Disclaimer:
I have written an #introduceyourself before, so technically I'm abusing the hashtag. However those where 1. a humoristic diss and 2. a kinda spammy intro about our webshop not knowing what Steem was about, respectively.
I have asked around various users from the abuse channels if it would be a problem if I wrote another one and I was generally told that "it would not be a problem as long as I acknowledged that I had written those before and also mention why I would write this one" which is:
With upcoming projects (soon more!) I feel the need to properly introduce myself, as a future reference post and so you know who I really am, and where I am from.
Without further ado....
Born & Raised in a windmill
In 1981 I was born in a small peninsula in the South West of the Netherlands. The first year of my life I lived in a windmill. No shit! My dad was born next too that windmill and all is his life he had dreamed of starting a 'wheat grinding'-company by using that windmill. By the time he had borrowed the money from my late grandfather (a trader in whole wheat) a professional wheat grinding factory was constructed only 5 kilometers down the road. Gone businessplan. A pivot turned the 'pig -shed' next door into a pancake restaurant, a golden pivot. 35 years later, my brother is running the show working 7 days a week in the summer holiday season. If you happen to be in Zeeland, be sure to check out Pancake Restaurant De Graanhalm! Source: My facebook |
Annoying teenager runs away from home
My highschool years where on the very same peninsula "Schouwen Duiveland" and every day I cycled 36 km (18 km in the morning / 18 km in the afternoon) to get to Highschool. It didn't take long before I got a stubborn annoying teenager, doing all kinds of stuff which teenagers do, and also skateboard a lot, running in an athletics association and then the cumulation of all teenproblems was when I walked (or actually cycled) away from home, thinking about quitting High School only 1 year before graduation and living by myself in Amsterdam.On the very morning I cycled away from home to 'Rotterdam' (80 km's). I felt really free and thanks to the downwind it felt like a breeze. When I arrived in Rotterdam I planned to visit a (cheap) clothing store as well as a drugstore for hair dye. I visualised myself on the 'missing'-section of milk cartons and thought that by dying my hair (from blonde to black) and dressed in a button shirt nobody would recognise me :) Onwards to Amsterdam! That part by train and I actually stopped on Schiphol Airport where I imagined I could stay 'hidden' and stay for the night on the public areas of the airport, since it's open 24 hours a day right?
I stowed away my luggage in a locker room and tried to sleep in the not very comfy waiting lounge chairs. Also the airport became more quiet by the hour. Apparently airports are not so super 24/7 as I thought :) I spent the night skateboarding and on 5 AM I went to my final destination: Amsterdam! So I arrived 5:30 on Central Station and the city was super quiet. Only streetcleaners. Not what I envisioned for my vibrant future city. I did not give up just yet and started looking for a room. I only had 200 guilders (about 100 EURO's / USD) so not much to spent. Looking into the option at the YMCA / Youth Hostel but still that was so expensive.
Then I felt totally lost. I think I cried a bit in the corner and then picked up the phone and called home. My parents where really happy I called. Wow. Imagine your kid running away and not knowing where he is, for over 24 hours. They had been looking everywhere. Anyhow I said I will come home. I took the next train to Zeeland. And then still I had to cycle back from the trainstation (40 KM) and this time 'upwind' which was though, also thinking about coming home after this debacle haha.
I remember my mom called me a "joker" since my hair was all of a sudden dyed black. The next day at school I was the talk of the schoolyard. "haha look at your hair". In the end I'm happy I didn't stay in Amsterdam. Just yet. Not long thereafter I graduated high school and took a year off, living in Vienna working in a museum and afterwards spending one winter season in Saalbach Hinterglemm Ski resort working as a waiter in Hotel Ellmau.
