Technology, operations, consulting
The foundations: information systems, engineering, production and technical responsibility in environments where you quickly learn that the quality of a decision is first visible in its execution.
Eric Dunkel
Understand.Connect.Decide.
My professional life has unfolded in places where technology alone is never enough. You have to listen, put facts back in order, connect issues that do not naturally speak to one another, and decide without losing sight of what comes next.
A committed European. A Mediterranean story. A life built between Europe and Africa.
01 — Method
Strategy matters to me when it survives contact with reality.
A good decision is not the one that sounds brilliant in a meeting room. It is the one whose effects and dependencies have been understood, and which still leaves room for tomorrow.
Over time, I have become wary of answers that come too quickly and of subjects handled in isolation. A complex programme forces you to look between the boxes: how one choice moves the budget, the schedule, safety, teams or what happens on the ground.
That is the area I enjoy. It requires method, reliable information, some distance, and the ability to arbitrate when everything is not perfect.
Correlations
An infrastructure decision is never only about infrastructure. It can move risk, resources, time or cost. The real decision is often hidden in those correlations.
02 — A committed European
International work begins with understanding context.
Deeply European, I remain Mediterranean by inheritance and deeply attached to North Africa and to its jewel, Morocco, where I lived and worked, and which gave me so much.
Europe is my natural frame of reference: a culture, a history, and a certain idea of method and debate. It is not a boundary for me.
My professional life was built first in France, then in Morocco, Germany and across several African settings. I learned something fairly simple: what works in Paris cannot simply be transplanted to Rabat, Karlsruhe, Algiers or Abidjan.
Rules, pace, institutions, decision-making and the relationship to time change. They need to be understood before anyone tries to “correct” them.
EUROPEFRANCEMEDITERRANEANMOROCCOAFRICAINTERNATIONAL
03 — Origins
A story that looks more like a loop than a straight line.
The Mediterranean appears at the beginning of the family story. Several generations later, my own path returns to it from the other shore.
First comes Venice, La Serenissima, appearing in the family story as a distant origin, still to be discovered… An old trace that already places the story in the Mediterranean world. Then come the Rhine, the Eifel and Paris; finally, in my own life, Morocco.
This history matters to me because it is about movement, cultures meeting one another, and an identity that cannot be reduced to a single point on a map.
A story of passages
“The journey began in the Mediterranean. It returns there by the other shore.”
Not a destiny written in advance; rather a continuity that I only came to understand with time.
Venice — the originLa Serenissima appears in the family story as a distant origin, still to be discovered…
Rhine · Eifel — the rootsA European family history, shaped by movement and belonging.
Paris — the anchorThe city where my outlook, my French life and part of my culture took shape.
Morocco — the other shoreAn experience that became familiar, and an unexpected return to the Mediterranean.
Tomorrow →
Venice · Rhine/Eifel · Paris · Morocco. These images are markers in the story, not historical proof. Where the family history still needs documenting, the site says so.
04 — Perspective
A taste for ideas, words and form.
I grew up with theatre, great texts and the arts as an ordinary presence. I kept the pleasure of reading, an attachment to precise words, well-designed objects, places with a soul, and conversations that take enough time to get to the heart of things.
This is not separate from my professional life. It shapes the way I observe, write, present an idea and sometimes make a decision. A solution can be technically correct and still be poorly thought through in its form, its use or its relationship with everything around it.
I also kept a certain distrust of anything that tries too hard. Elegance often lies in what one chooses not to add.
05 — Career
Four decades, several professions, and the same interest in situations that do not solve themselves.
The path has never followed a single track: engineering, major accounts, cloud, applications, operations, public sector, Morocco, Africa, sport. The thread lies elsewhere: responsibility, arbitration, teams, budgets, systems and decisions that have consequences.
Major accounts, cloud, applications
At Atos: financial and contractual leadership of major accounts, cloud solutions leadership and then application management in France, with teams numbering in the hundreds.
Morocco and institutional programmes
Leadership of operations and complex programmes in Rabat alongside major organisations in transport, finance, telecoms, energy and smart cities, with activity extending towards Algeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
France, Europe, sport and AI
Market leadership followed by technical management of applications in Southern Europe; alongside this, development of work in sport, major events and controlled uses of artificial intelligence.
This summary is deliberately short. I would rather let the coherence of the path emerge than turn this page into a curriculum vitae.
06 — Today
Sport has become a field where almost all of my subjects meet.
A major competition concentrates decision-making: infrastructure, finance, operations, regulation, security, data, human resources, technology and participant experience.
What interests me is not adding a digital layer to an event. It is making information speak to other information, making inconsistencies appear early, and making trade-offs understandable.
Artificial intelligence can contribute a great deal to this work. I see it as a tool for analysis and proposal, never as a substitute for responsibility.
Royal Moroccan Golf Federation
Strategic advisory work, including an academy for golf professions with OFPPT at Golf Dar Es Salam in Rabat.
Sport & artificial intelligence
Talks and work on the use of AI in sport, including a conference in Saïdia as part of Terre de Jeux 2024.
The World Games 2029 · Karlsruhe
Budget leadership and structuring work on an international programme where sport, infrastructure, data and operations must remain coherent.
AI proposes. Facts constrain. People decide.
07 — What comes next
I look more at what remains to be built than at what has already been done.
After several decades in technology and programme leadership, I want to devote the next chapter to projects where experience genuinely matters: projects that require method, imagination, an international perspective and the ability to remain very concrete.
Sport, artificial intelligence, major events and the relationship between Europe and Africa provide that ground today.
I do not need projects to be simple. I need them to have meaning.
Write to Eric Dunkel