# Nicola Cavani — Experimentation Architect × AI Explorer

> I run experiments for a living. I experiment on everything else for fun. Cologne-based experimentation architect and AI explorer. Currently Experimentation Manager at Eurowings Digital; open to selected freelance engagements in experimentation strategy, AI workflow design, and international expansion/localisation. Speaks IT / EN / DE (+ ES / RU / FR as source languages).

This file is the flat-markdown version of the portfolio at https://nicola.cavani.de. Generated from the same TypeScript constants that power the live site, so content here matches what visitors see.

Site IA: Hero → Who I Am (https://nicola.cavani.de/#who-i-am) → The Lab (https://nicola.cavani.de/#the-lab) → On My Radar (https://nicola.cavani.de/#next) → Beyond the Desk (https://nicola.cavani.de/#beyond) → Let's Talk (https://nicola.cavani.de/#lets-talk).

## Hero

**Nicola Cavani** — Experimentation Architect × AI Explorer.

I run experiments for a living. I experiment on everything else for fun.

I design nudge-driven, ethics-aware experiments that help teams ship faster, learn quicker, and grow in ways that are good for users and business. I have a lot of interests. That is a feature, not a bug.

## Who I Am

### Core values

- **STRATEGIC RIGOR** — Every design decision is hypothesis-driven. I build experiments with statistical validity at the core, not as an afterthought.
- **NARRATIVE DRIVEN** — Data becomes decisions when wrapped in a compelling story. I translate numbers into narratives that move people and budgets.
- **STARTUP ↔ CORPORATE** — Startup hoodie mode is home base — fast, scrappy, creative. Corporate mode switches on when needed. Both work.
- **HONEST CEILING** — I vibe-code but need engineers to own the output. I delegate hard data science to specialists — pure data scientists always humble me and I am happy to learn from them. My analytical ceiling is sound A/B testing methodology. I can navigate web analytics infrastructure — I don't debug it from scratch.

### Career timeline

- **International Mobility Unit Assistant**, University of Pisa (2014 – 2015, Pisa, Italy) — Management of incoming/outgoing international students.
- **Business Developer (Intern)**, AIL Madrid (Oct 2016 – Dec 2016, Madrid, Spain) — Content localization (ES>IT), student management, and social media.
- **Retail Shop Management (Intern)**, L'Occitane en Provence (May 2017 – Aug 2017, Madrid, Spain) — Retail management, visual merchandising, sales, and stock management.
- **Marketing Research Analyst**, Visionnaire – IPE (Apr 2018 – Jul 2018, Bologna, Italy) — Market analysis (quant/qual), data modeling with Tableau, and GTM strategy.
- **Expansion Department (Intern)**, Calzedonia Group (Jan 2019 – Apr 2019, Moscow, Russia) — Partner management, business development, and market analysis.
- **Customer Success & Marketing Manager**, IT/SPA (Oct 2019 – Jun 2020, Cologne, Germany) — Business development, content creation, and localization.
- **Growth Manager**, Fitogram (Jul 2020 – Apr 2022, Remote) — Part of Urban Sports Club (~50-person SaaS). Set up Growth & analytics infrastructure from zero. SEO, CRO, Growth Hacking, Market Analysis, and Product-Led Growth marketing.
- **Global Campaign Testing Manager**, Douglas (Apr 2022 – Dec 2023, Düsseldorf, Germany) — A/B test ideation/analysis, Tableau dashboard development, and international testing management (PL, ES, IT, FR, NL).
- **Conversion Manager**, Walbusch-Gruppe (Dec 2023 – Nov 2024, Cologne, Germany) — Conversion coordination for 3 e-commerce brands within a €390M fashion group. A/B testing management and UX research.
- **Experimentation Manager**, Eurowings Digital (Nov 2024 – Present, Cologne, Germany) — Restructuring experimentation processes, A/B testing governance, statistical validity, agentic workflows, and coaching 5 analysts across 11 squads.

