Gamifying & Exploring the world - Meet Martin
He is the latest addition to the TeQflo team in Malmö and his name is Martin Carlsson a true explorer. Born and raised just a few miles outside of Malmö he took the route out in Europe before returning back to his roots and landing at TeQflo, here’s the Martin story for you.
It was the urge for new adventures and further experience that made Martin Carlsson, IT consultant and network specialist, to leave Sweden.
- I just needed a fresh start and was looking for a new challenge, anywhere would do basically. Says, Martin.
Faith or chance brought him to Dublin, Ireland where he put his first step into the IT business…and it was hell.
He had some interest in computers and IT with him from home, growing up he got hooked on online gaming, although he spent many hours gaming it was not without claims from his parents.
- My father used to say, “if you’re going to spend all that time in front of the computer at least do something useful as well, haha”.
So he began to learn the fundamentals of network and computing and became the guy everyone asked for help with their computers and the one everyone relied on when setting up LANs for late night gaming.
But the glance of IT got stained when landing a new job in Dublin, at an IT support call center, with people from all over the world. Although he enjoyed helping people the management wasn’t his cup of tea, too much micromanagement and tyrannical hierarchy.
But Ireland wasn’t all bad, he met the love of his life Jenny and together they set out on a new adventure, next stop was Stavanger in Norway.
After the bitter taste of the IT business, it was time to try something else and Martin took a job as a salesperson, hoping to get experience in the field. And experience he got:
- We had a really crazy manager, probably very inexperienced who every other week tried to motivate us in different, quite bizarre ways.
One week entering the office the loudest and most racket metal music you can imagine was blasting out of the speakers and the boss jumping up on his desk wearing sunglasses and shouting to get the staff pumped up for selling, dangling movie theatre tickets as a sign of the bonus awaiting. Other weeks he could take a completely different approach, being quiet, very serious and harsh. Looking back, that’s probably something you can classify as psychological abuse.
What do you do after an experience like that? Well, Martin came to the conclusion that it was time to move back home and get a degree.
Although still burnt by his experience of IT, his interest remained and thought that with a good education, things might be different.
He studied cloud computing engineering and after finish his education he landed a job as an IT consultant specialized on networking.
- Finally, I enjoyed what I was doing, I loved my work!
But his exploratory mindset made him keep searching and wanting to develop both professionally and as a human. Again faith or chance led him to TeQflo.
Late night he was reading a book on the importance of putting yourself in an environment where you can flourish, and randomly typed “startup Malmö” on Google and just like that he found TeQflo and his next step in his personal development.
- I was impressed by what Henrik (Founder of TeQflo) had accomplished and the vision for TeQflo. I think it’s my curiosity that makes me a perfect fit, I’m enjoying being on this journey, exploring, learning and being a contributing force.
The circle is in some sense closed, one of the first projects Martin got to jump in on was a Gamification project, putting his long hours in front of the computer back in the days to work. He is convinced that the positive mechanisms built into games can have a truly positive effect on the world.
Besides having a great job enjoys working-out (we are all witnesses, he goes for runs nearly every lunch) meditation, reading and of course hanging out with his girlfriend.
So one journey ends and another one begins, we are happy to have Martin along for our trip moving forward!
If you like Martin are looking for the next step on your journey you're more then welcome to connect with us!