Martin

Martin is an IT expert and resident smartass. But don’t be filled by the quips: he takes his job seriously.

His latest mission seems relatively low-key. Posing as one half of Team ‘Just Married’, his objective is to ensure that Andrej’s technology survives the expedition intact.

But will the proximity to his ‘wife’ Magali and the imminent infatuation complicate matters?

Professionally it shouldn’t be a problem, but on a personal level you can never be too sure.

His humor is as dry as champagne and his enthusiasm as spark(l)ing. Friends appreciate his helpfulness and his sunny soul.

As it happened, Martin took part in WAVE Trophy 2013 as “Team Just Married” with his former wife Magali. He was accompanied by a loyal drone that, at his skillful hands, produced fantastic aerial photos of the expedition – mentions of a “bathroom break” at Albula Pass will get insiders in fits.

Martin’s toy provided various inspiration for the story, just like he himself. Many scenes with him in the novel, including the one with firefighters on the way to Weissensee, are genuine. Being the undisputed IT specialist he is, Martin immediately knew what was going on. But we’ll come to that later.

At home, the IT specialist gets the upper hand of him, especially when it comes to smart energy usage. Think of any device or appliance that can be hacked. It’s quite possible that he’s done some magic to control them automatically, and because he knows that music makes the world go round he’s not even stopping at coupling their featured task with his favorite tracks.

In business, Martin is a graduate economist who’s made a mark in business development at various stations. He advises internationally acting companies in strategic or technical projects on cybercrime, ethics and compliance issues and of course on IT security; particularly in the area of Internet of Things and sustainability.

He also has some tips for private users in store:

Buy a lot of things offline at the shop around the corner. Pay with cash and avoid loyalty programs such as Payback, iGraal, webmiles or other discount or club portals. However, these portals are mainly interested in aggregating data of people who work for big firms and buy or book for entire departments as evaluating this data allows portals to draw conclusions on the travel behavior of their corporate clients.

Turn off the geo-location function when using Google. Check all the privacy settings in Facebook on a regular basis.

When using external WLANs, make sure to connect to the individual sites via an encrypted browser page. If this is not possible, do not use the WLAN. It pays to keep the antivirus program on my home PC up-to-date. Investing in tools like Bitdefender or Kaspersky won’t hurt you as much as a security breach can.

Since 2008, Martin has been out and about electrically. That is, if we ignore the first electric vehicle he built when he was seven. He has gained extensive experience with a variety of models. There’s little that converted cars can challenge him with since the time when windows and radios took on a life of their own.

In 2016 he organizes the northern part of WAVE Trophy, which will start in Bremerhaven, his hometown.

How could he waive that?