High-End audio is a passion of mine. So, after building worlds best speakers for several years in Estelon, we decided with engineers to move forward and create also worlds best amplifiers!

Technology should empower and inspire people, not define them. So we founded an entity at EKA what is focusing on how AI and data sciences should liberate and make us better beings. We are going to operate at the borderline between art, humanity and technology and EKA has it all, so it is a perfect starting point for cracking some of the problems we are facing today and closing the feedback loop between humans and technology.

Alfred & Partners is better known by the trademark Estelon. One of the most prominent speaker manufacturers in the high-end audio market worldwide and recently decorated with CES Innovation Award for the latest and greatest 'Extreme' model.

For getting comfortable with Asian culture and customs, Indonesia is a perfect place to start from. At the country where almost 50% of the workforce is considered to be part of "Informal Economy", its a world of contrasts. You can find self-employed people doing incredible walk-by uBGA repair jobs on the small market booths stuffed with very high-tech equipoment and spare parts for almost any mobile phone there is. You can find project managers who make you wonder, how is it possible that they have ever gotten that far without knowing anything about how to use excel nor planning. But most importantly, you will find lot of kind people with heartfelt attitude, appreciating a good laugh every now and then.

One of the promises I have given to myself is to never loose my skills as a professional embedded electronics engineer! Partially because mastering a craft gives one independence, partially because gadgets and electronics is my passion. So it happens, that throughout the higher- and lower profile desk jobs I have had an opportunity to work on many interesting projects consisting of real bits and pieces! Startup Electric OÜ was founded to provide electronics and product design services for startup companies. This is the sort of angel investment venture, except that the support provided is not a financial backing, but services I can provide. The sort of thing what classically has happened in the "garage"! And I do have a workshop what would easily pass for a garage in Silicon Valley, recently also featured in Wired Magazine! :) http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_uvb76/all/1

The e-government affairs in Estonia have been often taken as an example by others. As one of a front-runners for innovative governance, the next big thing to embrace is the Cloud Computing, OpenData services and the "citizen-generated public service" originating from these technologies. So, this is what I am blueprinting on a daily basis for the State Information Systems Department!

The term initially coined by Apple, Evangelist is probably the coolest title one can get awarded in technology field! :)The job of the Technology Evangelist is often described as "the salesman who does not sell, but makes a customer willing to buy!". I guess that may be true!Imperative to evangelist is the passion for technology, knowing his technology by heart and willingness to stand up and speak for this technology.

The dot-com bubble was starting to form some time around 1997-1998. Around the same time, US tech companies realized, that with a little education on engineering procedures and some lessons in US English, Easter European engineers can work magic when brought to Silicon Valley. So it happened, that at the peak of the bubble, a small Estonian engineering company found itself providing a design services at the Palo Alto and a little condo at California St., Mountain View, was a regular second home for all of us. We were working on the novel system-on-a-chip design, what meant to bring the whole embedded Linux world to a new heights - me, as a software (architecture, BIOS, operating systems etc.) engineer. So - what can go wrong at the peak of the .COM Linux hype for someone designing the Linux-optimized chip?Well, this can: http://www.secinfo.com/d24sd.11q.htmApparently, the whole IP was outright stolen by one of the leading semiconductor manufacturers of a time!Although the case finally reached a settlement 6 years later and $20M was paid to our customer, it tangled the whole business into the web of lawsuits for years, did cost the business for the founder, did cost business for us in Silicon Valley and for a time it was all over,the chip design was outdated, the .COM bubble burst and everybody who had anywhere else to go, left Silicon Valley for couple of years to come. Highly educational, although terribly expensive exercise. And as it seems, the ripples of the aftermath are still propagating ..http://www.agentsofamerica.org/article_detail.php?id_art=440

Nineties in the post-soviet block of Europe were the times everybody shall envy for times to come. It is not often, that one has an opportunity to do so many things "from scratch" involving infrastructure and services. The banking sector back then was one huge playground for the 25-year old CEO-s and 20-year old managers. Out of the initial 15 or so people working for the Estonian Forexbank when I joined the team, about half got married to each-other later on :)So it also happened, that first functional mass-market electronic banking solutions were developed in Estonia - first the Microbanker, a modem-based system (developed by Madis Kaal and Margus Kliimask) in 1994 by Estonian Forexbank (later aquired by Sampo), followed by Internet-based version in 1996 by Hansapank (later aquired by Swedbank).My field of operations was banking cards and cash dispensers back then. The opportunity to contribute in building up a nation-wide cash dispenser (ATM) network also meant, that basically all of the software had to be developed in-house and majority of this was written by myself. The concept of banking card department head spending his days writing an ATM host system in C++ would be quite novel approach today! :)