About Me
You have just landed on the homepage of Markus Aurala.
Without further ado, a few facts about me:
I am a mobile enthusiast. You hardly ever see me without my phones. I have one in every pocket and I keep test driving new applications and services all the time, sometimes even developing something small by myself. My special interest lies in mobile gambling and I have recently started to blog about it. Read more here.
I am Product Line Manager. I get paid for managing people, processes and projects in a company that operates Internet and land based casinos. We develop our platform, site and games (mostly) internally applying more and more agile (Scrum) and lean thinking in everything we do. It keeps people like me busy learning new tricks, inspecting and adapting day after day.
I enjoy reading books. I rediscovered my love for books when I moved from Espoo to Siuntio in January 2007 and since then have spent approx 1.5 hours on a train per day. Being a “jack of many trades, master of none”, I try not to limit myself to any single topic. You can find some book recommendations on these pages.
I love travelling. Currently my travelling is being limited by two small kids but I have travelled a lot all around the world, for business and pleasure. My all-time favourite destinations are China, Thailand, London, Amsterdam, California and Las Vegas. Las Vegas especially has always a special place in my heart as I was married there (by Elvis himself, of course) in June 2004. My next big plan in this area is to take a train from Helsinki to Shanghai. Since this requires a lot of research and I have already been involved in many discussions regarding this project, I’ll open a specific section on these pages for sharing information.
I take a lot of photographs. I have taken thousands and thousands of digital photographs. I hardly ever leave the home without a camera (or two). I currently have Canon EOS 450D and IXUS 850IS.
I am a very casual gamer. In fact, I spend much more time following the games industry than I spend time playing games. Strategy games (both real-time and turn-based) are my favourites, but occassinally I spend some time playing Xbox Live Arcade games.
If you want to be in touch with me (no special reason required), here is my contact information:
Mail
Säästöpankintie 23
02580 Siuntio
Finland
E-mail
markus . aurala (at) gmail . com
Phone
+358445800173
