Wed 18 November 2015 by Laura Gaetano
Introducing the Captain of the Data Blizzard
Today we'll start to introduce our team members, starting with our Captain of
the Data Blizzard: Dražen Lučanin. Dražen is one of the co-founders of
CloudFleet and was born and raised in Zagreb, Croatia.
Dražen was always around computers, from playing games as a kid to his computer science studies. "I've been hacking together servers and Raspberry Pis for myself and others in my household for years. I'm looking to take what I've learned so far and enable others to have similar systems without investing that much time."
He studied computer science in Zagreb before moving to Vienna to work as a research assistant and pursue his PhD at the Vienna University of Technology. He also completed several smaller research/development projects for the University of Vienna and Ruđer Bošković Institute.
The Responsibilities of a Captain
His main responsibility lies in making sure that it is easy to order and set up a CloudFleet device and that all backend services work. He also developed the system that makes sure that all communication with the device and data on it is encrypted. "Through my research, development work and involvement with open source projects, I have learned what it takes to build dependable distributed systems."
When asked about what motivates him to work on a project that aims to give people more privacy, he mentions the right to communicate without unwanted eavesdropping. "We take it for granted in the face-to-face context and I think that other media, like the web, should be no different." He's convinced that our technological advances make it possible to achieve both privacy and ease of use. "With CloudFleet, we do the hard work for you."
Off The Helm
His creative side extends beyond the work he does for CloudFleet. He's been an avid guitar player since he was eight, where his journey started with heavy metal and ventured later into the territory of classic rock and rock. "I have a band called Nehaj that's currently mostly operating 'in the cloud' due to our geographical dispersion." He's still waiting for some killer web service that will allow them to continue playing together despite the distance.
To rest his eyes from the screen he likes drawing. "I do this webcomic in Croatian called Epic Adventure about a band of slightly incompetent characters trying to be epic heroes now and then."
To stay healthy, he cycles around town and enjoys skiing, hiking and swimming.
More from the Captain
If you want to read what Dražen has to say you can follow his blog where he documents random hacks or his Twitter account @metakermit.