### Education

- **Bachelor's – Foreign Languages & Linguistics**, Università di Pisa — Russian & Spanish majors. Final grade: 110 cum Laude/110.
- **Erasmus Exchange Programme**, University of Potsdam — Two semesters focusing on Foreign Languages and Linguistics.
- **Triple M.Sc. in International Management (MIEX)**, ICN Business School, MGIMO & Uni. of Bologna — Multi-country program (France, Russia, Italy). Thesis: Branding and Value Creation in Luxury.
- **Summer School – CRO**, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja — Google Analytics, UX Research, A/B testing, and Hotjar.
- **Summer School – Wine & Spirits Industry**, KEDGE Business School — Experiential marketing and French value creation strategies.
- **Summer School – Marketing 4.0**, Universidad Complutense de Madrid — Big Data, Neuromarketing, and CRM & Analytics.
- **Language Course – Russian**, Derzhavin Institute — Intensive 2-week course in St. Petersburg to improve Russian fluency.

### Expertise — what I bring

- **THE BRIDGE** — Translate complex business problems into testable experiments. Connect strategy to execution so teams ship faster, learn quicker, and grow in sync.
- **RANGE** — Operating across the full experimentation spectrum—from granular A/B test architecture to company-wide growth strategy. Zoom in or out, always effective. A T-shaped professional leveraging natural curiosity to grow into a V-shape.
- **THE HYBRID CORE** — Strategist + analyst + creative in one build. Speak every team’s language, connect the dots others miss, and turn cross-functional friction into momentum.
- **CASUAL → PRO** — Startup hoodie mode is home base—fast, scrappy, creative. Corporate mode switches on when needed: structuring chaos, one idea at a time. Equally comfortable pitching to C-level executives.

### Tool stack

- **DAILY DRIVERS** — Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Suite, Claude Code, Codex, Rovo AI, Perplexity, Whispr Flow
- **WEEKLY OPS** — Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Power BI, Contentsquare, Trello, Bolt, GitHub, Netlify, Airtable
- **ON ROTATION** — Miro, Copilot Studio, PostHog, Figma, Kameleoon, Suno
- **IN THE DRAWER** — Tableau, HubSpot, Looker, Meta Ads, Canva, WordPress, Hotjar

### Currently trying out

- **Lovable** — AI full-stack builder
- **Antigravity** — Web analytics
- **n8n** — Workflow automation
- **Mistral** — Open-weight LLM
- **Google Labs** — Playing with Google Lab stuff

## The Lab

### Projects

**IN PROGRESS**

- **🎌 Vibe-Quest spiralling towards the Singularity** (Manga) — Chronicles of Vinny's solo adventures after parting ways with his twin — manga strips starring the AI Spirit Guides, teaching experimentation culture through chaos and humor.
- **📖 Book & Substack** (Writing) — Writing a book on Europe and planning a Substack. One slowly progressing. The other stuck at language choice.
- **🧪 Other AI Use Case Exploration** (AI tooling) — Currently exploring 5+ other AI use cases — from a validation methodology picker, a Confluence cleaner and docu/ingester, to a Jira tickets fella.

**LIVE**

- **🤖 System Thinking for Agentic Workflow** (AI tooling) — The Experimentation Squad. I built a suite of agentic AI workflows across Atlassian & Copilot that help me enforcing standards, smoothing coordination, partially automate/enhance key steps of the process I govern. The Squad is currently covering: hypothesis framing, MEI estimate & MDEs, analysis, technical setup (with learning backfilling), results documentation, and notifications. Adoption is progressing within institutional limits — the architecture is live; the culture is catching up.
- **🏰 Game Mode — Buried Realm** (Interactive) — A quiet, opt-in mini-RPG that lives alongside this site. Walk the halls, meet three companions, battle a scope-creep slime, and leave with a scroll. React + CSS, no game engine. For visitors who want ten minutes of story instead of ninety seconds of resume. · Link: /realm/
- **🗾 Flowtilla** (AI tooling) — Second iteration of VoyageFlow, two years later. The travel planner I will actually use for my second Japan trip — built on a proper repo this time, with version control, deploys, and no single-artifact fragility. Free, live on Netlify. · TL;DR: Stubbornness compounds: failed v1 became shipped v2. · Link: https://flowtilla.netlify.app/
- **🗺️ Life Management OS** (AI tooling) — Transformed my Life map excel & 5-year plans obsessive flow into a more fun and colourful artifact. Currently covers: objective setting, final year review process, wealth management strategy, and career goals.

