Writing
Notes on strategy, architecture & the messy middle.
Long-form thinking on data & AI strategy, enterprise architecture, domain-driven design, and the broadcast world I grew up in. Some pieces are in German.
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Security by Design for Analytics Platforms: What Changes When Your Users Face State-Level Threats
Most security reviews of an analytics platform ask what happens if the data leaks — fines, headlines, an awkward quarter. For some organizations the sharper question is what happens to their users, because reading or sharing the wrong content can put a person in prison. Here is how that changes the architecture, pattern by pattern.
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Meet Once, Not Twice: Think Your Data and AI Organization Together
Most companies run their data initiative and their AI initiative as two separate projects — each with its own roadmap, and each booking its own meetings with Security, Legal, and Enterprise Architecture. That duplication is where the time goes. Here is the case for one organization, one governance table, and answering the hard questions once.
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Beyond EBUCorePlus: Why Leaner Ontologies and Data Autonomy Win the Streaming War
For broadcasters, the streaming war is won on speed — and the biggest brake on speed is the hunt for one perfect, universal data model. I argue the opposite: lean domain ownership, data products, and a minimal central ontology that governs the joins between systems, not every last attribute.
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Web App “Lyrics to Morse Code and MIDI Generator”
A side project from my life as a bass player: a web app that turns any text into Morse code and exports it as MIDI, so you can hide lyrics inside the rhythm of an instrumental track. I first wrote it in Python ten years ago and recently rebuilt it in the browser to try out AI-assisted coding.
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Digital Sovereignty for CIOs: From a Vague Fear to a Board-Ready Decision
“How dependent are we, really, on US cloud providers — and what should we do about it?” It’s a fair question and a hard one, because a dependency on its own is not a risk. Risk only arises in context. Here is how Enterprise Architecture turns that question into something a board can decide.
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CIO-Fragestellungen zur digitalen Souveränität – Mit Enterprise Architektur geopolitische Risiken meistern
Wie souverän ist Ihre IT wirklich — und was folgt daraus? In einem Artikel für den INNOQ-Blog zeige ich, wie Enterprise Architektur hilft, das Risiko aus der Nutzung von US-Cloud-Diensten strukturiert zu bewerten und daraus konkrete Handlungsoptionen abzuleiten.
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Warum das Öffentlich-Rechtliche Fernsehen heute so wichtig ist
Werbefinanzierte Plattformen belohnen zugespitzte Positionen und lassen uns die Gesellschaft gespaltener wahrnehmen, als sie ist. Der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk hat den gegenteiligen Auftrag — Horizonte zu erweitern, statt Aufmerksamkeit zu verkaufen. Warum das für die Demokratie so wertvoll ist — und wie er seine Reichweite in den sozialen Medien ausbauen müsste.
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Doing the Right Things — with Enterprise Architecture
For an IT initiative to succeed, a lot has to line up: the company’s goals have to be known, and out of everything that could be done you have to pick the few things that are feasible and best support those goals. This is what Enterprise Architecture is for — and here is how it works, phase by phase.
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How to Actually Land an AI Strategy
An AI strategy rarely fails on the technology. It fails on the organization around it — no clear mandate, no link to company goals, no way to show what the work was worth. Here is a five-step approach that puts those things first.
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INNOQ Podcast “Enterprise Architektur”
A new INNOQ podcast episode (in German) in which Anja Kammer and I talk about what Enterprise Architecture is really for. The short version: EAs don’t hand decisions down from an ivory tower — they help everyone else make well-informed ones. Be accessible, be friendly, help others grow.
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A Company Is Organized Conflict
Often everything is planned well — the organization and the technology alike — and still nothing moves. Usually the reason is not a bad plan. It is that the people involved have not been understood well enough to want the same thing. Here is how I try to change that.
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Migrate P5 Archive Server to the Cloud
A practical walkthrough of moving an on-premises Archiware P5 Archive server — one that archives media to S3 storage like WASABI — to a new home in the cloud. I cover the setup we started from, the migration to S3, and the bandwidth and latency traps that made the move harder than expected.
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INNOQ Podcast “Alles zu kompliziert”
A new INNOQ podcast episode (in German) with Sven Johann, Jörg Müller and me on unintended complexity — why technical solutions get more complicated than they need to be, when that starts to hurt, and what you can do about it.
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Taking Decisions
We’re quick to call other people’s choices bad — but often we’re just judging them by our own yardstick. This piece breaks decision-making into the steps that happen long before you pick an option: purpose, timing, stakeholders, requirements. A structured way to make better decisions — and to understand the ones you disagree with.
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What is a Domain and Why Should I Care?
Everyone in an agile transformation talks about “domains,” yet no two colleagues seem to mean the same thing. Using a box of Lego as an analogy, I show that a domain is just a chosen grouping — and the right way to draw the boundaries depends entirely on what you’re trying to achieve. Define the purpose first, then the domains.
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What does an Enterprise Architect do?
The job title means wildly different things to different people. So here’s my take on what Enterprise Architects really do: help a company navigate change — reducing cost, untangling the organization, and shaping where technology should go — plus how Enterprise, Domain and Solution Architects differ, and when it’s actually worth hiring one.