8 Bits Wisdom To Secure The Code Of Life - Desiree Sacher-Boldewin

it's working so good morning everyone thank you everyone for joining I'm very happy to be telling a little bit about my experience so it's actually this year 20 years since I ched my first CCC uh back then still in Berlin back then when it was still 2,000 people and I think there quite a bit more these days um so I definitely went through my technical uh Parts but a few years ago I discovered that where my actual talents lie are more in the structuring of information so this is why I'm now more working as a manager these days and I try to like put that information into a presentation and I have 25 minutes so it

will be dense um but I'm hoping that I will not lose too many of you this early on in the morning um a quick disclaimer these views here on my own not the ones of my employer I'm not a doctor so everything that goes towards health is not um that I'm like an official person that could give you that advice and the pictures that I've referenced here not all of them I would or can completely endorse the people behind um some of them are really just really cool pictures but um I tried to make sure that I reference um really the um the people that helped me the most as well in my journey so let's dive in I mean the

eight bits days it's like a lot of fun when we were talking about the topic it was like okay that's in the ' 80s we were playing those games and that's how we all got to computers I did um playing games doing music on or lot of music yet on the computer but doing um writing and like writing stories taking the thing apart stucking it back together trying to and um but the thing what I wanted to like focus on today is that a lot has changed since we all started and I think we all got into it security because we were curious we wanted to understand how that works that at least was my driver

and it always still is so what has changed since then I think most of you know that picture moraw and how the like the transistors amounts have changed over all of the years back then when I did do my it um apprenticeship I still had to learn the transistors per CPU and areas that was like an easy multiple choice question that's at least what my teacher thought I'm glad that we're not doing this anymore I hope but what you can see is things have changed and with the amount of transistors the speed has changed of stuff that we're taking in the information the amount that we're taking in and consuming every day what has also changed is the vulnerabilities

some of you might have seen that study but um if you see like the cves that got published and this is only starting in 200000 and so not in the 80s because back then they didn't have that yet but so over all of the time how many CV we have per year these days so you can pretty much amount the criticality that we have behind it then we have some nice things like ransomware which of course makes everything even more like driven and um risky and it's pretty much one of the key drivers that each one of us has at work to keep up to date to try to keep to push the rest of the company to

go and Patch their systems and um do like the incident response so what has it all led to in my opinion burnout burnout of many of us because we came in for the technology we came in for the fascination to understand stuff and we're suddenly confronted with people we're confronted with people who don't want to do what we what we want them to do and we're like what the [ __ ] how can we make those people do what we want them to do and um it's a lot about communication but it's also what I learned a lot about centering back on yourself because suddenly it's not about um it's more you focus on the other

person the more you start to lose yourself and I assume that many of you also turned to technology because I did because it was easy you didn't have to focus on the the emotional part on the people part and it was just so much easier to focus on The Logical stuff it's one of the reasons why I only turned manager now because I just wanted to focus on The Logical stuff so I mean even Gartner created a study I mean I think it's a shame that they only focused on the Cyber Security leaders because I think it like pretty much fits for most of us but yes burnout is a topic and it has arrived in the

mainfield and we are important and really key employees and and the future is with us so the only thing that we need to make sure is that we remain resilient and that we can sustain our own life force while doing the stuff that we love so this is what the rest of the presentation is about because I asked myself like what would I've wanted to do differently what would I've liked to know earlier on and what is also knowledge that I tried to teach my people or coach my people when I guide them and I mapped to another framework that most of you might know from the 8bit dates the is oi model and um so we're going to go for

that because what I've seen is if you pretty much like the layers are pretty useful still and I would point and say like the the below layers are like the self where you focus on yourself and it's pretty much the emotional state of yourself and the top players are like on more on the company level so what you're doing for outside and The Logical and the orientation um is pretty much what I as a manager want to give my people so if I have an employee coming to me and they're like frustrated with a station situation that they have at a customer frustrated with a situation that they have with somebody else what I automatically

become aware of and I don't focus on this like At first at least not down here at first but it's pretty much this is this the foundation that needs to be set correct so everyone can focus on the rest and I'm going to go into the details on why that is but I think it's critical that we all remain creative and that we come up with Creative Solutions and we can only do that once we feel stable and safe and once we understand what can destabilize us and we know what our priorities and what our own needs are and only when we can do that we can learn to understand how we can reach our

