Nice to meet you!

First off, I'm not too sure where this is all going to go, but introducing myself here seemed to be a good place to get started! I found Steem through one of the many inspiring video from @jerrybanfield. So here I am having a look around and enjoying the perks of discovering something new🤘.

Design, Technology, Life Improvement - How it all comes together

👆 A way to old picture of me back at my internship!

I've studied Multimedia Design in community college and got my Bachelors degree in Media Technology (BSc.). Both privately and professionally I have a passion for anything technological that helps to make our lives easier or more efficient (no, not more lazy!). Obviously this comes in many forms and flavors, but my particular flavor is web technologies. Anytime I can build something on the web which helps others in any way, I'll be heading to the office with a smile on my face.

During my studies I quickly discovered that programming (back-end) was my poison. Even though I am now a fulltime back-end developer, I am still very creative. Not so much with colors and fonts, but in coming up with new ideas and solutions for technical problems or cool feature for whatever platform I'm working on. Creativity is so much broader then just design. Personally I mostly use creative techniques in my daily life then actually being "creative".

🏃💨 Busy, Busy, Yet Free Guy!

I have quite a few hobbies which take up most of my free time. A big part of that is voluntary work, but luckily also some relaxing things!

Motorcycle 🏍

First of all, the one I had been waiting for ever since I was a small kid, driving my own motorcycle! As a kid I used to "ride bitch" with my dad and imagine I'd be driving myself. The fact that you are in the outdoors and can pretty much ride anywhere you want has always appealed to me, freedom. Now I finally have my license and get to ride this pretty machine 👇!

Snowboarding 🏂

Next up is my other passion for freedom; Snowboarding! Ever since I was 16 I've been going to Austria to do some shredding. For me these holidays are another form of freedom. When you are there, the rest of your life and the world temporarily doesn't exist. It's just you and the mountain and that's it. Well... And lots of beer afterwards of course 🍻. I loved it so much that I decided to become a travel guide for youth groups. I always went on these trips in youth groups myself so I knew the drill well. Now every Christmas I get to take 20-ish young guys and girls to Austria and show them the ropes of snowboarding (and drinking beer, but shhhh!).

👆 I'm the one on the right in red.

CoderDojo ☯

A little bit less about freedom, but more about achieving something bigger then myself is CoderDojo. I will definitely be writing up some posts about this so I won't go into too much detail here but in short: "CoderDojo is a volunteer led coding community for children aged 7 to 17.". I got into this about 4 years ago, starting up a dojo in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Now, 4 years later I am the chairman of the regional body for our country and responsible for 80 dojo's! Well responsible is not the right word, but the regional body lays down the foundation for new dojo's and helps existing dojo's with whatever they need. It's not like they couldn't run without me, but it's pretty cool to be in a position where you are the connecting link between dojo's, the HQ (Dublin, Ireland) and any other third parties wanting to get involved. I'll leave the rest to be discovered in future posts 😎.

👆 Me explaining what CoderDojo is during a conference in The Hague

Capturing life, the universe and everything else 📸

I'm actually amazed I'm still going on with these hobbies, it makes me realize I really do... do a lot! So this one is smaller hobby, but a very fun one nonetheless. Once upon a time I bought myself a DSLR camera and started playing around with it. I am in no way a professional photographer, I have never asked a single payment for any of my work, I just love to play around with it. This is also a merger of creativity and technology. I'm not so much a creative photographer, but more of a technical photographer. Hence I mostly enjoy capturing events in a sort of journalistic way. That way I can play around with different techniques, while the composition is mostly following standards. You can find my work on Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/christianvermeulen.

👆 One of my personal favorites

So much more...

Believe it or not but this is not even all! Though these are the hobbies I spend most time on I also spent time on:

Playing the drums
Tattoos
Music
Going to concerts / festivals
Occasionally being the light-technician at improv theater
Going sailing / yachting
...How do I still have a social life? 🤔

Am I into Cryptocurrency As well? Sort of..

So what about cryptocurrency? Well, I'm pretty new to that too. I've seen what happened with Bitcoin over the years but never really cared until it was too late. Then I saw Ethereum come around the corner and almost invested, but didn't. Then a few months later I was pretty much like 😱. So now I've decided to look into it a bit more and see whatever it brings. Mostly I look at it like I would a casino, I will only put money in it which I'm prepared to lose, but who knows what the future brings!

Bring it on Steem! 💪

I think I've told you quite a bit about myself now, and yet I probably could go on even longer but I'm pretty sure you all will have plenty of opportunity to get to know me later. It's a pleasure meeting you all and I'm looking forward to seeing what Steem has in store for me 😃. If there is anything you would like to know, feel free to ask me in the comments!