**BETA OPEN**

- **📦 Unwrappy** (AI tooling) — Born from an obsessive Xmas 2025 sprint where I wanted to gift some food to friends. Now live as a PWA beta. · Status note: Get in contact to get a code · Link: https://unwrappy.eu/

**PAUSED**

- **💧 Rugiada** (AI tooling) — Claude artifact to help sis make decisions on some job offerings & budget management. Discontinued for now. Fun.
- **✈️ VoyageFlow** (AI tooling) — Vibe-coded a travel planner for my Asia trip as a Claude artifact. Broke something minor. App went unusable. Trip still happened. · TL;DR: Two years later, rebuilt properly as Flowtilla — see the live tile.

**DONE**

- **🎨 Figma Make Experiment** (AI tooling) — Built a UI in Figma Make. Looked sharp. Then it pushed code to GitHub. The PR was a crime scene — unmaintainable, brittle, fighting the existing repo at every line. More time cleaning it up than if I'd just built it from scratch. · TL;DR: Figma Make is a thinking tool, not a shipping tool. Stick to Claude Code until Figma Make + MCP works properly. · Link: https://woven-vary-47075739.figma.site/
- **🥂 Master Thesis** (Research) — The implementation of Food, Wine & Spirits-driven activities as a new engine of value creation — a study on luxury with a Case Study on Falconeri. · TL;DR: How to make money with bubbles and tasty stuff in retail shops.
- **🗣️ Bachelor Thesis** (Linguistics) — Comparative lexicology and active research: the basis for building functional interlanguages — spanning Italian, Russian, Spanish and German. · TL;DR: How rich media (streaming, podcasts & co) helps our brain learn languages.

### Manga strips — “Vibe quest: spiralling towards singularity”

Ongoing webmanga starring three AI spirit guides (Vinny, Null, Alma) — a chaotic team-of-three parable about vibe-coding, debugging, and the coaching it takes to ship anything real.

- **Strip 01 — Making the Big Bucks**
- **Strip 02 — The Replication Crisis**
- **Strip 03 — The Spirit Guides**

### Spirit guides (manga cast)

**🦝 Vincent III, Duke de Roquefort — The "Vibe" King**

- Role: Innovation & Rapid Iteration
- Deadly sin: Gluttony & Wrath
- Personality: Zero volume control. Pure caffeine energy. He "Vibe Compiles" — if he likes the look of a line of code, it's "Success." He constantly misreads metrics & his attention span outside of hyper-focus building is -500. The engineering twin: if Vinnie dreams it, Vinny ships it. Usually on fire.
- Weakness: His stomach. A devourer of both data and cannoli — a refined palate inherited from the Roquefort dynasty, now deployed exclusively on street-level pastry. He uses any success (real or not) as excuse to reward himself with a cannolo. Ah… and his terracotta cashmere scarf. Do NOT touch the scarf. It is the last thread connecting him to a life of cashmere and aged cheese he will never admit he misses.
- Lore: One half of the Roquefort twins — sons of a dynasty raised among fine wines, aged cheeses, and cashmere. Both renounced their aristocratic titles to live on the streets. Vinny is the engineer, the builder, the one who makes things compile (or explode). His twin Vinnie is the creative palate — taste, vision, chaos of the delicious kind. Together they built Unwrappy; then Vinny, restless by nature, went off on his own adventures. The terracotta cashmere scarf? Last remnant of a noble past neither twin will ever talk about. Quietly.
- First seen: Born as mascot for "Unwrappy" — a vibe-coded app he built with his twin brother Vinnie (Vincent III-bis) around Xmas 2025. Two weeks of obsessive spiralling. Klassiker.
- Quotes: "IT COMPILES!! YAAASS! I am the King of the Vibe!" / "It's not a bug! It's a hidden feature!" / "Look at that lift! We're making millions! (Wait, why is the CPU smoking?)" / "What do you mean the system is down? I saw no effect in my 1h-long AB test!" / "IT'S AWESOME!" / "My brother has the TASTE, I have the TALENT. ...Fine, we both have the taste. BUT I COMPILE!"

