS Bremerhaven is available here.

Listening this week

The latest episode of the Oxide and Friends, Engineering Rigor in deh LLM Age podcast discusses the use of LLMs in software engineering / software development. And aside from all the hype and loads of bullshit around that topic, one can’t deny that there are relevant use-cases and scenarios. This episode highlights that and very much resonated with me. Definitly worthwhile listening. Their predictions episode with the 1, 3 and 6 year predictions is also worthwhile.

Podcast-listening wise this week the Software Engineering Radio episode on Modern CLIs with Eric Schaefer was also worth listening too.

SCS in the D-Stack

On Friday, January 16th, a fairly big news items (relating to my work) became public: The first summary of the consultation for the D-Stack was published: Gesamtbild and in the section of Managed Services und Cloud it states:

There are currently no specific standards for managed services. However, it is specified that
[…]
Standards from the German Administration Cloud (“Deutsche Verwaltungscloud” == DVC), OpenStack, and Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) must be complied with.

We’ll see how much this means in reality, however I much rather have SCS being referenced here than not. Obiviously we bring a lot to the table and combined with the input of others this can be leveraged to a really good next level. I’d really like to see how we can jointly work on bringing the “Detailstandards der DVC” with the SCS-Standards closer together. Especially if one looks at the DS 44, DS54 and DS 54 one sees how they complement the SCS Standards for KaaS.

FOSDEM upcoming

The schedule for the Building Europe’s Public Digital Infrastructure devroom is nicely filled with lots of interesting talks. We (the SCS Community) are organizing this jointly with the ZenDiS. As every year, I’m really looking forward to FOSDEM. Afterwards I will be heading to Ghent for CfgMgmgtCamp.

Currently reading

I finally started reading the much appraised “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. Had this on my list for ages. Around christmas I started listening to the audio version of “Empires of AI” by Karen Hao. Am about half way trough and so far it has been interesting.

Hero Kids or how my son discovers the joy of pen & paper RPG

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Since my (almost) seven-year-old son has enjoyed listening to stories that I make up on the run while giving him choices on how to continue the story, I started considering introducing him to the world of pen-and-paper roleplaying games. While at 39C3 there were RPG sessions for kids (without any specific ruleset). We did not attend those, but afterward I started researching which ruleset would be appropriate.

Hero Kids

I quickly came across Hero Kids - which appealed to me since the content has been translated to various languages, including German (our mother tongue). While I feel comfortable to also translate on the fly, this does make things a tad easier. The intro page to the game is here. Hero Kinds has been created by Justin Halliday.

Everything is available through DriveThruRPG and there are several bundles available.

First Steps

The rule book comes with a first adventure, and the rule book has some predefined characters. While we were going over the pre-defined characters, exactly what I hoped for happened: “Can I create my own character?” my son asked. Wohooo - of course: let’s go!

Hero Kids is targeted at kids between the ages of 4 and 10. Especially if you like improvising. and creating your own style in Hero Kids is fun, since it easily lets you adapt stuff.

We played the initial adventure, ‘Basement O Rats’ and it became clear that he was hooked on the game.

Monster Compendium

The Monster Compendium comes with many printable figures, and my son really likes “building” (cutting them out and gluing them to a cardboard foot) with me. Together with the Brecken Vale Gazetteer these are perfect resources for extending the games.

Fire in Rivenshore

The next adventure we played was Fire in Rivenshore which actually features not only a good story about helping and making some though decisions but also a moral dilemma. It was interesting to see how my son approached that. So far we’ve only played among us two - next step is to assemble a small group with his friends and see how that works out. :)

I’m now off preparing the next adventure for us to dive in!