Sophos Community Member Spotlight: QC

I would like to introduce Christian, who has been helping out Sophos users (and employees!) for almost 8 years with ~6700 posts to date. Christian has been part of the IT industry since the 1970's and has a very interesting timeline of his involvement, which I will let him detail below. He has recently topped 4 category leaderboards (Sophos Home, Endpoint Security and Control, Free Tools and Server Protection) in the Community which demonstrates the broad amount of knowledge he has. Please get to know him below.

How did you get involved in the IT industry?

My first contact with IT was Pascal programming with punched cards back in the late 1970s. I was then an assembler on a prototype image processing unit, PL/I first on a "mini" computer, then on an IBM/370. I was also a system programmer on the 370 and its successors (last one a 3090) for almost 20 years. When the mainframe faded away I became manager of the desktop provisioning and general IT-support group. I started working with PCs in the late 1980s, DOS, then first Windows versions, OS/2, Windows NT, XP and so on, no courses or certificates though. I have some knowledge of Windows Server, Mac OS X, Linux and have been administrating Sophos (Endpoint enterprise license) since 2004. At work I'm generally a pragmatic generalist. Though like all generalizations this one too is wrong.

What is your approach to the Community?

I'm not here to show off, just to share some of the few things I know. Actually it's me who benefits the most from it - I've learned quite a lot while composing, testing, or (re-)searching for answers. I have an independent Community persona, occasionally some quirks show through and I alienate someone. For example, I don't like to give straight answers when I have the feeling that the question isn't the right one. In other words, I'd like to verify the strategy before giving tactical advice. I didn't have the chance to apologize the last time I made someone angry. He deleted the thread before I could excuse myself. There's room for improvement on my side.

What are your interests/hobbies outside of work?

My interests are rather unimposing, a common characteristic of generalists. I like to play on words, volleyball, skiing and having some beers with old friends. Recently I've taken up photography again after decades of abstinence.

Bob | Sophos Community Manager