WHOIS …? Lea Wieditz

What’s your name & what techie cliché is totally true for you?

Hi! My name is Lea Wieditz and the techie clichés that I fulfill are …

0. That I have a rubber duck in my office which comes in handy for really complex problems and

1. That you can barely recognize my work pc beneath the many layers of stickers.

What is your role at BurdaForward?

I currently work as a Technology Innovation Portfolio Manager in the central cloud infrastructure team at BurdaForward.

What do you do as Portfolio Manager?

As a portfolio manager, it is my job to be a trend scout regarding new cloud trends (e.g., Multicloud), lead projects to align modern technologies with our company’s needs and ensure happiness all over BurdaForward with these technologies.

What is the job of your team at BurdaForward?

Think of BurdaForward like a tree. Our digital content and news articles? Those are the visible branches and fruits. But my team – we're the roots underground. We create the infrastructure that supports everything you see. Just like roots feed and stabilize a tree, our cloud infrastructure enables every digital service, every webpage, every piece of content to flourish. It's a field that's sometimes overlooked, but I love working in tech infrastructure. It's literally the foundation that makes everything technical possible in our company.

When & Why did you start to work in tech?

I started my career in tech by studying it. For me, tech has always been fascinating – like when I was a small kid watching my dad work on his computer, writing his own programs for his PDA running Windows Pocket PC (Look it up! I could only describe these devices as a nearly pre-historic ancestor of smartphones). But in my opinion, tech was never properly taught in school, so I was thrilled to find a dual study program where I could enrich a classic university degree with an apprenticeship. And that’s where I really fell in love with the tech sector.

What is your favorite part about working in tech?

I personally get more excited about working with the people in tech than actually writing code or configuring infrastructure. Bridging the gap between business and technology, driving tech teams to success, and ultimately giving techies a voice is what really matters to me.

What is your “tech superpower”?

I was told I can explain even the most niche tech topic to non-techies in a way that they can truly understand. 

And how did you use it recently? 

My favorite example is a presentation I gave at our internal tech conference called Burda. Product. Tech. about cloud cost optimization. It was crucial that both our developers and their managers understood its importance, so that maintenance and cost optimization tasks would be prioritized – instead of just pushing new features. To make it clearer, I compared different cloud instance types to various pieces of cutlery to highlight the impact of selecting the right cloud resources: Imagine trying to eat soup with a fork (and why a "spork" might not be the most efficient tool for every meal).

What advice would you like to give techies out there?

Whatever you do: Find the fun in it. 

… also don’t neglect maintenance work, please ?

Did you find any nice tool/software/technology/… recently that you would like to share?

• To reduce maintenance overhead, I can recommend Renovate Bot. An OpenSource CLI tool that automatically updates software dependencies. You can check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/renovatebot
• I love creating tech presentations that are fun to look at. My current favorite tool is Pixilart for making 8bit-graphics: https://www.pixilart.com/ It's a fantastic way to add some retro charm to presentations.

Can we find out more about you on social platforms (LinkedIn, GitHub, Tech Blogs, Link to an article on our post…)?

Sure, you can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lea-wieditz/

Any famous last words?

Support the OpenSource community!

Don’t know where to start? Here are some great resources:

• For Coding Newbies: https://www.firsttimersonly.com/
• Checklist for OpenSource contributions: https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/#a-checklist-before-you-contribute
• Still looking for projects to contribute to? https://www.codetriage.com/