Hello friends and supporters of ungleich!
We have a very exciting new project to share with you : as some of you might have already read from our German post with an article from Südostschweiz, we are building a new data center in Glarus. (datacenterlight.ch) Data Center Light is an innovation. One, it's a data center without cooling, two, it is incredibly affordable, and three it is in Glarus, Switzerland. Our prototype is already sitting in the downstair of Digital Chalet Schwanden.
And of course, great things one can't do alone, one needs talent and help from like-minded people.
Today's interview is with one of the people who is enabling the data center to run, Kamila. Aside from her impressive personality and good humour (though 80% geeky, but that's a good thing right?) here are some facts about her: Kamila has been the smartest kid everywhere she's been to since she was 3, she worked for Google, she is now doing a master in computer science at ETH Zurich (which happens to be the world's 9th best university, according to THE). Kamila is the kind of person who makes us think that, if we are attracting a person like her to work with us, we must be doing something awesome so we should keep doing it. In a nutshell: Kamila is awesome. Let's read her interview!
What is your name and where do you come from?
My name is Kamila and I’m from Slovakia.
Tell us about your hometown, what it is like.
I come from Bratislava. I grew up in the “wrong” part of the city, which is the one covered in the communist buildings. So basically we live like rabbits..! (laugh) But I do like the people there. The other side of the city- the old town-is actually pretty though.
How long have you been in Switzerland, and what brought you here?
I came to the Switzerland half a year ago to do an internship at Google Switzerland. I did 2 internships there, and then I decided to stay for ETH.
What’s studying computer science at ETH like?
Pain, a lot of it! Oh you don’t have to write that. (laugh)
Hard work, it is much harder than I expected. Sometimes I collaborate with the industry, or the professors do some interesting things too, so in a way I’m forced to learn things I wouldn’t learn on my own. So that’s actually fun.
So what brought somebody like you from Bratislava, doing Internship at Google and studying at ETH to Digital Chalet Schwanden?
I met Nico, the mastermind of Data Center Light, at ETH while doing the master, and I was subconsiously dragged into all this. Nico saw through me that I couldn’t resist if he gives me 5 new servers to play with. And now look what I’m doing : I’m the storage person at Data Center Light.
What is Data Center Light?
It is a very cool new project of ungleich, and we hope it stays cool. Because we are building the datacenter without cooling, that's why we hope it stays cool! So the idea is that we provide low cost hosting for people who want their data to be safe in Switzerland. In mountains, with nice views like here! So in a nutshell we provide affordable Swiss hosting that works.
Can you tell us what you are working on at Data Center Light, and what's cool about it?
I like to think of myself as the reliability person for data center light. Someone who makes sure that things run. So right now I'm working on storage on data center light. We make sure that the data runs fast, and later, I’d like to also focus on monitoring, for the case of something going wrong, we'd know about it and we could do something about it.
What is your impression of canton Glarus?
Pretty! Sunny! Quiet! Compared to basically, everything else. And important : all the 5 people who are living here are friendly!
Did you know about Glarus before coming to Digital Chalet Schwanden?
I knew about the nice mountains, Klöntalersee. I was here for hiking.
And what do you find challenging in the project?
I think of it fun and challenging at the same time. How do we make something reliable enough, while keeping the costs low for example. And how do we make people want to buy this is probably also challenging, although not really my area.
What do you think about the project Digital Glarus?
It is such an interesting idea and I think it has great potential. I’m watching it myself with a lot of curiosity how it develops.
What is your goal in the near future?
Finish studying, that should be interesting enough. Afterwards I’d like to go back to Google, I really liked the internship there. It’s a fun place to work. Basically many things we have to solve again and again, are already solved in Google, so we don't have to do the boring part but we can get right to the interesting things. And after that, who knows? We’ll see.
And last but not least, what is your dream?
Well I have some small, achievable dreams, like being able to play flute well, or getting a pilot license for single engine planes. I’m looking forward to those for fun.
And on another hand, there are dreams I‘d like to achieve but probably won’t happen in my lifetime. Like figuring out what to do with faith. There are different faiths in the world and their differences cause fight and I find it very sad. Because, I think in the end we’re all just trying to do things right. Unimportant things are standing in our way. I would really like to solve this, but it’s hard.
Thanks you for the great answers! It was awesome.
You’re welcome! It was a fun and productive weekend here.