Hi Mark, member of the month in December!

Quick introduction: Who are you? Where are you from? And why?
I'm Mark from Reading, England. I moved to Berlin with my German fiancée from London, to start a new life and escape the insane house-prices.

What are you working on right now?
I work remotely as the Director of Engineering at Struq, an online ad-personalisation company, based in London and New York. We're a technology company that uses data to target personalised ads towards users based on their browsing behaviour, and work with some of the biggest retailers in the world (EasyJet, Hugo Boss, Nike to name a few).[nbsp]

What's your background? What's in the pipeline for the future?
I'm a software engineer by trade. I studied Computing at Imperial College London (with a year in Karlsruhe) and, after a year out teaching English in China, have done that ever since. At the moment I'm the only Struq employee in Berlin, but who knows - one day we might build an engineering team out here :-)

Since when do you cowork at Office Club?
Since August 2013.

What is the benefit of using a coworking space for you?
For me it's better to have an office to work in, rather than just work from home, but Coworking offers the flexibility to have both. I often travel back to the UK for work, so the flexible payment systems suits me too.

Which questions / problems could you help your coworking neighbour with?
I generally have my head down and headphones on, but if not, I guess software questions, particularly in C# or Java.

Do you have favourite spots in Berlin?
I'm still discovering new things every week, but I guess everyone loves their own "Kiez", so I'd have to go with Gleimkiez. I love Kohlenquelle and Omoni on Kopenhagener Strasse. Further afield, I think Tempelhofer Feld is just an amazing place, and there's a great restaurant on a boat on the Mueggelspree near Mueggelsee called Spreearche which is a nice option in summer. In general, I'm not all that fussy. If a place sells Augustiner Pilsener, I'll probably like it.


Thanks a lot - and have a good rest-of-2013!