(I do have similar pages floating around on the Wild Web, but my aim is to make this one the canonical version. I'll try and seduce Google into making this page the "I'm feeling lucky" hit for "Steven Noels".)
Howdy, stranger! I don't have the habit of tracking referers or checking webserver logs, so you are and will remain a stranger as far as I am concerned. Maybe we met in real life, or we have been mailing with each other, or Google has sent you over here. Anyways: welcome!
Also known as: much more than you would ever like to know about Steven Noels. Don't say you haven't been warned!
I was born as a male member of the human species in 1970 on some autumn morning. I live in Belgium, which is a EU country, in a lovely city called Ghent. I used to be living in some other part of the country, where my folks and my only brother are still living, but we decided to stay in Ghent after our studies. We means me and my wife, who I know since 1988, have been married to since 1994, and with whom I've been producing a set of the finest offspring, two boys and a girl, born respectively in 1997, 1998 and 2002.
Dutch (or rather: Flemish) is my native language. I speak, read and write English quite fluently, French more or less the same (lacking practice), I can make sense of written German, and make a fool of myself in other languages. I've been visiting countries abroad, and consider myself to be a leftist, socialist democrat, in the sense that we have been dropped on this little globe, which means we are in this together, whether we like it or not.
I was raised as a Catholic, but now that Faith has became just another rack in the supermarket, I figure it isn't fair anymore to call for God's help if you don't care about the Guy when things are going fine. So while my kids are baptized, we don't bother going to church anymore. Plus there's something deeply insane about a centralized, patriarchal organization which is afraid of gay people and birth prevention.
Together with a friend, we started our own company in 2001. Outerthought is a small, geek-level technical Open Source Java & XML competence support center. We have three main activities: mentoring of budding Java & XML developers, support and training for the Apache Cocoon web application development platform, and open source framework development. Outerthought has released two open source projects so far: xReporter, a web-based database reporting application, and Daisy, a content management framework.
Before Outerthought, I've been working for a number of other companies, mostly as a consultant specializing in XML matters. I started with SGML pretty early on - around 1990. I made this (mostly self-grown) skill into a career decision by joining Wolters-Kluwer - a legal publisher - after graduating. After Wolters-Kluwer, I also worked for a family-owned typesetting company, a French-spoken e-whatever consulting shop, and then I joined the largest Belgian internet company when the dotcom bubble was almost at its biggest. When the bubble bursted, I found myself on the streets, which was the best occasion to finally take the plunge and not work for a boss anymore.
Though I don't consider myself to be a developer by a long shot, I am fairly technical and understand Java things quite well. I'm more of a generalist however, rather than a specialist. I dabble around in XSLT and Python to compensate for that. There was a time this was causing me frustration, but over time I found out that there's plenty of room for generalists, which suits me fine. At Outerthought, I teach most of the XML-related courses, and I've been sighted doing talks and presentations about Cocoon as well. I've been doing various sorts of public speaking, during conferences, workshops, seminars and the like. I'm long past the stage of being nervous when standing in front of an audience, but I don't think this has to do with talent - rather indifference mixed with exercise. Though this might sound differently, I tend to be quite modest and down-to-earth about my professional achievements.
I'm involved in Open Source as well. I organize and host the annual Cocoon GetTogether, an international meeting of Cocoon developers & users, and have been a Cocoon community member for quite some time. I'm a Member of the Apache Software Foundation. I'm pretty opinionated about Open Source in general, and building a (small) business around Open Source specifically. I have a keen interest in open source software licensing and community aspects.
Being a (happily) married man with three kids, playtime is a mixture of shared and solitary pleasures. We're not the type of family which can sit at home for days in a row, so we tend to go places quite regularly. Over the years, I learned to enjoy visiting the seaside (mostly Cadzand, Ghent is quite close to Zeeuws-Vlaanderen), but we love strolling around in Ghent as well. Needless to say, with me and the wife both working, we have our share of home-tending drudgery going on during the weekends, though we're not much into DIY and house renovating.
I'm an avid reader, books, magazines and blogs alike. I watch television, but without much passion. I listen to music quite a lot, mostly on the radio but I also have a nice eclectic CD collection - with both old and modern music sitting nicely next to each other. My favourite radio station is Studio Brussel, while I might be a tad too old for that.
My main hobby is photography. I own a bit of gear and love shooting pictures, and try hard to become better at it.
Some time ago, I made a quite personal countdown about myself on my blog. That's pretty much who I am and what I do.
I tend to prefer a few close friends over collecting lots of acquaintances. While I'm not socially inept, I feel better at ease in smaller gatherings of like-minded people. Within my circle of friends, I can be very open about myself, and very caring about others. I do feel bad about the current state of the world, and will try to convince people that we're all in this together, and that we should feel compassionate about each other. I believe people should take into account the bigger picture and not care only about themselves. Capitalistic liberalism hasn't brought us much in that perspective.
I've been putting up personal and not-so-personal things on the Web for quite some time. Here's a list for the investigative types amongst you.