Since I spend about 95% of my time in front of a computer lately, I thought, I might as well fill the other 5% with useless blogging.

On a more serious note; this blog is intended to serve as a place where I can post some of my experiences with trying to stay up-to-date when it comes to technology while at the same time trying to keep a business up-and-running (of course I’m not doing this all alone, there are numerous colleagues within SpringSource I can depend on.

On a more serious note; this blog is intended as a place where I do the occasional writing on all things business, pleasure and the occasional bit gadgetery (is that an English word ;-)? ). We’ll see where it ends, maybe one day this blog might get a real focus, maybe it’ll just end up being a big bunch of blabbering.

Of course I’ll shortly introduce myself: I was born in a small village in the middle of nowhere (nowadays there is no middle of nowhere anymore in the Netherlands, it’s just traffic jams starting at 6.30am). I moved away from Amsterdam to Utrecht early 2005. Utrecht is the city where I’ve lived for almost four years while studying at university. Utrecht is a somewhat smaller city, about 30 minutes South-East from Amsterdam–no wait, that’s during night-time, it’s about 90 minutes when driving there during the day. It’s got the same (but fewer) canals as Amsterdam and there are coffeeshops here too ;). Our offices are in Amsterdam and Delft, but fortunately I don’t have to go there very often, as I’m working from home a lot these days (when I’m actually in Holland).

I’ve started working in IT mid-nineties. After doing the silly stuff everybody’s been doing (typing up small-time websites, thinking you could rule the world by typing public static void main(String[] args) { /* do it */ } and etcetera) I started my first serious business. After I got fed up with that because I didn’t learn anything new, I joined a startup called SmartHaven where I met a few of my current colleagues (one of them actually hired me). I did a lot of cool stuff during my time there and so did the company. The whole thing focused on providing an intelligent assistant based on semantic and neural networks and other nifty AI stuff I never have even tried to understand. We were finally taken over by a publishing company and that’s where the fun (read: my life as an entrepreneur) started (small correction: I did have fun before).

After having some beers in a bar, we had the amazing idea to change the world and voila: JTeam was born. Since then we hired a number of people and did some even cooler projects. All this with the focus on ultimately satisfying customers and technologically challenging ourselves. Somewhere early 2003 I got involved in the development of Spring Framework. I have this ‘five-minute rule’ that I always apply when looking at new technology. When in five minutes a technology appears to be anything but useful, doesn’t show any potential and if in those same five minutes I wasn’t able to download the distribution and get the first sample up-and-running, I forget about the technology and never look back at it. Spring passed the five-minute test! I got involved in the development, wrote a lot of the initial documentation and started to do some presentations here and there.

Early 2005, I started the started the Dutch branch of SpringSource, the company employing most of the people behind Spring and other technologies such as AspectJ. We educate lots of people (of smaller and bigger companies) to use those technologies. Next to that, we also advise people on how to implement scalable applications and conduct reviews and assessments. Rod, Juergen, Steven, Colin, Rob, Adrian and the rest of the team (growing every month) provide an exciting environment to work in. Together we provide the technology to make things happen. Using the right tools and the right processes, it’s really possible to deliver software on time and without spending too much money. With SpringSource we help a large group of companies doing just that.

Like I said before, this blog does not have a particular focus. More technical and Spring-related articles used to go up here, but are published on the SpringSource Team Blog now instead. Here, I write about business, entrepreneurship, my trips, gadgets and more.

As for hobbies, I don’t have many. When not working (if you want to keep up-to-date on several technologies and have hobbies, let me give you one advice: don’t start a company) I either spend my time relaxing in a bar while enjoying a couple of beers, doing some sports (riding my bicycle, swimming, running, kite boarding), riding my motorcycle (although that hasn’t happened a lot lately), enjoying short breaks (people have the impression that I go on holidays a lot) or in front of the computer, because I thought I finished my work, but in fact I didn’t. Oh, and I do a little photography as well. Hmmm, maybe I do have hobbies afterall