goals we understand the intentions of the people around us the expectations that other have at us and the expectations at your current task so you can reach your next steps so let's dive in this is a topic that I've only in the past year started to dive into myself and I'm mind blown about the impact it has so it's about the nervous system and how it works in our body and some of you might have heard about parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system States and um so the sympathetic nervous system state is pretty much when we're active so right now I'm pumped with adrenaline because I'm nervous but um what also happens is there's quite a few

other things that happen in our body so um like we have not relaxed well like like how our breathing system is going we're starting to become tense in our system um we have like certain things that are suddenly produced in our body like acccess with other hormones for example and um when we want to slow down when we want to calm down we go into feros sympathetic nervous system States so the heartbeats become slower so there it is either faster and it also even impacts like our whole um um uh digestion so everyone who has like stomach problems or um like has sometimes I had that Under Pressure um that I stopped hearing I start to hear

like a sound high sound stuff like that so if you have such effects happening to you that's usually your nervous system that's starting to respond to you and you usually don't notice it and um so what Isen happening is your body get gets into um a an active State into a response State and most of you hopefully have heard about the fight flight and freeze responses so the fight is of course you get those Outburst of emotions you want to fight something you get defensive um is an example um you have an unclear an aggressive voice for example um and the tendency to flee the next one is when you want to like move to the next topic you can't really focus

you don't you can't finish the task at hand you want to move to the next to the next you're always like on the run on go that's disregulation because you're not in a center and you're not active focused on what is like right now in front of you and another thing that I have learned in childhood very easily was free state and the free state is stuff like you go blank there's someone attacking you and you can't respond there's stuff like like um you want to listen but you can't remember what has told so somebody's telling you that you agreed on that well you can't remember it's just gone from your memory and um it's actually can happen that you get

into a free state for years and years some of us stay in it for most of our Lives just because it's something that we learned early in childhood that our emotions are too much that we are not allowed to live our emotions feel our emotions and we learn to push them away and the problem with that is all of those States take us away from creativity and what we need more than anything else is creativity right now so um I definitely encourage everyone to learn about that there's a lot of amazing resources I personally like Irene lion because she also has like a lot of stuff on YouTube and like with free worksheets but it's just the

foundation to actually get you in a state where you can look forward and stuff the next thing that was really surprising to me is Foods because I mean I remember the days when I could still drink k m and I pretty much rolled on that and I definitely most of my bachelor feces was written while listening to like lots of fast music and Club Mar but the problem with that is that what it happened with me was because um I've been open about it always I had a burnout eight years ago and I'm pretty good after it but what happens is it's adrenal fatigue because with every little bit of um coffee you you take in you stimulate your adrenal

glands and so they need to release cortisol that's what's happening so you stimulate your body to produce extra hormones and at one stage it gets exhausted and the problem is some of you might never reach that state I did reach it and it started to have an impact on me that I got um anxiety from it so these days when I drink coffee I get anxiety from it and we have so many people with depress depression these days and I don't think many people understand the correlation that depression can actually be caused by what you eat so the nutritions are really really important and one other thing like one of the key measures that I took was I changed my eating habits

and so we also I was like the one that was after lunch still having a sneakers and like loved my um a chocolate that usually someone took to workplace um I Tred to change that and I focus and I eat as much fiber as possible possible so that might be beans might be high like um full fiber grains um stuff like that but these things have a such a high impact and I'm mentioning it here because it's not talked about enough in my opinion um because one thing that can happen when you have those Spikes all the time as insulin resistance and we all sit in front of the computer too much anyway so we are like on a roll

towards all of those future problems just because we have this work situation and so you might not have the effects now but and I can't promise you that you will have them eventually but it's good to have this in the back of your head so if you ever have a thing you can go back to yes there was something and there's something you can do about it now so we're jumping to the network layer the packets like how do you structure information and what is like something that I try to teach also is like understand your own needs and priorities and everyone that knows me knows that I love and really love the moving motivator cards the moving

motivator cards are like a A4 sheet that you can print and like um cut out and it's pretty much the 10 internal moving motivators and you can like order them and like find out for yourself what it is that is a priority for you and for me while I was in tech and like on a tech level it was always driven by curiosity and by Mastery but there are people who are more driven by acceptance by status by relatedness by Power by Freedom or by Honor these are all different things and they are all valid there's no right or wrong but understanding that somebody else has a different driver can help you in translating on like why something can