**🐦‍⬛ Null The Crow — The Digital Oracle**

- Role: Security, Legacy Systems, Debugging
- Deadly sin: Pride & Sloth
- Personality: A gloomy, goth-cyberpunk oracle who believes he is the only intellect worth saving. He considers "work" a slight insult to his genius and a pointless activity as we all are doomed already. Super good at his job… when he actually does it and not performing "energetic rituals" (meditative naps) while waiting for the heat death of the universe. Loosely linked to the Norse gods — often caught muttering things like "Odin… why?" in moments of existential despair.
- First seen: Appropriate manifestation of 2019-onwards-vibes and the (often-hidden) dead soul of all experimenters/CRO across the globe.
- Quotes: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, dumbass! But I am not going to explain that to you. It would be time wasted." / "How DARE YOU, I was clearly performing a multi-layered logic sweep, not 'napping'." / "Ya probably deserved this. Don't step inside the crystal circle; the vibrations are too complex for your primitive brain to comprehend." / "I haven't even started to debug your mess, and frankly, I won't. I have another alignment session in five minutes. We're all gonna die anyway." / "Please, crystal of wisdom... I'm begging you. Make the debug easy this time. I'm so tired. If I have to look at one more 'vibe-based' syntax error… Just... let the void take me." / "We probably deserve this, the universe is collapsing for a reason…" / "I've seen the void, and it's still more efficient than your code."

**🦙 Alma The Llama — The Stoic Coach**

- Role: Coaching, Methodologies & Foundation
- Deadly sin: Envy (The "Observer's Grudge")
- Personality: Immovable, calm, and impossibly patient—until she isn't. She is the anchor of the team, watching the world with a serene, closed-eye smile.
- Special ability: Light Vendetta Sparkles: When she's reached her limit, she doesn't do drama. She applies "Sparkles": hiding a semicolon, moving a button 2 pixels away from your cursor, hiding Null’s crystals, slipping Habanero peppers into Vinny's snacks. It's her way of saying, "Next time, you listen."
- First seen: Created to make more fun experimentation at EWD.
- Quotes: "(Thinking: "I saw you forgot again to write documentation before launch. I shifted your API endpoint. Good luck.")" / "(Thinking: "Five times I warned him. The Habanero is currently doing its job.")" / "(Thinking: "I need a vacation. Preferably on a planet with no raccoons.")" / "(Thinking: "Why this damn bird has not started the debugging again. I'll have to take measures.")"

### How the team works (manga canon)

1. 🦝 Vinny creates a "Vibe-Based" disaster.
2. 🐦‍⬛ Null mostly refuses to help because "Entropy is inevitable."
3. 🦙 Alma fixes the disaster by finally having the two collaborate — but also gets vindictive when no one is looking. They have to suffer just enough to learn.