Studying in The Hague - International Hotelschool and getting the festival virus
After my time in Austria I worked a stint at a campsite in the South of Belgium (Virton, in the Ardennes Natural Reserve) after which I returned to work for the rest of the season and my parents pancake restaurant, as my dad had a serious sore back ache.I was elected and enrolled in the Hotelschool The Hague to do my bachelor degree in Hotel Administration. This is where I got a laptop on downpayments. Because all students needed their own computer for Excel and Word to make your assignments. This was the time of ICQ, Napster and Kazaa and parties all night long on the campus.
I worked on the beach of Scheveningen in a beachclub when I started using my computer for making a website: Celenation.com (Only partly available through Internet Archive). The purpose of the site was simple: Write reports about festivals and gain free access to those festivals :) Later on we also got tickets to give away, and quite often accidentally my friends won those tickets.. Free party for all! Still I put a lot of effort in the site, but it was only untill I learned about PHP + MYSQL (dynamic page generation) that my eyes really opened. "Now I don't need to copy paste all those links anymore!" Celenation turned into Daily-Fresh.net which was again about parties and festivals.
After a few years the time had come for my final graduation project and I'd rather not wanted to do that at one of the regular internship placements at Hilton, Disney or other international hotel chains. Instead I applied for a job / internship at TodaysArt.org - the international festival for art, music and technology. My internship got accepted and I started working on the marketing department.
5 years at TodaysArt Festival
At TodaysArt I discovered and learned about the other side of the festival-life: 'working your ass of around the clock for 2 days in the year'. The first years where the 'golden years' with big funding from governmental organisations and mega art installation projects in downtown The Hague. Later editions where more conservative financially wise, which required much creativity from everyone, as well as working together to, regardless of the budget, create another great edition, surpassing last year's event.My all-time favorite TodaysArt projects are the 100 meter high projections on the 'City Counsel Office' and the THX Landing Strip in The Hague's Shopping Street: at night Audio & Light artists had setup along the whole street some 100 Funktion One speakers and flashing lights setup like a landing strip of an International Airport (the theme of that year). By pushing a button they could 'jank' a Boeing 747 imitation flowing through the speakers. It was great and got many complaints from people living in the neighborhood too :)
Source: TODAYSART: THX: THE HAGUE INT'L from LUST NL on Vimeo. |
At TodaysArt I took care of the marketing, building websites, partnerships, setting up livestreams and later on also the apps for the first iphones. Day to day it was about promoting, getting as much attention for the festival in newspapers and websites.
I also had the change to setup another event totally apart from the festival on my own, called "Berlin Ruft An", which was a cooperation with the local event venue "Het Paard". Cutting edge music from a selection of performers from Berlin. In the meantime I had moved to Amsterdam and continued working at TodaysArt, commuting every day to The Hague.
 Logo for the Berlin Ruft An event (artwork: me and Ampellmaenchen |
The Twitter Bug and meeting my GF
After a couple of years at TodaysArt I noticed my attention shifted more and more towards the social internet. I was spending much of my time on Twitter, although I should work on the event so I decided to quit my job and make place on the payroll for fresh talent and more devoted people such as my good friend Vincent.Those early Twitter days actually feel a lot like these early days on Steemit: The vibe of a new network, new people, new connections, cool apps and initiatives.
Twitter connected me with people in the Netherlands who worked at the National Television and for example at the local Facebook of the Netherlands (Hyves (since its collapse bought and turned into a gamesite)). This was the time of Web2.0 - the birth of API's - interfaces to community websites- which enabled me to build apps on top of the 'Social Graph' of those big community sites.
I started building small 'fun' apps to run on top of the APIs of Twitter and that local Facebook called Hyves. Since the Dutch Twitter group was just a small community following each other my work got noticed and it landed me freelance gigs for making 'social advertising campaigns' and together with a partner in coding we started a small coding agency called Open & Sociaal - 'engagement in communities'. I ran the company by subletting a workspace in the then very young 'The Next Web' office by the way. Great guys and we have been in contact every since. Wonderful to have seen them grow from that crappy office to such a big event & media organisation.