be like more helpful and like how you can relate to that person and include them in the way that is helpful for them and for me for example this is why when I have people who are driven by curiosity I'm not going to giving them by default extra pay because what I know is what they more are like striving on our interesting projects they want to like learn on the job they want to have creative work where they can like really fulfill themselves the money is just a secondary thing to them they most likely will use the money to get extra learning in if they can't do it on the job so I always need to see how it is possible but

understanding what is actually driving my other person is helpful for me to understand as a manager and I think it's helpful for everyone to know about themselves as well and the other thing is the nonviolent communication thing so that's not just like you're an [ __ ] and the better version is not like I think you're an [ __ ] but it's more like because you did do this and this it made me feel like I wasn't at place here and that makes me feel uncomfortable and therefore I don't want to do this so this is hard because um that's vulnerability and that's like emotional vulnerability and there's a great book by ber Brown dare to lead that is a lot

about how managers can be more vulnerable without being seen as just like simple to push over or easy because that's still like a state that many man managers out there think that vulnerability actually is but it takes a lot of strength to be vulnerable and I would like to see more people being actually honest and communicate what they actually feel because we coming to that on the next level I think I put it on a notes the next level after that but it is about understanding the needs behind what is going on and um so I'm going to jump now into the segmentation that is still really um important to tackling the big problems what was very

helpful for me was the Pomodoro Technique I don't think I would have made it through my bachelor feces and most of my studying pretty much without the Pomodoro Technique and yes the 25 minutes were too little for me I usually like 90 minute sessions because you can't get any Cod done in 25 minutes that's at least what I felt like but I set those limits to 90 minutes and I took a 15 minute break and like having those breaks do something different like for me it was playing the piano because switching the side of the brain was actually something that made me go back easier into it and like learning and knowing about that that it's just like

doing something else that occupies a different part of your brain can help you to off do it go even deeper and I wasn't aware of that before but it helped me to go through those really hard times that I had and the other thing that really was helpful for me was to think like a programmer which pretty much is just like an example on how you structure not only Cod but like any problem that you tackle like how do you structure it how do you approach it and um start with the easiest first then go around like take the most complex part of the code first because it has the most dependencies and I mean when I Was An Architect that

still was true because it's all about understanding the requirements the connections and so you can build the solution that is fit for everyone so yeah both of those were like key for me and helping me in the past years so now we're coming to one that I was mentioning before the Harvard concept the Harvard concept or har method is a method about deal making in like in theory and it is about that you shouldn't focus on what the position is that somebody is holding but what the need is behind the position that they're holding because there usually is always a solution and the question is just can you understand what the need is behind that they try to fulfill because usually

people are very defensive they're emotional they're and I mean when we have the layers when they're emotional down here they're not stable you can't argue with them on a logical basis you just can't reach them and so what you need to create is understand the need behind fulfill that need what gives them the safety so they can feel like they are included and then you can come to logical like agreement because you before made those decision criterias on what you actually want to reach how do you measure your success and then you can come to this logical step and like an agreement with them so in my experience I've pretty much done this naturally over the past 10 years and it

has helped me greatly and I can just recommend this concept to everyone it's a very thin book I think even the wikip page reading that will be helpful for everyone because it's really about understanding what is the need behind that makes the difference and that can help you then bring the solutions and like make the other person [ __ ] patch that hole and it's um yeah it's understanding what the problem is behind always the next thing next thing that I thought was very interesting to me about understanding other people's needs is the 16 personalities I don't know how many of you know this you ah thank you very good so the main message behind it

is everything or everyone has a different kind of personality and that's totally okay because they have the things that they are good at and you I had a mentor that told me about 10 years ago like you should only go into management when you like people and um I took that dearly and what you learn with this um methodology is really like to understand the strengths of each and everyone and we when you focus on their strengths and you like make them live those strengths you give them confidence you make them want to work work more you make them more passionate about things and you can like better analyze on what is the team that you have and where