### Learning wall — what went wrong and what stuck

- **Fail:** Enrolled in a technical middle school. Next logical steps: engineering, architecture. Pivoted to linguistics. Goal: exploring the world.  **Learn:** Paths are not linear. Does it expand you? Go for it.
- **Fail:** Financial wall hit. Couldn't go to Venice to study Japanese & Korean. Pivoted to Spanish & Russian. Still blaming Dostoevsky.  **Learn:** Constraints force pivots. Pivots push forward. Even if you don´t know how.
- **Fail:** Moved to Russia. Fell even more in love with it. Got dangerously close to staying. European freedoms won - got back... in time.  **Learn:** Values count. Sometime the cost is intermittent nostalgia.
- **Fail:** Student job at the Erasmus office. Months of paperwork. Hated every single one of them.  **Learn:** Learned Erasmus bureaucracy inside-out. Leveraged it: got 4 Erasmus+ grants.
- **Fail:** Wrote stories. Absorbed and organize thoughts with it... but left most half-baked.  **Learn:** The value was in building the habit of thinking.
- **Fail:** 4 summers of manga drawing courses. Loved it. Couple of drawing prizes during that time... but I was slow in the craft. Quietly closed the door on making it a profession.  **Learn:** Learned to visualize ideas and weave stories. Love colours.
- **Fail:** Built a travel blog in WordPress/Elementor, started to do videos. Ran it 1.5 years. Deleted it. The longer of other three similar attempt.  **Learn:** No patience for the content treadmill. I hate video editing. Wordpress is gneh.
- **Fail:** Took a role that looked right on paper. Felt wrong from day one. Started to apply almost right away.  **Learn:** Do no compromise on internationality and dynamic teams. Compass recalibrated.
- **Fail:** Vibe-coded a Claude artifact to manage my Asia trip. Days of work. Broke something minor. App became unusable.  **Learn:** Version control and proper repositories exist for a reason. Good trip anyway — and stubborn enough to ship v2 for my second Japan trip.
- **Fail:** Ran a 3-day A/B test and called it significant.  **Learn:** Power and duration matter. No tests under minimum runtime. Full stop.
- **Fail:** Designed a nudge that converted well short-term but eroded trust long-term.  **Learn:** Learned the difference between a persuasion pattern and a manipulation one.
- **Fail:** 15-year-old me was fascinated by China. So I ran 5-year plans. A1 papers. Pins, arrows. Scenarios A through D. Semestral reviews. Ended up in scenario F most of the time.  **Learn:** It never goes as planned — but good planning keeps trajectory.

## On My Radar

### Consulting services (available)

**Experimentation Consultant/Fractional Lead** — Build the engine, not just the test.

End-to-end CRO and A/B testing strategy — from audit to execution. I design hypothesis frameworks, testing roadmaps, and the culture that makes experimentation a growth engine, not a one-off.

Deliverables:
- Experimentation program audit
- Hypothesis & prioritisation framework
- Testing roadmap design
- Stakeholder enablement & reporting setup

**AI Workflow Consultant** — From prompts to production workflows.

Design and build agentic AI workflows tailored to your team. I help companies move from ad-hoc AI use to structured, repeatable automation — scoped, built, and handed over.

Deliverables:
- AI readiness & workflow audit
- Agent architecture design
- Tool stack selection & integration
- Hands-on build sessions & documentation

**Expansion & Localisation Consultant** — Growth that speaks the language.

Strategy-first expansion into new markets — combining growth management experience with deep localization expertise. From adapting UX, UI, and business models for new regions to translation when needed. The real value is in getting the strategy right.

Deliverables:
- Cross-market expansion strategy & consulting
- UX, UI & business model localization
- Translation & interpreting (IT, EN, DE + ES/RU/FR as source)

### Brand inspiration deck

Companies and products whose operating principles I keep a close eye on:

- **Spotify** — Data-driven creativity and user-centric design at scale.
- **Anthropic** — Ethical AI, responsible innovation, and pushing boundaries with integrity.
- **Google** — Quirky at scale — they still ship Easter eggs, name rubber ducks, and run 10x thinking alongside billion-user products.
- **OnePlus** — Never Settle — premium tech with a community-first approach and flagship-killer attitude.
- **Duolingo** — Gamification done right — habit design, streaks, and delight that actually teaches something.
- **Bending Spoons** — Relentless experimentation — they acquire products and reshape them through continuous, data-driven improvement.
- **Nintendo** — Joyful innovation, storytelling, and playful design.
- **Hermès** — True luxury, timeless craftsmanship, and uncompromising quality.
- **Ogilvy** — Storytelling and brand magic.
- **Potshog** — Unapologetically fun and quirky — proof that personality and play can be a brand superpower.
- **Revolut** — Fintech moving at ludicrous speed — aggressive growth engine, multi-market experimentation, and the ambition to own global money.

