Location: The Netherlands (UTC+2)
Expertise: SQL Server, PowerShell, DevOps (I try my best), Automation
Contact: Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog
I’m a SQL Server DBA from The Netherlands.
After college I started working at a school group where I started as an application engineer. Maintaining the application but also the database. I got more and more interested in databases and even got to a point that I helped the developers of the software improve their software.
I then started to work for a secondment firm working for various companies in automotive, healthcare and financial industries.
Fast forward to 2014 I worked at a pension fund company. At that moment I was thinking of doing more in the data community but had no idea how to do that.
In that year Redgate organized a contest to describe your worst day as a DBA. You could win a cruise, called the SQL Cruise in that day, which was a small scale conference with some of the best speakers around.
I had my share of unfortunate events in the past and I wrote my story. A few months go by and I suddenly see an e-mail from Redgate that my story was chosen and that I won the contest.
I cannot emphasize this enough, but SQL Cruise (now Tech Outbound) has changed my live in many ways. It was at this event that I learned that
- everybody has something to say
- everybody is a genius in their own way
- everybody is creative
- you don’t have to think your ideas or not worth posting
Several people, including the speakers, convinced me to start speaking and so I did.
My first session was an online session. I was nervous, sometimes I had to think about some things to say, but overall the session was good and the demos worked. In the end Aaron Nelson, the user group leader, told me the number of people that joined my session, over 300!
I thought, if I inspired one person with my talk it was already good, but apparently my talk was something that people were interested in.
Fast forward to today.
I’m a regular speaker at smaller and bigger events. I’ve presented at PASS Summit, SQL Bits and various other events like SQL Saturday.
I’m a major contributor to the dbatools project and I’m a maintainer of several open-source projects.
Because of all those contributions I became a Microsoft MVP in 2019, to be exact a Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP.
I’m a believer that anybody has something interesting to say. That’s why I wanted to become a speaking mentor to help people get started. It’s that first hurdle that you will have to take, but believe me, it’s worth it.
I never had that mentor that helped me get started, but I had the community that nudged me in the right direction.
I’m here for you if you need help.
You can reach me through my LinkedIn or through Twitter and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
