After being born and raised in Gennep, I studied computer science in Eindhoven where I received a BSc degree in 1981. I began my career at the research institute KEMA in Arnhem. Afterwards I started at Philips Research (NatLab) in Eindhoven. Here, I gained experience in the fields of operating systems, fault tolerant computer systems, consumer electronics, and medical devices and systems. While I initially started as a programmer, during the years I covered several other software engineering disciplines, e.g. integrator, architect, project leader, quality officer, and test architect.

I have always enjoyed working in multidisciplinary and international teams, travelling all over the world and working together with many different partners and customers.

In the beginning of this century I got to know Maarten at Philips, when we both joined a consumer electronics project. At that time we got the initial thoughts of a system that should control all the processes required to build and test software in multisite projects. It took us a few years to shape these ideas to what we now present here on the Boxing Beetle website.

I'm married, have three grown kids, and live in Eindhoven. In my spare time I like to travel with our caravan throughout Europe, especially Slovenia and the Scandinavian countries. We really like mountain hiking. Furthermore, I'm the chairman of a regional volleyball club, so my evening hours are mostly spend in that way.

Sometimes, you can find me sitting in a lazy chair or concert hall listening to classical music. My favourite piece is the St Matthew Passion of J.S. Bach. For sure, I will never reach that level of perfection playing my own cello.

Raised in Etten-Leur, from the moment we got an MSX home computer, I spent much of my free time behind it. Not just to play games, but also to program, first in BASIC and later also in assembly.

When I went to study in Eindhoven, I started with math, but in a few months it became clear that computing¹ science was a much better match for my interests. Here I met a lot of interesting people, participated in programming contests, got interested in open source software and finally I also got my MSc degree in 2002.

My first full-time job was with NotTheFly Mobile Entertainment, but I spent most of that time at Philips, working on set-top box middleware and applications. This is also where I met Hans and we worked in a small team that generalized and improved SoftFab.

While I spend most of my time behind screen and keyboard, I do enjoy board games as well, both for the games themselves and as a way of spending time with friends. Since 2019, I'm part of the team that organizes T-DOSE, an annual open source conference near Eindhoven.