Pascal Dörflinger: Between Bits and Bib

Pascal Dörflinger was born in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg, just a short bike ride away from Liechtenstein and Switzerland. He and his sister grew up there with their grandmother. "I owe everything I have in me in terms of manners, commitment and the ability to deal with conflict to my grandmother," says Dörflinger. "Throughout her life, she was my biggest supporter, but also my biggest critic. She taught me not only to believe in myself, but also to work on myself."

After elementary school, he moved to a boarding school in Bregenz - thanks to funding from the state of Vorarlberg and the federal government. The start there was bumpy. Over time, he learned how important it is to remain enthusiastic and able to deal with conflict on a daily basis and to assert himself. He took on more and more responsibility - and not just as temporary school spokesman and state school spokesman as well as student representative.

What would not be worth mentioning for many, proved to be groundbreaking for twelve-year-old Pascal Dörflinger: the moment when he held his first laptop in his hands. "A year earlier, I had already had my first contact with computers in a course on basic digital education. And although I had no idea what the word Word meant, I was immediately fascinated by this world that was completely unknown to me," reports Dörflinger. He had plenty of time to immerse himself in the world of computers during his summer vacation in a small Serbian village - the country where his ancestors on his mother's side come from. "With no internet and no fear of contact, I pored over books and learned how to take a laptop apart and put it back together again and how to program," says Dörflinger.

Eventually, he was so familiar with the subject matter that he mostly took on smaller jobs and designed websites or print products for people in his environment. His first major involvement came when the family of a classmate founded WeTomorrow, a charitable organization that implements educational projects in Asia. To this day, he is responsible for IT and community management - and was on site when digitally equipped libraries were built and set up in Mongolia and Vietnam.

This and other things led to him setting up his own company, RaidPixels, when he was barely 18 years old. Since then, his portfolio has grown to include projects in the field of digitalization and process optimization - such as helping an office to become paperless or helping a hairdressing salon to introduce a digital appointment booking system.

The family of the now former classmate was also to play a key role after his A-levels and FSJ. On the one hand, they enabled Pascal Dörflinger to study business administration and law at the University of St. Gallen, and on the other, they employed him in the family-run asset management company based in Liechtenstein at the time. He spent four months studying and four years working for the asset management company. There he experienced "a wild ride from web and graphic designer to IT manager", as he describes it himself. "During this time, I learned a lot of new things that I now use in my own business. As a team, for example, we used Excel spreadsheets to program rules for processing applications and set up a CRM system and a customer portal," explains Dörflinger.

Like the family, Pascal Dörflinger also withdrew from the asset management business over time. When the sale of the company became apparent, he was persuaded to accompany the transition. However, another transition was already in full swing: from the stimulus-filled life in the financial world to the intellectually stimulating life at a university. He had acceptances from universities in Aachen, Berlin and Heidelberg, but he opted for the SPE Bachelor at ZU in Friedrichshafen. The ZU scholarship and the trust it placed in him at least helped him in his decision. "But even more than that, I wanted to feel part of a community and not be treated like a student number. And finally, it was important to my grandmother that I enjoyed an education that challenged me," adds Dörflinger.

Pascal Dörflinger first came into contact with academic work at the end of his school years when he took the compulsory module Pre-scientific work on the way to his A-levels. Shocked by his generation's superficial approach to digital media, he analyzed the negative effects of social media on Generation Z in a technical paper: from digital dementia and social isolation to emotional dependency. "To this day, the question of what social networks do to us and how we interact with them is a recurring theme in my research," mentions Dörflinger, who is not deterred by "hard fare" such as Weber, Habermas, Foucault or statistics. "My wish not to have to commit myself yet, but to be able to pursue many interests, has been completely fulfilled in the SPE Bachelor's degree," says Dörflinger.

What Pascal Dörflinger has also retained from his school days is his enthusiasm and ability to deal with conflict. As soon as his own induction week was over, he became a member of the team led by the then Student Vice President Amar Günther. Now in his fifth semester, he holds a university political office: that of student senator. "During the course of my studies, I experienced first-hand how much discussion and action is needed at a university," explains Dörflinger. And so, in his position, he is committed to better coordinating the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT and examinations and to balancing out the responsibilities of students and professors as much as possible.

Although Pascal Dörflinger is terrified of needles, he is also aware of the benefits of donating blood. "When I found out at the beginning of my studies that blood donation campaigns were being organized at ZU in cooperation with the German Red Cross, I immediately knew that I had to get involved," says Dörflinger, who took over the organization of the blood donation campaigns in his second semester. "Of course, I always hope that the first-time donors stay on the ball and continue to donate blood regularly," says Dörflinger. As soon as the blood donation campaign in the current semester was over, the next event in which Pascal Dörflinger was involved was already waiting: as Head of Finance, he supported the networking and career event "zu|taten", where students and companies from business, culture and politics exchange ideas at eye level.