D-talk - Social

Career change

nospam@example.com (Mark van der Velden) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 13:37:00 +0000

I started as developer in Pascal, Java and C. After noticing this interesting phenomena called the world wide web I was eager to participate. Convinced that PHP was a perfect language to quickly build web-applications, I started building websites even before the H in PHP received the officialmeaning "Hypertext".

After developing websites for a while, I was convinced I knew it all. I quickly stumbled upon the obvious, that I knew nothing. After learning from other developers, reading many books and constantly trying to improve myself, I found out that software-development isn't easy at all. In fact, it's very hard to do right.

In my 5+ years of professional experience in building large web-applications. I learned to identify many of the problems of software development. During many hours of consultancy jobs and by working at Ibuildings (one of the best PHP companies in the world), I'm able to explain and express those problems, to developers and to managers.

I'm a developer and open-source enthousiast at heart, with real understanding of business needs. I know what drives developers, I understand managers and I know what the business wants. I'm able to translate between those massively different entities.

I started at Ibuildings in 2008 and I've worked there with great pleasure, but it's time for something new. As of 2013 I will continue doing the thing I love most, as a freelance consultant.

I'm available as a solutions architect. I can help design your new platform, I can give a second opinion on your existing infrastructure, I can help you with assessing the technical ceiling of your development team. I can help setup proper tooling to give you better insight in the quality of your products, by making quality measurable. I can review your development processes and make recommendations with the end goal, of introducing a better overal quality of code and a healthier development team.

I offer my services in the Netherlands, but I'm always open to interesting opportunities (My linkedin profile)

Thanks for reading!

The way a developer community works

nospam@example.com (Mark van der Velden) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I was watching the talk "Standing out in the crowd" by speaker Kirrily Robert at OSCON 09. And tweeted about this (http://twitter.com/Dynom/statuses/3142970947/) and when I read it back it got me thinking. And I decided to blog about it.

Much of what Skud (Kirrily) says is without a doubt true, but doesn't apply sole to women. It's generally the way it "works" in the open source world and between developers in general. There is a certain attitude that is simply there, not just between language fanbois but also between developers in general. Your sexual orientation, sex, hair color or religion has nothing to do with that. Partially I think the attitude is there to improve yourself, at least that's how it works for me. You try to be as good as the one you think is better then you are.

In a lot of communities, you don't explicitly mention your gender. You simply join a community (subscribe to a form or e-mail list) and you start posting/reading etc. And unless your nick is 'Girlygirl99' it's not too obvious in name also, so I wonder how people treat anyone based on their online identity. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, it's not that I don't believe it, I simply have never seen discrimination towards sex or sexual orientation in any community I've been in.

And maybe it differs a lot per community, I'm involved in the PHP community and from what I hear it has a small percentage PHP developers that are female, and they even have their own "support site" PHPWomen.org. And they seem to do pretty well.

As Skud quotes in her talk, some projects have a "diversity statement". I think it's nonsense to mention it at any community/project. It should only be mentioned if it doesn't say "everyone". If you want to be part of a community, simply step in. Order a beer, listen and join the conversation. If you lack the assertive skills to do that, it's not something the community can do about. It's something you need to improve on. If a community helps beginners, well that is a (big) plus.

Personally I don't care what you are, as long as you aren't (secretly) part of Skynet.

Comments are more then welcome.

I R Returned!

nospam@example.com (Mark van der Velden) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:54:00 +0000

A few days ago I got back from Norway, beautiful country! But boring as hell (Went to Rana and the artic circle and some sightseeing). So if you go, bring your camera and leave your kids at home! Special thanks to my dear friend Kathrin who was our hostes, tourguide and the best company we could wish for! A few sight-seeing photo's:

Going to Norway!

nospam@example.com (Mark van der Velden) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:52:31 +0000

Tomorrow I'll be leaving to visit a friend in Norway. Looking forward to meet her for a long time (last time it was in April/June or something) and we had good fun then! So gl and cya when I get back!