The Ferncast Team – An international, friendly and multi-talented team based in Germany
We are all dedicated to answer the specific needs of the end users and to offer the best service 24/7 to our customers.
Let’s start with Detlef Wiese, the co-founder with Hauke Krüger of Ferncast GmbH. Detlef is our innovator and creative head. He supports an iterative approach towards the company’s targets allowing always additional ideas. His passion is the transmission of audio from one location to the other connecting people and emotions. Based on his electro-technique and music study at the University, he spent his research phase at the IRT in Munich. With a clear focus on MPEG Audio and its standardization, he totally held more than 30 patent applications including some recently issued. He is also founder of Binaurics Audio GmbH , a Startup in the field of binaural and immersive audio communications. When he is not fiddling around with a new invention, Detlef is dedicating time to his passion: music. He is a singer-songwriter and he is also playing the piano.
Our top developers from Aachen, Bernd, Thomas, Florian and Christian, are the heart of aixtream. Led by Hauke Krüger they are specialized in digital media signal processing and systems engineering and all of them are skilled experts from Germany’s leading technical universities.
Hauke Krüger, our CTO, studied Electrical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen and received his Dr.-Ing. degree in 2010 on the topic of low delay audio coding. He has been involved in audio signal processing and audio transmission for over 15 years and has published multiple international papers and patents. Hauke loves to spend time with his wife and his 3 children. In summer, he loves catching some waves in the Atlantic Ocean with his huge longboard.
Bernd Geiser, Senior Audio Engineer, studied Electrical Engineering & Information Technology at the RWTH Aachen, receiving the Dr.-Ing. degree in 2012 with contributions to backwards compatible speech and audio coding and standardization. At Ferncast, he is responsible for implementation of audio signal processing algorithms as well as audio transmission systems. Whenever there is a question how to implement a new audio or transmission feature or how to ensure maximum compliance with both industry standards and customer wishes, he usually has the idea. Bernd is very much the family man and so loves spending time with his family. For leisure he also enjoys cooking, hiking andimproving his piano skills – turns out he also works on audio production in another capacity.
 Florian Wickert, Senior Development Engineer, studied Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Computer Engineering at the RWTH Aachen, earning a degree as Master of Science and displaying a truly diverse skill set. For Ferncast he is involved in all forms of software development, from initial design to bug fixing, and is our flexible jack-of-all-trades. In this capacity he is most involved in the software backend running aixtream and plans the general software implementation, but also ensures hardware compatibility. Florian also interacts directly with customers to help and gather feedback, for example for custom software adaptations and to gain a better understanding how to integrate new features into the user interface. Florian has the heart of a globetrotter, he enjoys travelling and outdoors in general, especially if he gets to climb, hike and go canyoning.
Thomas Schlien, Senior Software Engineer, like most of our crew, studied at the RWTH Aachen and recently earned his doctorate in Electrical Engineering there. He is usually taking care of a wide variety of tasks here at Ferncast. Whether implementing new technologies like AES67 and Dante, maintaining and improving our infrastructure or helping the other developers with their projects, Thomas is a versatile handyman who can handle a variety of tasks with professional expertise. He also gets involved with more customer-facing tasks like support, configuration assistance and the conceptualization of customer-specific features, like new Dashboard Widgets. He also acts as one of our hardware specialists, especially for our smaller hardware offerings like the fernReport and fernStudio. His hobbies mirror both his passion for computer hardware and his very own kind of audio production: they include realizing exciting microcontroller projects, but also singing in a choir.
Christian Thierfeld is the newest member of our team coming from the RWTH Aachen, where he studied Electrical Engineering and is soon going to earn his Master of Science in Computer Engineering. For Ferncast his first contributions were in the development of the Customer Service Center and assisting in the front end. He quickly picked up new skills, which is an invaluable talent for our dynamic and agile development. Now he is becoming increasingly involved in future front-end improvements. Aside from the new Customer Service Center, you will soon see his work in GUI updates and refinements, in which he will take a leading role. He has a variety of interests to fill his free time. He plays badminton as well as the piano and recently began learning French.
Apeksha Rahangdale is the youngest member of the development team. She is currently studying Computational Social Systems at the RWTH Aachen and is taking over many tasks in the development of the aixtream front-end. After her bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, she worked a lot in UI/UX design in her past work in India. She will help use refine our UI even further, in order to maintain a cutting-edge front-end design. Since coming to Europe, she developed a passion for bicycling and wants to explore more of the continent whenever possible.
Our Sales & Marketing team, led by Detlef Wiese, is responsible for creating value for our customers and communicating on our innovative audio streaming software solutions. Virginie Danker and Kathya Garcia are bringing their international experience to the team.
Kathya Garcia comes from Mexico, but having lived in eight other countries, she has a multicultural perspective. She is currently studying MSc. Digital Technology Entrepreneurship at Hochschule München and she is working in the Marketing Team. She has experience in project management and enjoys forming part of cross-functional teams where there is a focus on innovation and disruption. In her free time, Kathya likes to read, paint, and learn German, though her real passion lies in nature. Her favourite thing about Munich, she claims, is its proximity to mountains.
Virginie Danker studied at the EDHEC Business School in France and received her degree as Master-Marketing. She has lived and worked in places all over the world, including Paris, Helsinki, Buenos Aires and Amsterdam before joining the Ferncast team in Germany as Marketing Manager. She is responsible for all Marketing and Communication activities, including PR and social media, a real Marketing Allrounder! She loves spending time with her family, hiking in the Bavarian Alps, travelling and discovering new cultures.
Tobias Dornbush, our Documentation & Product Expert, is always available and happy to answer all your questions. Tobias studied International Professional Communication at the Flensburg University of Applied Sciences and devotes his skills in Technical Translation and Editing to various tasks at Ferncast. As our foremost wordsmith he takes care of most kinds of communication, including documentation and support. He ensures that our communication is both professional and modern, just like our software aixtream. He is in close contact with all our customers and is ensuring a steady flow of feedback to our developers’ team as an ear for our customers is very important to us and he is also handling the fernTalks to introduce customers to the aixtream GUI. Tobias not only spends a lot of his time with language at work, but also in his free time as an avid reader and enjoys traveling a lot, another outlet for his passion for languages and culture.
Last but not least Evelyn Peuker has been working as financial accountant and sales assistant for 45 years in various companies. At Ferncast, she is the contact person for all questions and tasks in the areas of financial accounting and HR in cooperation with the tax office. For leisure she loves to spend a lot of time with her family, she enjoys sports, especially cycling and hiking in the mountains.
Read more about your Ferncast Team www.ferncast.com/company/team