you're going so understanding those different types of skills and um passions and interests and things that they have is key just to get get this capacity and understanding like okay yes this is actually decent person we don't align on everything and yes they're not doing what they want them to do but they have their values and that's valid as well because they focus and those values were gained based on their experience that they had so every opinion is valid because you probably might have turned out the same if you were in their shoes on the presentation um layer it's understanding the expectations for your role and there you have the key things between understanding your manager so what is

your manager trying to reach why is he giving you the task um what are their preferred ways to communicate what is um like how do they respond to things how can they deal right now is my manager overloaded themselves and just can't make this other decision because it would be too much is it helpful if I come with Solutions and they just pick at one and I think it's always important that a manager can give you your priorities but I'm always glad when someone comes to me with different solutions and I can pick which one so this is helpful for me and sometimes your manager just might be like under the dreads themselves and so

this can always be helpful um to just understand and like also what is it's it's funny but seeing of or figures I had a hard time with managers for a very long time and like understanding like that that I have this that I challenge them that I want them to be in this idealistic way that I have for myself but of course they couldn't because they had their own experiences and like they like respecting that as well that was a path for me to learn as well but um so I think it's very interesting and like just not being aware of this that we all are in all in this together but the key is to successful work experience that

make your relationship work with as many as possible and especially the key people um and because everything else will drain you eventually because you will feel lonely and separated from the rest frustrated with the world and it will come towards depression likely and when you get into that state life just is less fun so let's keep it at that and there's many more things that I could say about it and so the last thing the last level is really understanding the task that you are at like what is your current task do you understand what is the purpose of the task that you're doing what are needs and yes that means for me as a manager

that I like explain the context of why we're going that direction that I tell you like what my parameters are what are the guidelines that we need to respect to be able to reach that goal but it's makes everyone in the team so much more passionate about it afterwards because they understand where things are going and if I've learned one thing is that if someone has a meaning on why they're going away then they actually know why they get up in the morning they know when they look into a mirror that they're confident and happy with themselves because they know what they contribute and everyone that can contribute feels a bit more like they a

person of worth and I think that is very important so and if there's one last thing and I'm now really at the end of the presentation it's always stay curious follow your joy follow what brings you to Joy and um in my experience it's brings you also to the place where you belong and um yes I wish you a wonderful peite mic thank you everyone for your attention have a great day

[Applause] and that wasn't [Laughter] time thank you so much for the amazing Workshop uh sorry presentation it's been a long you see the human intelligence is getting a little tired now before I um say something I would want to ask in the audience do you have any questions for Des everyone needs coffee now so then I would go ahead so as you mentioned or touch bases in your keynote and you mentioned that human intelligence I would like to quote it as human intelligence now this has been affecting a lot lately now during the previous years let's say for example 8bit era from there today M today's date let's say where the Cyber threats are evolving crazily every other day there's

crazy stuff and the stress levels are increasing they are going Beyond leaps and Beyond now from this particular perspective how do you think like how would the emotional intelligence come into place like our uh emotions feeling conscious mind how do you feel like how do we hack it that it doesn't give away to these vulnerabilities easily so I do think it has the biggest impact on how we do the work because what I've learned is that I mean you always have the work itself and if the work achieving that goal feels like a struggle because you're fighting internally with yourself with something else on your mind and I do think that like we will always have things in our

private life that will have an impact might be a health condition of someone we love might be our own health condition might be like um a move that is happening might be like a project that you want to to get done on the side um and so what I've learned is that it's hard to be fully focused on the topics and the more you can be fully focused on one topic the easier it becomes for you and the more you feel like you're doing the right thing and you're actually um it satisfies you what you're doing the more fulfilled you feel so it's not about the it probably will just make things get to you faster you will have

done the work FAS so for example what I had to learn about myself is that when I Tred to force creativity I'm the worst but it comes naturally to me when I get enough space when I get like enough free time and I get enough relaxed state so my ideas usually come like at night I wake up in the middle of the night and then I know what to do so is the UL model thing here the references to that that was a 3 a thing for me and it's like I can't come to that on a like forceful manner of with a flip chart and brainstorming or whatever but so these are things that

come easy to me because I learned my way on how to get there and not everyone has the same way to get to the solutions but learning your own way on how to get there and get there in an easier way is just making you feel like work is less work it's more fun and I think that is what I at least try to achieve I don't want to work hard so it feels like work hard because but I'm just doing the work because I'm passionate for it and because I love what I do and so I sleep different in a different quality at night and I have better relaxation because of that and I like can share

