I have an analytic mind, and like to understand how things work. As a kid I was often tinkering with electrical and electronic devices, and later got into IT through the Free Software world. Through this, I've build up a decade of experience in programming and self-hosting services, including e-mail and distributed social networks.
2022 - current
Developer
Git BE: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma
Git FE: https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma-fe
Akkoma is a fork of Pleroma, a distributed social network platform aimed at micro-blogging. It is written in Elixir, an Erlang-based functional language aimed at creating low-latency, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. Currently I'm working on and off on streamlining communication of a custom markup language between servers. This work includes collaboration with other projects, writing a formal specification, writing a custom parser as a reusable library, and making changes both to the Vue front-end and Elixir back-end. Notable organisations who use Akkoma include Erlang Solutions and the Linux Foundation.
2018 - 2022
Developer
Git BE: https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma
Git FE: https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma-fe
While already dabbling in IT, Pleroma was my first real deep dive into programming and self-hosting. After hosting this software myself, I started contributing to the project by providing support through the support chat, improving documentation, and doing bug fixes and implementing new features.
2021 - current
Contributor/Developer
OpenStreetMap is a public map of the world, provided as an open dataset, free to share and use. I started contributing to the dataset in 2021, often through ad-hoc contributions, while other times as part of a bigger project. I did work for the Lili app for example, a routing planner for people with visual impairment by blind care institution Licht En Liefde. For mapping I make heavy use of Mapcomplete, a software project which was started at the request of Tourisme Vlaanderen, to which I also contributed code. Other big names who use OpenStreetMap data are TomTom, Meta, and Bing maps.
2020 - 2024
Co-founder
Linux Living was part of Ecoliving, located in the Langestraat in Bruges, open for people interested in doing social projects. Linux Living was a place where people interested in IT, and the broader collaborative nature that comes with it, could come to talk and tinker. It mostly provided a relaxed environment where people could share projects and ideas, or just talk with like-minded people. As part of this project, we also supplied some IT services to Ecoliving, like making sure there was working wifi, and computers volunteers could use for digitally signing required paper work.
2017 - current
As application support, I am the first contact regarding problems who need a more technical analysis. It requires translating end-users' problems into reproducible steps, and using a general understanding of the architecture and technology to figure out where problems may occur and find both short term as well as more fundamental long term solutions. It requires communicating technical concepts in a non-technical way, as well as properly and structurally communicating with operations and development when more specific knowledge or action is required.
2005-2016
As a technician my primary task was fixing machines. This meant figuring out how an already defect machine works, what's wrong with it, and eventually fix it. This includes replacing broken parts, but also find and implement improvements to the machine's design to make sure that the same problem won't happen again. Besides problem solving, this job requires communicating with different types of people, each with their own set of technical expertise, from machine operators to suppliers and external technicians.