Don't worry. This will not be my formal CV. Instead I'll provide you with an overview of who I am, what I've done so far and what I'm interested in.

Before I start to speak, here is what others are saying about me. (All recommendations are publicly available through my LinkedIn profile.)

Brian Galvin, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Nuance Communications, Inc.
"Ralf is an extremely gifted and visionary developer. He was essential to the success of his last two companies, and we considered him personally to be a strategic partner of Genesys. Ralf is also a well-read, enthusiastic explorer of ideas and experiences, and he easily builds rapport with all whom he meets. He is very strong in customer-facing situations, and he is equally adept at 'delivering the goods' - a great engineering leader!"

Elliot Danziger, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Genesys Telecommunications, Inc.
“I have known and worked with Ralf for many years and have found him to be exceptional in many areas. He has a unique blend of detailed technical knowledge combined with a strong business intuition. His drive and enthusiasm are infectious and he adds a degree of excitement to those around him. He is also a strong team leader and business manager that can drive toward achieving the goals of even aggressive business plans. I would strongly recommend Ralf as a key executive for companies that want to drive leading edge technology forward.”

Dr. Helmut Reisinger, Senior Vice President (SVP) at Orange Business Services
“Excellent professional with hi-level seniority in all domains of call/contact center and voice application matters. Trustworthy.”

Monique Bozeman, Senior Manager Product Marketing at Genesys Telecommunications, Inc.
“Ralf has worked with Genesys both as a customer and partner, not that those two are ever mutually exclusive. His technical and market knowledge, expertise and ability to use, improve upon and create and effectively demonstrate market leading, user friendly products is impressive.”

James Stuart, UK General Manager at twenty4help Knowledge Service AG
“[...] I remember Ralf very well indeed from when we were both in twenty4help. Our working relationship was relatively brief... but it had a significant impact on me. I found Ralf to be knowledgeable, helpful and with a high level of integrity - and if I recall correctly, he ate all the biscuits from my office. I am so pleased Ralf is being recognized for his obvious talents and skills. This just shows there is justice in the world. Well done Ralf. One day we will meet up again. I look forward to it. My very best regards. James Stuart.”

Next, this is what the "about us" page at my current company used to say about me (unfortunately during a recent redesign, the management team got cut out entirely...):

After university Rottmann started his professional career at Warner Brothers Recreation Enterprises for 18 months as the Head of the Animatronics Engineering Group (AEG) in Los Angeles. He came back to join RTL Television as a Production Lead. Prior to joining VoicInt Telecommunications GmbH, Rottmann was Head of IT Strategy with twenty4help Knowledge Service AG, a leading provider of technical outsourcing services in EMEA, overseeing a multi-national, multi-vendor complex voice infrastructure. He ran twenty4help's IT department comprising 40 staff members spread across eleven countries.

Rottmann is a well known speaker at major voice events, has had several keynotes at G-Force, and moderates the German Voice Community’s Strategy Forum.

Now you know the condensed version! ;-)

Let my try to put the things with my own words without the usual marketing ingredients:

Friends, partners and fellows who know me consider myself as being very much entrepreneurial. I do love to create and grow stuff. I'm not good at routine tasks. In fact I set up my first own business while I was still in university. This was in the late 80's and it's been a small company which was offering computer aided light design for musicals, shows and larger events. We managed to grew our small shop to eight staff members when I happened to get in touch with somebody working for Warner Brothers in the United States.

One thing lead to the other and I got a job offer to help extending the Animatronics Engineering Group for WB. The AEG guys used to do the computer stuff behind the robots used in such movies as Jurassic Park, Gremlins and many many others. Today most of this is achieved by computer generated images (CGI) but back at that time many effects were actually built using a combination of micro mechanics and computer programs written in languages you've rarely ever heard before. The WB engagement not only offered me my first leading role while I was in fact still pretty young, it also made me live in the US for almost 18 months. When Warner Brothers decided to open a Warner Brothers MovieWorld - this is their theme park brand - in Germany they were seeking for engineers which were willing to speak German and to live in Germany for a while. Well, as a native German this was my ticket back to Germany while remaining employed by WB. So finally I helped building Warner Brothers MovieWorld and stayed with the company until shortly after its Grand Opening.

My next step was to join RTL Television as a Production Lead which somehow made me stay in the world of media but on the other hand introduced a full new world to me, again. RTL Television is Germany's first private broadcasting station and back in the 90's was considered very innovative. Many of the concepts and broadcasting formats we are now used to were introduced in Germany by RTL. The downside of working in the Television production space is that you have almost no private life. As an example we were producing popular daily talk shows. This meant to start at 8.00 in the morning and produce until 23.00 in the nights - and this was the regular schedule. At the point where this had ruined my private relationship and I no longer got any birthday party events from any friends, I decided to look for another job - one which would not necessarily mean less work but better working times.

At that time 1&1 - a large Web hosting company - had started its outsourcing business. They were planning to expand the operation of their daughter company - twenty4help - from a purely German operation to EMEA wide coverage. When I joined twenty4help they had 113 employees. When I left twenty4help seven years later, we were counting 2.500+. I've been in charge for the entire IT infrastructure from deciding on architecture up to purchasing hardware, software and services. At the time of me leaving the company in 2004 I had a team of 40+ great talents in infrastructure, technical support, systems, architecture end engineering.

In 2004 I've co-founded VoicInt Telecommunications GmbH, a software technology vendor start-up which drives managed services based communications solutions. As with many start-ups most management team members do have titles primarily to fill in the white space of their business cards. My current official title is Vice President Strategy & Business Development. This means I'm defining VoicInt's technology and product strategy and make sure it gets executed appropriately. On top of this I'm running Sales. VoicInt is doing fine and we managed to win a couple of Fortune 500 companies as our customers. We have some great ideas in mind and I'm looking forward to further expand VoicInt's operation.

I recently acquired the majority of shares of Talentgroup, another German start-up which focuses on building visually astonishing user interface for enterprise software applications and Rich Internet Applications. While I'm not involved into Talentgroup's day-to-day business I leverage my business network to help them to grow. I also consult the great team at Talentgroup whenever they ask for my advice. Talentgroup helps me staying at the edge of application architecture and technologies and from time to time forces me to open up Visual Studio or Eclipse to experiment with code. (Which after all I still love to do.)

Based on this busy career I always managed to improve how to lead great teams to produce great results while at the same time I never stopped learning. I've always followed the paradigm that even when you're required to macro-manage, you should own the skills and competence to understand exactly what you're talking about. That said, I've got a solid understanding of the following technologies:

- J2EE and JEE
- .NET, Silverlight and - specifically - Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
- iPhone Development and the iPhone SDK
- Enterprise Architecture
- Enterprise Contact Center and Communications Systems

As you might imagine I've given technology related speeches on various panels, events and trade fairs in either German or English. The largest international audience I've ever spoken in front of has been a group of 10.000 people (for Bertelsmann during Expo 2000).

You can also find me at XING, LinkedIn, Facebook and at ASMALLWORLD.

While I'm pretty busy with VoicInt, Talentgroup, my blog and my friends & family I'm always open for creative ideas, concepts or a challenge where you believe I could add value. Feel free to contact me at any time. You can find my PGP Public Keys here.