DeKamme (MS)

Personal: I grew up for 1/2 of my life in a somewhat "ghetto" part of Antwerp, Belgium. Not that it looked that bad on the outside - it's a quite old suburb of Antwerp, and doesn't seem too rowdy at all. When looking beneath superficial impressions, you see a lot of fighting, drugs etc. ************************************************************ *************** So, I had my share of experiencing the lower regions of our society, what made me decide to leave home when I was 19 and go try the world on my own. That's almost 5y ago now, of which I've been renting an appartment for 4y. 2y ago I found a very nice job, which I still have. All this has brought me into contact with a lot of different people, and taught me not to judge people by first impressions or their looks. It also made me stronger - it takes quite a lot to upset me. ************************************************************ *************** I'm a very relaxed guy, although I know "life is hard" and you get a lot of responsabilities, I don't believe anything will be easier if you work yourself up. I have my goals in life, both short and long term, and try to find a subtle path that leads me there. ************************************************************ *************** I like to travel and see what other cultures or regions are like. One of my goals is to go to every continent once, and learn one of the common local languages. So far I got to 4 languages and 2 continents, so I'm behind on schedule :s ************************************************************ *************** Professional: As I have no degree at all, I soon realized I had to give my best to show that I -am- ambitious. I started out in a small company, as a PC Techie. This company provides automatizised PC based audio & video solutions for other businesses - eg. we provided music for a lot of Belgian retailers, bars, restaurants, ... After a while we merged with another European company , broadening our customer base and location (we now are active in the bigger countries of Europe). My efforts were rewarded, and I am now head of 2 departments: Quality Assurance and Int'l distributor support; and part of the R&D team. I believe my analytical insight, long-term thinking, empathical abilities and knowledge of languages & the IT market brought me here. My colleagues are all nuts, so I fit right in :)My next goals are to create something like what the Ipod was for the consumer market, but then for the corporate market - and to travel to our distributors (Italy, France, Spain, ...) to train them. I try to couple the most efficient thing to do to the things that are interesting for my own career :) And, what's fun - of course ;)