Meet Johannes - our member of the month in November!
Introduction round: Who are you and where are you from?
My name is Johannes Boyne, I’m the Director IT at Crowd IP GmbH and originally from Münster, Germany.
I’ve studied Business Informatics and previous to Crowd IP I’ve worked for several other companies including one of my own.
In my spare time I’m a sports enthusiast, movie junky and nerd. As I really enjoy wakeboarding and running during the summer season I also love to snowboard and squash while snow and cold is around. But as sporty I’m as nerdy I'm too, computer science is still an obsession of mine especially distributed, scaleable systems on cloud infrastructure.
What made you come to Berlin?
Actually my girlfriend, who moved to Berlin three years ago. I commuted a lot between Münster and Berlin - nearly each weekend - and thus it was just a matter of time for me to follow. Obviously Berlin is a pulsating metropolis making it possible to experience all sorts of things.
What exactly do you do? What's in the pipeline for the near future?
As said I’m the Director IT at Crowd IP which I’ll describe in a minute, but first let me introduce the company, Crowd IP.
Crowd IP transforms the patent and innovation industry by providing a platform called CrowdPatent, which is the world's first platform connecting inventors, investors and innovators.
It is the first platform in the alternative investment sector that permits investors to directly invest into inventions, patent applications and patents. This presents an entirely new asset class in which investors can purchase so-called InventionShares. This allows investors to secure direct interests in revenues when Intellectual Property rights are monetized.
We cooperate with research institutions, universities, startups, individual inventors, and small and mid-sized companies to permit early identification of inventions with high marketing potential.
CrowdPatent acquires these inventions and offers them online as investment opportunities. By issuing InventionShares, a capital pool is generated, which is mostly used for the application, maintenance, protection, and/or granting of Intellectual Property rights.
I have to emphasize that we’re not comparable to so called patent-trolls because we do not plan to sue anyone. We collect unused Intellectual Property (IP) providing this to our industry partners and enable innovation. This is called technology transfer.
As Director IT I manage our internal and external software. Like the online platform which will get a new version in the next one or two weeks. Besides software and cloud-configuration management, I plan and shape our business processes and take part in the business strategy decisions.
Before CrowdPatent I’ve helped to develop and build the business around the product VirtualTwins®, worked as a software engineer and consultant and did some technical reviews (e.g. for the book Node Security), wrote some chapters in the books Adobe Flex 4 (and it’s predecessor, both by Simon Widjaja) and eventually wrote my thesis with the topic "Evaluating Hadoop Distributions: Towards an Enterprise Guide“.
Since when do you cowork at Office Club?
We moved from our office in Charlottenburg to Office Club in September.
What is the benefit of using a coworking space for you?
Being around interesting people from different professions is probably the most important factor.
Which questions / problems could you help your coworking neighbour with?
I do love to chat about software engineering, cloud computing, infrastructure and IT security.
Furthermore, as CrowdPatent helps startups and individuals to protect their intellectual property everyone is more than welcome to ask questions around this topic! Especially for startups we offer a special solution, as we can finance their patent protection through our investment platform, granting the startup an exclusive usage right for three years and afterwards the right of preemption to buy back the patent for a previously defined amount.
Do you have favourite spots in Berlin? Something to recommend / consider especially for people coming here?
Of course, places like Mauerpark or similar are great spots but in the summer I do prefer everything around the river Spree or one of the several lakes around Berlin.
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Thanks a lot and all the best to you!