technologist and craftsman from Podhale
Andrzej "Jędrek" Pawlikowski
Andrzej "Jędrek" Pawlikowski, a technologist and craftsman from Podhale. I build systems and online stores, put together marketing strategies, and beyond that I design embroidery and clothing, carve wood, restore instruments, and play music. I've never bought the idea that technology is one world and making things another. What pulled me toward programming was exactly that it's creative — that I can make something out of nothing, the same as with a drawing or the design of a dress. One time it's a piece of code, another it's fabric and scissors, sometimes wood. To me it's exactly the same work.
I started out with creative things — clothing designs, drawing, painting. The love of craft and making I inherited from my mother. She's a seamstress — not a name anyone would know, perhaps, but a deeply creative person who hand-embroiders for the love of it. When we began working together on highlander clothing, the idea for the Folk Club brand was born — today it's in my wife's hands. Technology and programming, in earnest, came a little later, but in my head they hold the same place as everything else.
My professional path went toward technology: marketing strategy, e-commerce, running online stores, and systems that support sales and the day-to-day running of a business. I started in e-commerce; today it reaches wider — lately, a system for a travel agency, for instance. I treat a website or a store as part of the business, not a calling card and an added cost.
Some of my skills I give away for free, wherever I see a point to it — I'm building an open portal to help ordinary people and small businesses get a handle on regulations, contracts, and official paperwork. I do it because I can, and because I think it's worth doing something selflessly now and then. I've run up against how tangled the law can be plenty of times myself, but above all it's about awareness — so that people simply know which rules apply to them, and how those rules are changing. Working with companies across different industries, I've seen many sides at once, and I know that very little is black and white. In time I want to give people simple tools — for checking terms and conditions, say, or the trustworthiness of online stores.
The rest is craft and creativity. Whenever I get the time, I still design new embroidery and clothing patterns. "Lutherie," loosely speaking — I buy old instruments and see what can be restored or improved, more out of curiosity than for anyone's commission. As for music, I mostly play double bass, sometimes viola — Carpathian folk, a bit of playing in the taverns around Zakopane. An ordinary man from a Podhale village, who had to learn to do a lot of things himself.