In parallel to his university studies in physics, Kurt Garloff started working with and in Linux in the mid 90s. After receiving his degree from Universtiy of Dortmund and doing plasma physics research at Eindhoven University of Technology, he started dedicating his energy full time to Linux and joind SUSE Linux AG working on the Linux kernel and on security related projects. Kurt became director of the renowned SUSE Labs department in 2003 and served as acting VP Engineering for SUSE in 2006. He subsequently received Leadership Training at Harvard Business School and took on VP roles in Product Management, Business Development and Partner Engineering in SUSE/Novell. He joined Deutsche Telekom in 11/2011 and runs the Engineering Department of the Cloud Services Digital Business unit.
Despite the technical fascination, Kurt has enjoyed observing and fostering the social phenomenon behind open source. He has enjoyed participating and contributing to many conferences, amongst which OLS, Kernel Summit, Linux-Kongress, and LinuxCon Europe. He served on the program committee for conferences like Linux-Kongress and LinuxCon Europe 2011.