that um the fascination is well better with people because I'm personally convinced about it that's fantastic so basically we do need to dwell or like you mentioned in your keynote as well stand in front of a mirror and try to identify what part suits you the best yes yeah that's yes thank you for the talk um connecting passion you said um in the DAT in the network layer that people have different motivations some are passionate some have um are interested by in projects um connecting network with data layer like the skills that people have with the motivation that they have do you have any tips there um so you might not always be able to like bring like line with everything

and every opinion that somebody has so I think the key is always just to find like that one um thing that you share that one value that you share and I mean there have been people that I had like fallouts with but I value and love the way that they treat their employees and so I have a lot of respect for that person and I think it's always key to keep the respect for another person to treat them respect respectfully because they noticed that everyone noticed if they're actually appreciated and treated for the way they like are and I I know remember when I started out in it I like had to gain the respect and I felt like

I like had to jump Heights to just get like I mean first time like running the firewall rules on the active in production system was like they treated me like this was now a high achievement I'm like well the work was done before that it like pressing that one button wasn't a difference but getting to that respect level where they would allow me to do that felt like work already and I don't think that's fair because everyone should be deserving that respect for the experience that they have so always find that small thing that you have in common and go from there so I think that's like and and one of the things that I just

learned in my coaching I've worked with business coaches now for um six years so um I have those trainings as well on myself and one thing is really like if you see that there's no common thing that you can get to try to like Shadow them copy them like see where they are going understand the way that they think that's one of the things that I'm now focusing on like what is their um belief system that they have behind um because many people are just caught in their belief system and that's actually that's the thing where you start to hack the universe but um it's like understanding where those beliefs come from and um like when you understand those needs

behind you can perhaps have a bit more understanding on why they are and acting the way that they are and then it's again the Harvard concept it's about going to those needs and make just sure that those needs that they have behind are met and sometimes it might just be for the network Engineers let me come up with something that they don't want to have more extensive patching times and what you like require from them would mean like in the way that they think that you say it that um they would like have to work all weekends and not just like in this 2our shift that they have so if you um like make them understand

that this is not the goal that you tried to reach and your intention is just this and this and let us find different solutions and what are actually the criterias to reach that then you can come up with a better solution and it hopefully isn't that they need to like work 24 hours on a weekend that help you cool thank you any further questions anyone yes you had a burnout uh you mentioned before that you had a burnout um when you came back uh did you encounter any difficulties coming back and how did you deal with that so what was the biggest change was my sleep um like during the burnard I was on 2 hours per night that I could

sleep still and I after being in that state for two weeks that's when I actually went to the doctor and said like okay I need some help but um what I had to do was drastically become aware of what are my priorities so for me it was decluttering that I did do um a lot of like trying to do less like trying to become realistic of what I can actually do with my time what would actually be my priority and what was the hardest thing for me that I'm learned only now years after actually making a genetic analysis on what are my predispositions so I learned I have this genetic key uh the comp teing which is

pretty much making you slower burn like build down adrenaline and cortisol so that means that when I drink something with coffeine it has even a higher impact than it has a normal people and so this is why I now have like adopted all of my eating habits and drinking habits to that but like getting out of that state because it just meant that as soon as I got excited about something I slept or didn't have couldn't sleep for hours after that and then when I learned that I'm sensitive to that I now have like my repository of supplements that I can take in addition to that so um I like I'm an advocate for taking

magnesium before you sleep or I have like glycine powder that helps by me personally to like come into a more calm state in the evening and these are just easy things that I can do but it's um um it's things that are very custom to me and I had to learn that and one of the things that I also had to learn is like build up resilience with workouts workouts are an easy way to just like and you start with that like a hit workout you start slowly but it helps you build a resilience like more tolerance to stress because that this way when you get into a stressful State you do have the tolerance and you can

like recover from it more easy than afterwards Stu cool any other question so then I would like to say one thing and also contribute to what she's saying here to us is in case and I hope nobody of you suffers from this or has ever experienced this that would be the best scenario but in case and if you would like to share or discuss or get some guidance the is right here we now have a break for about 20 minutes and we kick off for the conference so you can approach directly to her she's here with us and I thank you all so much and wish you a wonderful conference for today and desire thank you so much for this

amazing talk you're welcome