Alexander Meijers

Who am I? My name is Alexander Meijers and I was born on May 19th, 1971. Father of daughter and son. Love to read technical stuff like articles and books, play on my guitar and do sports like fitness and running. I have been working in the IT sector since 1992. Primarily started with object oriented programming with C++ on Windows based application platforms. Later on I switched to the Microsoft .NET platform programming in C# and became a SharePoint enthusiast. My interest for Microsoft products and technologies has grown in the years. I got introduced with the SharePoint product when SharePoint 2003 came on the market. The love and happiness feeling I still get from the product , has made this product to become my core knowlegde. With my extended knowlegde of programming I see a lot of the oppertunities the product has. But my interest and knowlegde stretched further on. SharePoint as product is not a "click, next and finish" product. Such a platform expects from you to have a major knowlegde about installation, configuration and maintenance. I 'm highly experienced in handling such tasks. Also executing SharePoint implementations from a project perspective view is one of my specialities. Due to the fact that the SharePoint platform depends heavenly on other Microsoft products, my knowledge also extends to other Microsoft products like Office, SQL Server, Windows, Active Directory and Exchange Server. I have been involved in a large amount of SharePoint implementations. These implementations ranged from small, medium to large business projects handling in some cases more than 100K plus end-users. My multi discipline allows me to handle a large set of roles in projects like; hard-core development, lead consultant, liason between business and IT, business advisory, Project management, lead Architect. In many cases running multiple projects (4+) together at that same time. The last few years I have been working on SharePoint implementations with a number of customers like; BAM, TNT, Facilicom, TenneT, NS, Lost Boys international, Sanoma Uitgevers, Logica, Inter-IKEA, Dutch Space, Hogeschool Utrecht, Spil Games, Telindus, Multiple projects at Rabo Vastgoedgroep; SVn website, Rabo Vastgoedgroep website, Intranet migration, ShowCase, Intranet functionality extensions and more. These projects incorporates MOSS 2007 solutions, SharePoint 2010 solutions, Migrations to SharePoint 2010, implementing intranet solutions and implementing internet websites based on SharePoint. At Evoke we developed an ESL SharePoint Framework (Extended Standard Library SharePoint Framework) which contains a base set of SharePoint components and helper classes for increasing development speed and have a more reliable base framework in projects. This framework contains SharePoint extensions for creating commenting, blog based on publishing pages, news promoting system for handling news in different channels, statistics, profile and social add-ons, easy SiteSetup to initial setup sites or restore them to their original state again, handling managed metadata in several ways and handling object disposing for sites and webs. This framework is used at least at 5 customers. Also my blog called SharePoint Insiprations makes heavily use of this framework. My previous jobs till now have been Senior consultant and Architect at Evoke B.V., SharePoint Architect at Sparked, senior consultant at Tam Tam and Microsoft Product Expert For SharePoint and Solution Architect at Logica. I have been part of a theme group called “New world of work” in which customers were guided to optimalise and improve their processes and work environment. I have been doing a lot of coaching of colleagues to develop them into medior and senior developers / consultants for SharePoint. As SharePoint enthusiast I love to be involved in the SharePoint community and find it important to share and collaborate with people about SharePoint and Information Worker. Being part of the SharePoint Blackbelts group helps me and others to extend our knowlegde beyond. I have been speaker in the Netherlands and Egypt, blog about SharePoint and writing articles for different online and offline magazines. In the last two years (2010-2012) I have been Track Lead for Information Worker at SDN which is one the largest community groups in the Netherlands. My interests are SharePoint, SharePoint Online, Office 365, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, SharePoint Designer, Search, Windows Server, Office, SQL Server, Programming, Project Management (especially to enhance the process when doing SharePoint projects), Architecture, Business involvement, reusabilty of coding (design and building frameworks) I love to do research on combining existing technologies. Currently i'm very interested in combining data from SharePoint or other back-end systems like SAP and exposing it on mobile devices through dashboard technology. Think of interesting data for management to control the flow of processes inside their organ