I in a nutshell.

Hello everyone. I am Filippos but you can call me Phil. I am living in Netherlands since 2019 and my origin is Greek. Currently rocking at 27 years old, trying to increase my expertise in Data Science and currently working at IBM based in Groningen, Netherlands.

Fun fact:

A bit of a history

Phil as a person

I grew up in a very small Greek town which is called Igoumenitsa and as a usual teenager I was very spontaneous and friendly with a positive vibe. That didn't change a lot as I was growing up, but different characteristics started to emerge because of the experiences I had.
One of the biggest lessons (and blessings) I ever had, was to work from a very young age. When I was 13 years old my father was taking me on weekends to our family's grocery store to help them by loading and unloading trucks with fruits and vegetables. When I grew a bit more I also started to communicate more with clients in a daily basis by selling them groceries. That had as a result to understand soon enough how to properly speak to clients and understand their needs even in a very basic level. By the age of 18 I was managing the same workload as every other employee of our store and at the same time, communicating with clients and partners, gave me a general understanding of the retail sector.
Maybe that is why people usually call me very disciplined and schedule-oriented, especially if it has to do with my job or my working out routine. I like to think the same as well, because keeping track of your progress, not only as a professional but also as an individual, is one of the main factors that can improve you as person. Beside that, my closed circle is saying that I am easily adaptable, curious, gentle, congenial and inventive. However, during my life-time so far I was able to identify also a few negative characteristics such as perfectionism, stubbornness and that I am easily distracted. Especially the latter was the first one that caught my eye and I started working on it by diving into my daily habits and see what keeps me by being fully productive.
One of the major reasons was my cell-phone and specifically social media apps. Notifications can really absorb not only your attention but also your energy and general focus. Research on multi-tasking has shown that requires much of effort to reset your focus from one task to another and as a result that affects your productivity[1]. Therefore, my first action point was to put my phone on silent mode and out of my sight. That helped me tremendously as I couldn't lose focus and sometimes made me completely forget it that I even had a phone. But I may talk in another post about the things that I did and helped me improve my productivity and my personal daily organisation.

A couple more things about me:

  • I am riding a motorbike since I was 16 - Yamaha WR250X
  • I’ve got a Saint Bernard named Symba (see pictures below :))

Felling in love with Computer Science

Throughout my young years, I was living the teenager life to its fullest. Riding a bike and having a lot of extracurricular activities such as karate and football, so I was not paying much of attention in school. As a result my grades and my knowledge was not great neither big and I was more or less determined that I will not be able to pass to any kind of university and most probably I am gonna focus on my family's business.
However, my mother convinced  me to study and give a last shot on my final class on high school. This is where I discovered my love from programming which was one of the courses that I would be giving on the final exams. I dare to say that programming was not only the course that I fell in love with, but also gave me hopes about the exams in general. Quickly enough I started to study maths, physics and business administration along with economics foundation. I felt awful that I spent so many years without studying but, I also felt lucky that I've got the chance to give a try. You know what they say... Better late than never.
At my big surprise I was accepted to the university of Peloponnese in the department of Informatics and Telecommunications in Tripoli, Greece. I was all over the moon that I was able to succeed and most importantly I felt challenged for what is coming next. Because I knew it was only the beginning.

During my studies I tended to like more Computer Science than Telecommunications and I shifted my focus towards that path by selecting more courses of this subfield. As the years were passing by I met a lot of smart people and interesting projects but one of the biggest milestone on my studies came when I met the Prof. Manolis Wallace. Mr Wallace was not only just a professor that I had the luck to watch his lectures, but also a mentor and if I dare to say a life-coach. His guidance assisted me to discover my true potential by imparting his way of thinking either as an academic professor or as potential employee. In addition to that, he played a huge role on formatting my professional character by giving me the opportunity to attend with him in conferences abroad (and domestic) and by being my supervisor during my Master’s degree. I was honoured to be one of the members of his research lab named Gavlab where I learnt a lot from.

