Moving on: Interview with Christoph Daniel, Departing Senior IT Officer at the JVI

Christoph Daniel has been with the JVI for eight years. On the occasion of his departure, he spoke with JVI Newsletter staff about his experience here.

Christoph, you have been part of the IT team at the JVI for eight years. Can you give us an overview of your role and key activities during this period?

Over the past eight years, I have been responsible for the stable operation and ongoing development of a broad range of IT services at the JVI. My work covered Microsoft 365, Active Directory and Hybrid Exchange, Windows servers, virtualization, storage and backup, as well as endpoint protection and software distribution. A significant part of my role was also hands-on support for both staff and course participants, on-site and remotely, together with onboarding, training, documentation, and coordination with external service providers. In addition, I helped support and operate various learning, event, and collaboration platforms, and I served as a technical point of contact for the IMF on relevant IT topics.

How would you describe your experience working at the JVI?

My experience at the JVI has been very positive, both professionally and personally. The JVI is not a typical workplace: it combines the practical day-to-day pace of a training institute with the international outlook of an organization that works closely with several international partners and Austrian authorities. That creates a working environment that is broader and more diverse than many regular jobs, because you are not only supporting colleagues internally, but also helping create a reliable and welcoming environment for participants from many countries. At the same time, the JVI’s relatively small size gave it a very personal and supportive atmosphere. Communication was direct, people knew each other, and it was easy to feel that your contribution mattered. The IT team also naturally became a one-stop place for technical questions of every kind, for colleagues as well as for the many thousands of course participants over the years, which made the work both demanding and rewarding. I also appreciated some of the smaller but very real quality-of-life benefits, including the fitness gym, which is open 24/7 and available to course participants as well as staff. I was always happy to use it occasionally, even if unfortunately not as often as I should have.

What was the most memorable part during this period? Any anecdote you would like to share?

The most memorable period was definitely COVID. Like many other organizations, we moved fully into home office, and the courses were no longer held face-to-face but remotely instead. From an IT perspective, that was a particularly challenging time, because we had to ensure that remote teaching, communication, and collaboration worked as smoothly and reliably as possible under very unusual circumstances. At the same time, it also made you realize how much you miss real-life interaction. We managed well, but that period made me appreciate even more how important the personal exchange at the JVI really is.

What are your plans after the JVI? 

Starting on May 1, I will begin a new chapter at Fonds Soziales Wien (FSW), an organization where I had actually worked before joining the JVI. In that sense, it feels a little like coming full circle. I am looking forward to bringing with me the experience I gained at the JVI, especially in service-oriented IT operations, collaboration tools, and supporting a very diverse group of users, and applying it again in a meaningful environment.

Rilind Kabashi, Senior Economist, Joint Vienna Institute