uProfile September 2018: Henk Boelman

H5YR, Henk!

This month’s uProfile has been using Umbraco for many, many years. But even though his day job doesn’t involve Umbraco as such, he’s still a very passionate Umbracian. Henk is active in the Dutch Umbraco User Group and he even was a speaker at this year's Codegarden where he talked about AI and Umbraco. And then he uses his technical skills and knowledge for something truly admirable (just wait and see)! We are super proud to have Henk Boelman as the September 2018 uProfile:

uProfile September 2018: Henk Boelman

Working for: Heroes – Think Digital

Role: Cloud Solution Architect / Microsoft AI MVP

Country: The Netherlands

Time working with Umbraco: 8 years

Your favourite Umbraco moment?

There have been so many great things happening after I got involved with Umbraco, it's given me so much more than just a CMS.

One of the best things I guess is getting into public speaking. My first talk was during a Dutch Umbraco User Group meetup about continuous delivery. After given many talks the past years, a personal achievement was speaking at Codegarden this year about my two favorite topics, AI and Umbraco.

What in your Umbraco career are you most proud of?

That has been a while ago, I think somewhere around 2012 when I was still a developer and did my first big Umbraco project. We had been working for months on an Umbraco 4 website for a large bank in the Netherlands. It was awesome to see that hundreds of websites were served from one Umbraco instance and content editors where using the system we designed.

What about Umbraco keeps you coming back for more?

There is always something new going on, either new cool add-ons that make your life as a developer easier, like Latch, the new people you meet on the different Umbraco events around the world or initiatives like umbraCoffee.

What are you currently working on?

My day job is being an architect on large scale Azure implementations and building intelligent solutions using lots of different AI components.

In the evening and weekends, I work on some Umbraco projects like www.RoadTripAfrica.com. I have been working with them from the beginning, starting out with a small Umbraco 4 website and I got the chance to see the company grow and expand using Umbraco over the past years.

What is your top 3 best tips for an Umbraco newbie?

Go to Codegarden
Go join your local user group (search for "Umbraco" on meetup.com)
Share what you have created, solved or think with the community

Any aspirations for your future?

I recently joined the board of the Dutch Umbraco User Group NGO and we are now organizing the yearly Dutch Umbraco festival (DUUGFEST), you should check out this year’s speakers. I would love to keep doing this and build a strong and diverse community in the Netherlands.

What is on your desk at work?

I love to play around with new AI/Smart technology and see what new devices can do and how they work. On my desk now is a Invoke speaker, still figuring out if a speech interface is useful for me. A few days ago, I received an Intel RealSense camera, a depth camera and I’m looking forward to use that in combination with some machine learning models.

Tell us something we didn't know about your...

Besides all the technical work, I run a small travel agency which organizes tours and safaris through Uganda. Me and some other volunteers run an NGO that support young children to go to school and we go from school to school to do medical outreach.

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A massive H5YR to Henk 😀! If you’d like to connect with Henk, you can find him on Twitter: @hboelman and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henkboelman/

Henk also has a blog that you should go check out: https://www.henkboelman.com/

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