KUDOS - IT consultant and FOSS supporter

I am Patrick Van der Veken and I am a professional IT consultant with many years of experience in system & database administration and managing operations in larger corporate environments. I have an educational background in Applied Economics but I have always treasured a great interest in Information Technology.

During the 80's I was a fond user of the MSX home computer system which gave me the chance get hands-on with a computer environment that provided both great educational opportunities, - i.e. programming - and fun (remember the good old 64KB games!). In the course of my university studies I came into contact with the IBM PC platform in its earliest incarnation (8086, Hercules, ...) and soon after that also the early, public Internet. It was a time when dial-up was the most convenient way to get online and most available information sources very much relied on text only formats - simple HTML, IRC etc. I have since then not let go of the Internet and learned much about the OS platform that gave birth to the Internet, i.e. UNIX. Hasn't computer technology come an incredible way since then?

My core IT skills revolve around technologies that are mostly or preferably powered by UNIX. My favourite UNIX flavours are HP-UX and Linux but I am also pretty comfortable on Solaris and would love to get more exposure on AIX systems. One of my strengths is the ability to grasp and support the vertical stack of application + database + operating system that is the typical setup for most environment in the Open Systems world. It helps alot when you can talk to and understand people from across the proverbial technical and functional fences. You can read a lot more about my CV and skills on my LinkedIn page.

I am a certified HP-UX administrator and have passed the LPIC-1/2 exams. I also support - financially and otherwise - several FOSS projects and software (past & present):

• Free Software Foundation
• Sourceforge
• Drupal
• Tikiwiki
• RedNotebook
• ...