Ömer Hacıömeroğlu’s self-identification as a designer, entrepreneur, and educator is exceptionally accurate. His professional scope sees him fulfilling each of these roles with a great deal of passion, somehow finding the time to meaningfully contribute to each. As a result, he is not the kind of person to stay in the same place for long, regularly switching between his desk, prototyping in the Makerlab, leading one of his various workshops, conferencing across multiple time zones, or traveling the world to tackle projects in person. His work on Qwake Technologies/Qwake Media is as time consuming as it is impressive, while his commitment to sharing his knowledge with students of all experience levels is testament to his belief in the value of education. All the while, his perspective is that of a student of life, taking in lessons along the way and applying them to meaning in his work.
We took some time to speak with Ömer on the various projects he has taken on both past and present, the struggles and wisdom gained in his multidisciplinary approach, and the cultures that underlie it all.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Of course. I’m a designer, entrepreneur and educator from Istanbul. I feel like I was one of those creative kids (as there are so many) that was encouraged by his family to become what they want to be. Thus, I became an industrial designer. My father is an architect and my mother was in finance. I always got positive support from them and therefore was able to travel around and over the years focus on improving the necessary skills to become a designer. I find myself quite lucky in that sense.
I studied art management and curation for a year in Istanbul. Then switched to industrial design and moved to Long Beach, California. I studied there for two years and transferred to Istanbul Technical University to finish my Bachelor’s of Science there.
After my undergraduate in Industrial Design, I worked with my father in architecture for a year and a half. That taught me a lot about the business side of things and large scale project management and where design fits in the equation in relation with finance. Then, I worked for a couple of industrial design firms here in Istanbul. In total it was around two and a half to three years. Shortly after, I moved to Sweden to do my Master’s in Advanced Product Design at Umeå Institute of Design. It’s in the north of Sweden. That really changed my life. It’s a multicultural and multidisciplinary academy where you learn from one another a lot. It also had a great global network of designers and tutors. It was a big change for my design career.
There’s a tradition there where students take a year off in the middle of the two-year program and do an internship. All of my classmates including myself had the opportunity to intern at top notch companies. I traveled around the world to complete three internships and came back to Sweden to complete my Master’s after that one year.
What about your professional background, especially in recent times?
Professionally, after my Master’s ended in 2012, I was doing freelance for about a year. In the meantime I had been offered positions at several different companies in different countries such as Sweden, Italy, United States and Taiwan. I ended up picking up the one in Italy to be closer to my family. The visa issues took over six months, so that’s why I was in Istanbul for a year doing freelance. Unfortunately in Milan, I only stayed for four months. Things didn’t really work out so I moved back to Sweden to Atlas Copco as a consultant with Cliff Design which is based in Gothenburg. I had previously done an internship and my degree work with them. I started working there and about a year later they shrunk their design team and so I moved back to Gothenburg and continued working with the Cliff Design internal team. I was in Gothenburg for about a year and a half.
I then moved back to Istanbul. My current business partner, Sam Cossman, ended up finding me shortly after my relocation. He’s a Nat Geo explorer — the kind of guy who goes into volcanoes with a camera crew, shoots viral videos, sets up sensors with scientists and that sort of thing. He is a very energetic person who is a tech enthusiast and a new age explorer. He and I share a common passion for exploration and meaningful solutions that leave a positive mark on society. Back then he already had founded a media company called Qwake Media, which we would later expand together into Qwake Technologies/Qwake Media.
After graduating, two of my projects had won several awards — my degree work and my first project when doing my Master’s, which was a firefighter helmet. They both won Gold in IDEA (Industrial Design Society of America) and then the helmet became a finalist for Red Dot and was invited to Valtech awards in Torino, Italy. Then they both got published in printed and digital media over the years. Wired UK, Innovation Magazine and GQ Turkey are some of many. It sort of snowballed and that’s how my partner found me in the first place. He offered to help with the business and entrepreneurship side of my helmet because he wanted to use it in one of his expeditions. and I agreed to help him with the media and design side of his business. This was in mid 2014.
It was quite a crazy period. I helped with a lot of design work. We were preparing presentations and pitches for big names such as NASA and National Geographic. It was really appealing to my adventurous side and the sort of design I always wanted to lean towards. Several times a week, hours at a time on Skype. Qwake Media recently went to Nicaragua with GE to place a sensor network to bring the Masaya Volcano alive. The sensor network and IOT platform would allow us to hold the pulse of the beast in real time.
Over a two year period, Qwake Tech. evolved into a four co-founder startup developing an Augmented Reality platform to enable firefighters to navigate through zero visibility during their search and rescue missions.
Currently, Sam Cossman is our business lead. I’m the head of design. Dr. John Long from NYU is a neuroscientist who did his PHD on computer vision and is now our head of technology. Bahar Wadia is the head of Scale Up. It’s a great relationship of learning from one another. We officially became a company a few months ago. After several major pivots, it was fantastic to experience “my” project becoming “our project” and I couldn’t be more proud to have gone through this big learning experience with my partners.
