About me

My name is Roderik Muit. I am available in the designs 'suit' and 'geek'. A combination of those is also possible ;-)
(And if you'd like to know me through knowing the usual statistics and my connections, you can check my LinkedIn, FaceBook or InterNations profile.)

I've been around since april 27th, 1974. I'm single, and currently (temporarily) without a fixed place to live. That might sound strange but both things are to my complete comfort.
(I own 2 apartments in Amsterdam & Utrecht, The Netherlands, which I rented out for half a year or more. From October 2008 to February 2009 I lived in Budapest, Hungary, with the intention of helping to start a growing pan-European Drupal company from their new location. Right now I'm staying with friends in the USA, while working out the next step into the future.)

I have been working in the Internet / IT-business (and living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) from January 1995, having started my working life at 20 (after 1.5 years of studying at Delft Technical University). The first 4.5 years were spent working at the RIPE NCC which I've seen growing from 7 to 65 people in that timeframe, first doing 'customer relationship administration', then Perl programming and Unix system administration. After that I was employed at Koster Engineering, working together with a close high school friend on database programming in Visual Basic / Microsoft Access.

I've been self employed from April 2004. In my period in Amsterdam (until 2008) I've had only two major assignments, at ABN AMRO bank and at Tommy Hilfiger Europe. Both assignments started out as a project for one or a few months, but ended up having me around as long as possible (until the role of a non-permanent employee was not feasible anymore.) I have done smaller assignments at the same time, a.o. with Koster Engineering, in order to be able to keep my official status as a 'one-man company'.

After I was 'relieved from duty' and it was apparent that I could not get a freelance job in the financial industry anymore, I decided to turn to Drupal; a system which had known as a user for 4 years. Building on an information-sharing platform was something I'd love to do professionally, and I also loved the sense of a shared community, which was also present in my job at the RIPE NCC (a.o. organizing conferences). I registered for DrupalCon Szeged in August 2008, met up with the owners of VoiceHero there, and immediately made preparations to move to Budapest. I learned a lot there, however in February 2009 the time had come to move on.

What the future will bring? I hope and expect, more of Drupal.

Future dreams / things on the side

I've consciously created a situation for myself where I could go abroad for any period of time without 'burning any bridges' at home in The Netherlands. The exact reason for my latest 'career shift from banking/VBA to Drupal' was not intentional, but the process leading to being able to do so, was conscious.

Though it is not visible in the work I do so far, I am inclined to 'thinking about society, its future and my role in it'. Especially during my 'banking days' I was convinced that there should be more useful ways of spending my time than 'working full time automating big company administrations in the safe haven of Amsterdam', and aware that I have the possibility to do so. I'm beginning to figure out what that 'more useful thing' is going to be for me. The only professional experience I really have is in ICT, and that does not seem to open up a wide spectrum of things.

I was thinking for a while, with the current worldwide shortage of ICT staff and the pervasiveness of the internet, there should be room somewhere for me to do something that diverts more income from the 'rich world' to a place where it's needed more... but that hasn't been more than a vague notion so far.

...in the meantime, something else has come up. I'm now the treasurer/secretary of a Dutch foundation that supports 'free speech' related projects. Its name is Stichting BCCO (and frankly, I should still revise the wording of the "Background Philosophy" section and get some more pages together). It wasn't started by me but the whole thing is growing on me. In the past years I'm experiencing more and more, that the way society handles its 'freedom of speech' actually does not lead to a better understanding of the truth, because too many people seem to be afraid of the negative personal effects of 'speaking out for themselves, against pervasive untruths'. (In the Netherlands, this is quite apparent in the 'Islam debate' which is going on, and in what details of that debate are not going on.)

The fine print

...is just that. I have opinions. I have accepted the fact that some people will turn against me for having them, and that this will persent the occasional issue over the next few years. Even though these opinions are and have been no issue in my work: it still scares some people who don't like to think. [read more...]