The Open & Sociaal company was aptly named after Google's OpenSocial project (about widgets for social sites) and through that company I got an interview for the national newspaper De Volkskrant for an article about those OpenSocial widgets.
That interview was done by my not long thereafter girlfriend Heleen :) We stayed connected after the interview via emails and at a festival later that summer we met again and fell in love. We started living together soon thereafter and the crown on our love was the 'love boat' my first and only Steemboat.
 Me and my GF about a decade ago on the pink loveboat we still use to sail the canals of Amsterdam |
After Open & Sociaal I slowly got more interested into iPhone (and later Android) apps and started building a 'Social Location Based Audio Website' called Shoudio.com. Shoudio got me into making apps for third parties such as a tourguide app for the forest of the Dutch Park Service and many more, as you can see on the portfolio.
While running Shoudio I was working from another office in the Red Light District which I shared with yet another internet audio company, called Twones (and Shuffler.fm thereafter). A sort of HypeMachine competitor. The shared office space was great, we played a lot of Streetfighter and PES. And did some work. Through those office colleagues at Shuffler.fm I got introduced to Music Hackdays and we visited one in Berlin and Amsterdam.
Two years later nobody had picked up for another Amsterdam edition (it was 2012 now) so I decided to organise one.The MusicHackDay concept is open source, and the idea is that you voluntarily set one up. So that's what I did. It was a shitload of work to get it all done (sponsors, venue, catering, internet) but in the end it worked out and it was a great event. Here is review at Hypebot
 Thanking the MusicHackday Amsterdam 2012 sponsors - Source: MHD AMS 2012 album on Flickr |
2016 - a baby boy and the year of Steemit
Early april our son Viggo was born, so happy with him! He's a great baby and everything is super cliché :) Just before he was born we setup an ether miner rig in our side room. And when Viggo was born we also launched a webshop for babyclothes called LittlePoopFactory.com - you can buy baby rompers with a Smiling Poo Emoji and even pay with BTC! My gf, my son & I selling LittlePoopFactory items on The Next Web conference this May |
With the maternity leave I got into a bit slower waters. Still kitesurfed quite a lot, which is a great way to freshen up and reset and get totally into the zone. And then this summer I got introduced to Steemit through @beervangeer's introduction post. Beer and I are connected since that time at TodaysArt festival for which he has built a few remarkable installations.
Arriving at Steem for me this was all like 'wow' what's this? I tried some crappy posts (of which I am not proud) and then I decided to explore the possibilities of the blockchain for making apps on top of it. Thanks to work of @xeroc and @pharesim and not much later others such as @fabien and @jesta it was very easy to make cool blockchain 'read only' apps. Since then I started focussing on building apps for Steemit and (IMHO) thanks to the trending 'SteemStream' post I had unleashed quite some devs building great stuff thereafter on Steemit, which I started to collect on the SteemTools site.
For those interested, here is my Steem Portfolio:
- SteemStream - A visualisation of the live blockchain as it is written.
- SteemTools - A collection of all Steem apps.
- SteemFighter - A fun game mixing the good old arcade fighter with SteemPower.
- SteemStory - A story telling personalised stats page.
- Steem-O-Graph - A follower graph explorer
- Steemy Hot Or Not - Mimicking 'Hot or Not' by voting on the images of Steemit articles.
- SteeM.V.P. - An exploration of votes and reward shares, who is your MVP?
- RadioSteem - A consensus based web radio station
- I run a witness:
paynodeis his name: feel free to vote on him by filling in paynode on http://steemit.com/~witnesses - ...... soon more!
That's the gist of it!
Feel free to ask any questions below, however I'm a bit snoozy now as it is midnight and I spend all day on the beach with my family (and I want to drive tomorrow to Germany to do a 'PostIdent' to setup a German Bitcoin Bank account at Fidor & Bitcoin.de) So need to hit the hay first.
 Viggo and I today on the beach - my Steem tattoo got washed away by the salty water I guess :D |