I’ve really enjoyed the journey so far. Learning and understanding the business and strategy side of things makes me feel confident. Now, if I want to build something, start from scratch, scale it up, form partnerships, focus on the legal side of things, work with investors, plan formations, form and be a part of a competent team, I know whom to team up with and what to expect. Still there is lots to learn and I can say I’ve only had an overview of entrepreneurship, but so far I have a much better understanding of the risks ahead than before. It’s a great feeling.
We have an expression in Turkish about altın bilezik. It means “golden bracelet”. Your education is a golden bracelet or your network is a golden bracelet. It travels with you — the knowledge, the know how, the experience… This has been a golden bracelet for me. I want to keep it going, as now we’re in touch with potential investors and really good connections. We have recently completed our third prototype and got very positive feedback from this year’s FDIC ’17 Firefighter Convention in Indianapolis, USA.
Riding on a question mark can lead you to challenging adventures. It’s scary, but you also learn how to handle question marks and be cool with them after a while.
How has ATÖLYE fit into this?
ATÖLYE is a big part of my entrepreneurial life. There are lots of people here in the same situation as me, looking for investors or remotely working with global partners. They’re running their own projects or working with one another. ATÖLYE is quite nice in that they curate their members and therefore people end up to be pretty like-minded. I like helping others. People are like that here as well.
For the first time in a long time, I work in an environment very similar to what I had in Umeå in Sweden. It’s nice to be able to share updates with people, brainstorm and develop ides together. There are many different projects and disciplines co-working together. It’s a huge learning opportunity. You feel really good when one of your friends here achieves something, as many of them do.
Could you tell us a bit about your role as an educator?
Sure. I really like passing on experiences and methodologies and as a business it’s suitable for an entrepreneur because it is a flexible trade. It’s not about being better than someone, but having experience in something and passing it on to others to enable them. Also it is an international trade, I can do it in another country, I have my schedule and know my tools. So it appeals to my adventurous side as well. I currently design and facilitate certificate workshops with universities in Istanbul on Human Centered Design Thinking, Elevator Pitch, Visual Thinking, and Rapid Prototyping and Concept Sculpting. Participants vary from corporate staff to professional designers/artists and students.
What is your day to day like? You mentioned that you have a team abroad, how does that function with you being in Istanbul?
John is in New York, Bahar is in Chicago, Sam is San Francisco and I’m in Istanbul. We had dealings with China, Spain and Sweden. It was difficult with the time zones. I would sometimes have meetings at 4 AM. Toughens your skin, if you know what I mean.
One of the great things about entrepreneurship is learning and working with new tools. I knew some of them beforehand, but now I can totally operate remotely. All the cloud project management tools, cloud sharing and many other online project development tools I use or adopt immediately if I need to. I have a co-working set-up now where I could go to Thailand and work from there. I realized that’s the kind of freedom I was looking for all along.
Could you tell us a bit about some other challenges you face in your work?
As one may guess the international mindsets can differ from one another greatly. For example, my partner has a sales background in America. They’re like a shark tank when it comes to opportunism and sealing business deals. You have to stand up and fight. There’s more focus on survival. Whereas in Scandinavia, you might take a day off for your wife’s birthday. You get great benefits for parental leave, from anywhere to a year to two years, even as the father. Everything is cool and relaxed. You can expand this into different cultures and you would see a colorful mix of different approaches based on ethnography. So working with international people can be challenging, but it can also be nice. You learn a lot.
As we’re an advice publication for foreigners living in Istanbul, are there any lesser known places or tips that you’d like to share with our readers?
I would recommend watching the documentary series Cities of the Underworld. Each episode covers a big old city; there’s one for Rome, Naples, New York, London, etc. It covers the underground cities and they should definitely watch the one on Istanbul. Istanbul is one of the few that has many layers of history. It’s basically four or five cities built on top each other, that are all now underground cities. After that episode, I learned about what the historical remains and their history. Its amazing. You’ll see a fortress or some small thing and now you know it’s part of some temple that’s mostly underground with a part of it sticking out.
Leb-i Derya and 360 in Taksim are great locations to dine or grab some good drinks with the full view of the Bosphorus and the historical peninsula. Istanbul is built on seven hills, they should take advantage of the hills and the views. Rumelihisarı (“Hisar” means “fortress”, “Rum” is an ancient word that the Anatolians used for “Roman”, “El” means “Lands”- so it’s Roman land’s fortress) is also quite nice, I was living there until I was six or seven. There are areas you don’t see from outside, but you go and there are different elevations, you can smoke nargile, eat by the trees or enjoy the views.
There’s one restaurant I definitely also recommend. It’s called Rejans. It opened in the 1920s. It’s a Russian restaurant. They have their own homemade vodka that they serve in iced bottles and shot glasses. It’s a real Russian restaurant. They still have a table for Atatürk and on some nights one of the best Turkish accordionists comes and performs. It’s mid to upper level in terms of pricing and you need a reservation, but it’s not snobby. Great for taking guests or your boyfriend/girlfriend. They have great manners. The Italian place and chocolate place next to it are also really worth visiting.
To keep up with Ömer and learn more about his work, visit www.omerh.com.
ATÖLYE Spotlight is a new series on the inspiring community members of Istanbul’s most creative space.
All images courtesy of Ömer Hacıömeroğlu and Ayşe Esin Durmaz.
