http://outerthought.org/media/stevenn-eating-fries.jpg
Hi there!
I'm Steven Noels, stevenn@outerthought.org, living in Ghent, Belgium. 32 years old, happily married and father of three kids: Tim, Sander and Saar.
I am a Apache Forrest and Cocoon committer and enjoy working on documentation logistics. And when my family is starving, I run a small Java, XML and Open Source company together with a friend of mine.
We've founded Outerthought in October of 2001, and have been doing quite a bit of Java and XML training, often focused around Cocoon since then. In July 2002, we hired Bruno Dumon, a kick-ass Java developer who has been doing Cocoon development for big commercial projects in the past. In order to maintain our technical edge, we are now also doing some projects based on Cocoon, mainly background drudgery and deep-technical stuff. It's still early days for our little company, but we are gradually becoming a Cocoon competence center, doing deep-technology plumbing and building components-for-Cocoon-developers.
The reason why I'm here is mostly because of the community-aspect of open source development. It teaches me how to work with a group based on each individual's merits, rather than its financial backings or position on the social ladder. It really shows that you can do a much better job if you are prepared to do the thinking and reasoning out in the open, with your fellow peers challenging you (intellectually).
That's about it 