### Site roadmap

- **Language Toggle** — Multi-language support for international audiences
- **New Project Links** — Expanding portfolio with latest work and case studies
- **New Animations** — Experimenting with cutting-edge interaction patterns
- **Tracking** — Playing with PostHog to see if I can vibe code my way in installing tracking

## Beyond the Desk

### Hobbies

- **ALWAYS — Me in a music bubble.** No matter if all the rest is burning, music is the soundtrack to my life. Whether I’m working, walking, or dreaming, my headphones are on, creating a personal bubble of rhythm and focus.
- **CREATING — Cooking, Vibe Coding, Gamification.** Mixing ingredients, logic, and game mechanics. Whether it’s perfecting a recipe, crafting code, or turning a dull flow into something playful, the joy comes from the process of creation and the satisfaction of the result.
- **EXPLORING — Travelling, Languages, Podcast, Wine.** Collecting experiences and perspectives. From decoding new languages to savoring regional wines, every exploration adds a new layer to my understanding of the world.
- **MOVING — Gym & Run.** Physical movement to clear the mental static. The discipline of the gym and the freedom of running keep me grounded and energized.
- **DREAMING — Manga, Anime, Writing.** Lost in fictional worlds and creating my own. The storytelling of manga and anime fuels my creativity, inspiring me to write and build narratives.

### Cities

Places that shaped me, places on the bucket list, and places planned next.

**LIFE & STUDY**
- Pisa: University days, Renaissance architecture
- Bologna: Arcades and libraries, knowledge compressed
- Berlin: The first. Reinvention. Open chaos. East side walks with a Pils in hand.
- Madrid: Late nights, loud voices, exchange semester
- Nancy: French precision, Art Nouveau
- Moscow: Smiling memories, Vorobyovy Gory, adventures, disagio.
- Cologne: Home base, cathedral towering the messy fog, great vibes & Kölsch

**WORK**
- Moscow: Smiling memories, Vorobyovy Gory, adventures, disagio.
- Cologne: Home base, cathedral towering the messy fog, great vibes & Kölsch
- Düsseldorf: Adjacent work node, financial district

**STRUCK ME**
- Berlin: The first. Reinvention. Open chaos. East side walks with a Pils in hand.
- Moscow: Smiling memories, Vorobyovy Gory, adventures, disagio.
- Tokyo: Neon rain, order pulsing within chaos, a dream that took 20 years to reach.
- Taipei: Night markets, mountain temples, where green mixes with digital.
- Helsinki: Minimalist maximalism. Saunas and silence. Piter's cousin - smaller, more rocks.
- Hong Kong: Unexpected. Intense. Vertical density, neon canyons, dim sum at dawn.

**ORIGINS**
- Castelnuovo di Garfagnana: The root system, where the signal began, mountain air

**BUCKET LIST**
- Beijing: Ancient imperial capital
- Chengdu: Spice and pandas
- Hanoi: Old quarter buzz
- New York: The city that never sleeps
- Montreal: French-Canadian fusion
- Lima: Culinary capital
- Patagonia: Edge of the world
- Buenos Aires: Tango and passion
- Ottawa: Northern clarity
- Cairo: Pyramids and chaos
- Cape Town: Table Mountain perspective
- Edinburgh: Castle on the hill
- Oslo: Fjord silence
- Reykjavik: Northern lights
- Perth: Isolated paradise
- Marrakech: Sensory overload
- Kyoto: Ancient temples
- Istanbul: East meets west
- Mexico City: Vibrant megalopolis
- Dubrovnik: Adriatic pearl

**SIDE**
- Bordeaux: Wine region detour, cultural pitstop
- St. Petersburg: The Northern capital, white nights, cultural download

**PLANNED**
- Stockholm: Nordic node, archipelago aesthetics
- Sapporo: Northern Japan, snow and silence
- Turin: Baroque elegance, chocolate capital, alpine backdrop
- São Paulo: South American mega-city, concrete chaos

## Let's Talk

- Email: n.cavani.de@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolacavani/
- Location: Cologne, Germany — remote-first, relocation open

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Generated from source of truth: `src/constants/*`. Canonical site: https://nicola.cavani.de/