1978-1984, KGL in Arnhem, secondary school

Final exams in Dutch, English, Mathematics I and II, Physics, Chemistry, Biology.

1984-1990, Computer Science at the Radboud University

Primarily focused on the technical side of Informatics, with Physics as minor. Master degree project was named "Real-Time Fault Tolerance in Multi-Controller Systems".

1990-1996, System programmer at the National Aerospace Laboratories NLR

Developer of software to implement network-wide system administration. Besides that, participant in a few larger development projects.

1996-2002, trainer for AT Computing

Teacher and course developer for UNIX, C, Perl, and Internet related subjects at this (in Holland) renowned UNIX training company.

2002-now, self-employed

On this moment working as free-lancer under the name MARKOV Solutions. My primar field of interest is extreme complex programming problems and internet developments.

The fundaments of my computer related activities were laid at De Jonge Onderzoekers (Young Scientists), where I came in touch with their self-made computer in 1978. I learned to program BASIC and assembly, and then designed a few computers myself.

During my study Computing Science (Informatics) at the Radboud University, I was most attracted by the technical subjects. And only when I had taken all the classes they had to offer, my time had come to finish. My Master Thesis, entitled Fault Tolerance in Real-Time Multi-Controller Systems, implemented a system with many computers which continuously check and correct another. An example of such a system can be found in the Space Shuttle. Complex systems fascinate me.

After my degree, I came to work for the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratories NLR. Located below sea-level in a Dutch polder, the NLR is mainly occupied with research and development in the airplanes, airport control, and satellites. To support this work, it has a very modern computing center. On the moment I started working at the NLR, they just had bought their second UNIX computer. When I left, they had 130 from 20 different brands.

My task at the Computing Center was to organize the centralized backup and user registration. Therefore, I wrote enormous amounts of C and shell scripts. Besides, I participated in a few large scale software projects.

During my stay at the NLR, the World Wide Web emerged. The NLR was one of the first places where WWW got implemented. As hobby project, I helped with the development of The Dutch Home Page, the tenth website (in order of appearance) in the Netherlands. On this very moment, I have more than twelve websites. Regularly, new site are added to that list.

After six years at the NLR, I wanted to learn more. By joining the renowned UNIX training company AT Computing I could dedicate my time on UNIX system administration, website development, and Perl and C programming. In total, I gave about ten different courses, of which I had developed three.

At AT Computing, I came in touch with Perl. It became my preferred language in the last five years: it is the fastest language to implement all my ideas. Sometimes, I use C or Java to support Perl. On this moment, I maintain five Open Source Perl modules of my own hand. They are available from CPAN, the central Perl software archive. Most of these modules are e-mail related.

In short:

• experienced administrator for many UNIX brands, but recently mainly Linux;
• experienced programmer (in total 30 languages used), recently mostly Perl and C, some Java; and
• experienced website developer, both the technical as the user interfacing aspect.

When I visit a conference, I tend to give a presentation. My main subjects are Internet and Perl. An overview of my conference appearences follows. The numbers represent the number of short presentations (usually 30 or 45 minutes) and tutorials (usually 3 hours) that I presented at the event.

• NLUUG 1995, Unix User Group NL (1/0) best paper award
• TNNC 1999, Terena-NordUNet Networking Conference in Lund, Sweden (2/0)
• NLUUG 1999, Unix User Group NL (1/0)
• SANE 2000, int. System Admin and Networking Event in Maastricht NL (0/1)
• YAPC::Europe 2001 in Amsterdam NL (1/1)
• German Perl Workshop 2002 in Bonn, Germany (1/1)
• SANE 2002, System Admin and Networking Event in Maastricht NL (1/0)
• YAPC::Europe 2002 in München, Germany (2/1)
• German Perl Workshop 2003 in Bonn, Germany (3/0)
• NLUUG 2003, Unix User Group NL (1/0), best paper award
• YAPC::NorthAmerica 2003 in Boca Raton, Florida (3/1)
• YAPC::Europe 2003 in Paris, France (1/1)
• NINJA, Alumni meeting computer science students Radboud University (0/1)
• Dutch Perl Workshop 2004 (1/1)
• YAPC::Europe 2004 in Belfast, N-Ireland (2/0)
• German Perl Workshop 2005 in Dresden, Germany (3/0)
• Dutch Perl Workshop 2005 (1/0)
• NLUUG 2005 Spring, Unix User Group NL (1/0)
• YAPC::Europe 2005 in Braga, Portugal (1/0)
• NLUUG 2005 Fall, Unix User Group NL, best paper award (1/0)
• NINJA (2006), Alumni meeting computer science students Radboud University (0/1)
• Holland Open Software Conference 2006 in Amsterdam NL (1/0)
• German Perl Workshop 2006 in Bochum, Germany (BoF)
• YAPC::Europe 2006 in Birmingham, UK (2/1)
• Dutch Perl Workshop 2006 (1/0)
• Holland Open innovative projects 2007
• Dutch Perl Workshop 2007, Arnhem NL (2/0)
• German Perl Workshop 2007, München DE (1/1)
• NLLGG lectures (2007), Utrecht NL (1/0)
• YAPC::Europe 2007, Vienna Austria (2/1)
• European Linux Conference (2007), Cambridge UK (1/0)
• Amsterdam Perl Mongers (2007), Diemen NL (2/2)
• NINJA (2008), Alumni Radboud University (1/0)
• Dutch Perl Workshop 2008, Arnhem NL (1/0)
• Amsterdam Perl Mongers (2008), Diemen NL (1/0)

Visits to conferences (like OSCON) without a talk are left out. More details about the presentation and papers can be found at http://mark.overmeer.net/papers.html

Software development (1978-)

Too much to list, but recently mainly about 20 (some huge) perl modules.
Software development for SIDN, the Dutch internet name-space authority (2005-)

Website development (1995-)

Many simple websites, for example Stichting NLnet, Element, Arion Muziek, and Craneveer.

Satellite image administration system (2004-)

Development of the whole clustered infrastructure plus all software for an archive with huge photo's (mainly satellite and aerial pictures) on terabytes of cheap disks. Access via a web-interface.

Teacher Linux/UNIX and Perl (1996-)

Substitute teacher at AT Computing (2002-)
Teacher "Linux" and "Perl" at the School voor ICT in Arnhem, part of the school for intermediate vocational eduction Rijn-IJssel (2002-2004)

Daily UNIX/Linux administration (1988-)

Maintenance of many (own) websites and domains (1990-)
Netwerk backbone development and administration of the Geomatics Business Park. (2004-)
Administration of a small company's network with central Linux system and a few PCs (2004-)

Advice and design

DESIRE2, evaluation of the results of 15 research projects which were sponsored by the European Union (2000)
Consulting a web-shop to restructure its activities and software development (2004)

A more up-to-date and detailed list can be found at http://solutions.overmeer.net.

• secretary of NINJA, the alumni organization for former Computer Science students,
• board member NLUUG
• member council of the NGI
• long-distance walks, and
• play volleyball on a non-competition level.