Photo taken in: SMAP Conference 2014 Corfu, Greece. Me, my professor Wallace and my colleagues

Exploring the world

From early age I had the luck to travel abroad while I was a football player to my local team. First stop was Taranto, a small city of Italy but at the age of 16 I couldn't understand how to recognise the beauty of a foreign country. Plus south Italy looks very alike to Greece. However I was very fascinated to be abroad, and it was definitely something that I wished to do again. After a few years, as I said above, I had the opportunity to participate in conferences that happened to take place abroad. Along with my professor Wallace, while travelling we had the time to talk about travelling and life experiences. That was one of the many times that I was amazed about his stories, places he went, people he met, in general he made me look at the beauty of travelling from a very interesting perspective. It was one of the reasons that I fell in love with travelling and since then I am hungry to explore new countries and cities.
Countries I have been so far:

Photo taken in: Parc de la Ciutadella, Barcelona, Spain

Army Duty

On September 2017 I was called by the Greek authorities to serve my army duty. Because of my education, I was collected in the camp of Thiva in the division of Research & Informatics Corps. Day 1 was more of the paper work and settle ourselves in the rooms but was also one of the days that changed my life. All recruited soldiers had to pass from their commander for a typical interview but mine way more than expected.
When I walked into the room I was asked a few basic questions from my commander, like my age, my educational background, where I come from etc. but after a couple of minutes that we were talking he stood up, and he closed the door. I was starting to feel a bit nervous as this was not the interview that I was watching the rest soldiers to have. Immediately he asked me "Listen kid, I want to make you a captain of the group that we recruited today. I know this is something that you have never done in the past, and you don't know how it works, but I will help you for the next couple of days to understand the process and the exact responsibilities of yours. I just need to know if you have the guts to be determinative and decisive. I don't want people that afraid to do their job or be shady. I want people that they respect their superiors and we, as ranked officers we know that we can rely on them. Are you sure you are one of these people?" I remember that my look froze and that my heart skipped a couple of beats but in the very next moment I spontaneously answered "Yes. I am." and he replied "OK. Cool. Bear in mind that being a captain doesn't only mean leading the people. It means that taking the responsibility of your people. So if something in your group goes wrong, you are responsible for it. Not the person who caused it. So make sure you are the type of person who takes this kind of responsibilities. I will invite you for a last interview with all the other officers present, and we will let you know when you start. If you think you can do it, then I expect to see you there".
And so it happened. Already the very next day I was leading 250 people that I didn't even know. People way younger and way older than me. People from all kind of backgrounds. Doctors, professors, butchers, criminals, high school graduates, fathers, people with psychological issues, masters, PhDs any kind of people and I had to collaborate with them. I had to win their trust and respect. I had to make it work because if I couldn't do it, I would not be able to confront my commander.
Later on, after a few months I was promoted to the rank of lance corporal as an honour of my excellent services to the Greek Army. If you know how I did it, ping me up and let me tell you about it over a coffee ;)

Current lifestyle

After finishing my bachelor degree, my masters and my army duty I was looking to move abroad and work as a Data Scientist. I spent nearly two months by sending applications to UK, Germany and Netherlands where I ended up in the latter. Specifically I had interviews with Amazon, Bloomberg, Gamesoft and IBM where the latter was the first that gave me an offer and suddenly I was in Groningen, Netherlands. Beside coding as I mentioned above I am a fitness freak. I love to lift heavy weights and workout with challenging partners. I am also big fans of body transformations where I am doing it almost every year. Winter on bulk, summer on shred ;)
In my top interests you will find also coffee and gaming although I am trying to use them with caution because I can be really addictive to both of them.
Last but not least I am huge fan of natural museums. Everything that has to do with space science or in general with natural science keeps me captivated by reading or listening about it. Now that you have come to the end, you learnt a lot about me. What about you? What fascinates you as a person? :)

References

[1] - How Multitasking Affects Productivity and Brain Health