About

Hey! I’m Matteo, based in Austria (CE(S)T).

Online I call myself melektron, which comes from my website https://elektron.work. The “m” did not originally come from “Matteo”, despite it being very fitting.

On this website and under the label “ELEKTRON” I occasionally write about what I am working on and other topics I encounter. The motto is:

Juggling with bits and bytes for fun and profit ;) (and also electrons if I feel like it)

I’d describe myself as somebody who is curious about lots of topics especially in tech (hardware and software development) but also philosophy and others.

As an engineer, I like creating software and building hardware to solve practical problems I run into and turning things I imagine into reality, especially together with others. One might describe me as an “overachiever” who usually puts way too much effort into projects, sets very high goals, and is nonetheless picky about small details. When I do something, I want to do it properly, and I will pour a lot of energy into it to reach that goal.

I am a big fan of open source and the amazing communities emerging around open source projects. Therefore I try to make my work open source whenever possible. You can find some of my projects on my GitHub profile.

Areas of expertise

Over the years of creating various projects I’ve gained both personal and professional experience in quite a few areas, including the following:

Although one can never be an expert in every field, I firmly believe that, as an engineer, one should strive to attain at least a general understanding of a broad range of fields.

For example, a frontend UI developer should have a general understanding of how OS task scheduling and switching works, even if they never touch kernel space. Such “interdisciplinary” understanding helps them make better design decisions and more effectively troubleshoot performance issues or behavioral anomalies.

By being generally curious in this manner, any task can be tackled. It gives a great starting point for quickly learning the intricacies of the technology at hand, no matter what that technology may be.

My personal goal is never having to reply by saying

I can’t do this, it’s outside my field.

Instead, I want to respond with

I don’t know how this works off the top of my head, but let me quickly look it up.

About the name and the brand

“ELEKTRON” is a relatively general word, but it describes what I do pretty well. A small distinction is that it’s spelled with a K instead of a C, which is the German spelling of “electron”.

The logo mainly depicts electrons orbiting the center E and drawing a glowing trail along their path. At the same time they form a smiley face, making for a friendly appearance. They can also be interpreted as PCB traces leading to THT pads, while the central E made from simple rectangles can be interpreted as part of an SMD footprint.

My name “melektron” originates from “Mr. ELEKTRON”, but I no longer use this term today. The “m” in melektron could therefore just as well stand for “Matteo”.

I sometimes jokingly refer to the melektron as a fourth main subatomic particle among protons, neutrons and electrons. One may say it’s the “head subatomic particle”.