How everything started with a submission of an article on Hacker Noon via e-mail and David Smooke…

Written by yahyaibnmohamed | Published 2018/08/09
Tech Story Tags: cloud-computing | hackernoon | writing | inspiration | ai

TLDRvia the TL;DR App

It might sound awkward but I did not know anything about Medium.com a couple of months ago. At n’cloud.swiss AG I am in charge of PR and Digital Marketing, as well as International Business Development and Innovation Management. The latter especially because I finished my studies with a Master’s degree in Economics and Innovation Management. While writing my thesis at Daimler AG, I knew from the first day on that I would be working in an innovation driven sector. “Writing” that definitely is a good word to mention! From my childhood on I loved reading and writing. My first letter ever written — I was seven years old — was dedicated to my grandma. This is also why I am still having that feeling that I should go for a Phd.

Daimler AG “broke” my heart but n’cloud.swiss AG “fixed” it

With a “broken” heart I had to leave Daimler. It was just an internship and noooo they did not offer me a job because in today’s world it is not enough to perform very well, to have a Master’s degree and to be young, you should also have at least 10 years of experience before joining such a multinational.

No Job No Experience Cycle

After having started my post-university career within a gouvernmental and social organization in Germany, I went on joining French IT company Leadeo Groupe before being offered a job at n’cloud.swiss in Switzerland where that “broken” heart by Daimler got fixed! At n’cloud.swiss, we think big and compete with the major cloud providers. Our cloud platform is considered as “Swiss made” alternative to Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform & Co. Inspired by Daimler and Mercedes as heavyweight brand across the globe, I am striving from the first day on to make every single one of our Earth’s billions of inhabitants know, that we are capable of competing with the big ones and of establishing our cloud platform as a real alternative with the big advantage of being purely “Swiss made”.

Refused by Forbes, Entrepreneur and Inc. but what a moment of happiness and pride when David Smooke accepted my first article!

As part of my efforts in terms of brand management and development, I immediately focused on Social Media from LinkedIn to Twitter, Facebook and many more. I started writing articles on LinkedIn Pulse and sent out Newsletters. However, I did not see how I could develop my knowledge deeper in the field of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT and other state-of-the-art topics that are having a strong impact on our daily life. Consequently, I was always making researches and educating myself. After all, it is also a crucial part of innovation management to keep on track on what is happening in the markets to understand customers and to be aware of competition. Somehow out of nowhere, I got an e-mail from someone suggesting me to write an article on Medium for twenty dollars. The person emphasized on the fact that Medium is known across the globe and one of the most visited websites. Twent dollars is worth investing and less risky for a test. So this person published an article about the basics of Kubernetes and mentioned Kubernetes-as-a-Service by n’cloud.swiss as one promising solution. Until then I did not know that I could publish myself stories on Medium. I made researches and wanted to learn more about Kubernetes. This is how I came across the article Kubernetes for dev infrastructure by Maxim Leonovich on…guess it…Hacker Noon! From that day on, I became a regular reader of Hacker Noon and was always impressed by the big contributing network. It became a place to be for me as someone interested by innovation and technology related topics. The more you read, the more you feel like contributing as well. This is basically how I decided to submit one first article via e-mail — I did not even know that I could easily submit a story via Medium to Hacker Noon. Combining cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) is how I named my first Hacker Noon article. Actually, I participated in a conference by Frederic Wickert, absolute expert on AI and former Microsoft Technical Evangelist who is now Founder and CEO of A.I. SENSE. You cannot imagine that feeling of happiness and pride when David Smooke accepted my article! Honestly, I have tried to submit three or four articles to Forbes, Entrepreneur and Inc. but I never got an answer. Yet, I still have the ambition of writing for the likes of Forbes one day!

Hacker Noon

Contributing Writer at Hacker Noon and Editor of n’world publications at the same time

This is basically how everything started. I literally felt under pressure to submit a new story, to write something even better than before, to make people read my stories and to bring them closer to the company I am working for as well. Hacker Noon allowed to me to develop my writing skills further and to learn at the same time from such an amazing contributors network. This is something that did not keep unnoticed by n’cloud.swiss Founder and Chairman André Matter of course. He came up with the idea of having a Medium-based blog à la Hacker Noon. This is how I became editor of n’world publications. And noooo I will not stop writing for Hacker Noon, no way!!! The world and the sector wherein we operate as company is changing, moving and in full motion. The idea here is to share and accumulate knowledge on different topics including cloud computing, innovation management, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). As an internationally expanding company, we accept stories besides English in German and French as well.

About me

I am Yahya and I have graduated with a Master’s degree in Economic Analysis and Policy at the University of Strasbourg after completing a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Management. I specialized in the Management of Innovation and spent a semester at the SPRU of the University of Sussex in Brighton. Having grown up in Germany, I am lucky to have benefitted from a trinational education thanks to my studies in France and England. Consequently, intercultural competences, mobility and multilingualism are typical characteristics of my personality.


Written by yahyaibnmohamed | Marketing Specialist, Advisor, Author, Mentor & Speaker
Published by HackerNoon on 2018/08/09