work & personal musings
Welcome to my personal website which I created for my own pleasure. It is a small attempt to display the various aspects of my portfolio and background, allowing me a wider diversity than current social media allows.
Please be aware that all reaction areas will be moderated. Behave as you would in my living room meeting me face to face, and I will too.
This will be the last time in this blog that I mention Centre for Innovation (CFI). After an illustrious 10 year career, the CFI merged with ICLON HO to form a new central department called the Leiden Learning & Innovation Centre (LLInC) in 2023. You can read more about it on our website. Not only …
Something I didn’t have in my bet books for 2022 was the fact just about everybody is talking about the importance of community, the holy grail. There is a lot of speculation why the word community is right now trending in Higher Ed. It coud be that Emergency Remote Teaching left something to be desire …
Back in the day Online Learning in Higher Education was a rather niche topic, reserved mostly for IT staff, education innovation experts and instructional designers. It was part of the strategically applied R&D of some of the most forward looking universities (including my own!) with an eye to the long term future. Since March 2020, …
I work in digital innovation of education, at Leiden University’s Leiden Learning & Innovation Centre, where I specialize in online communities, life long learning, educational policy and understanding how to better use digital platforms.
I am fascinated by connecting people through digital technology, and understanding the behaviour in that digital space. There are things you can and must do to control the trolls, the cyber criminals & haters, but online communities remain great opportunities for interaction and collaborative projects. I have a background in History, Management and Online Roleplaying with an activist track record on education quality and sustainability issues. Of course you could have read that on my team bio.
Want to know more? A bit too much for one page, so check out
On this page I will attempt to link to work that I helped to create, either in most cases as part of a team, or solely by my own efforts. I have attempted some categorization and may change my mind on that later.
My first presentations date back to 2014, when I did some internal presentations, as well as a small paper and a teacher handbook, around the first results of MOOCs. I also attended a Coursera Conference panel on how to deal with negativity in courses in London in that year. I presented at several annual Coursera Conferences after that until that went out of style (and their conferences became solely marketing oriented), and was also involved in the programme committe of the LWMOOCs for the first couple of years. I have also presented at several communication seminars. Those have lost most of their usefulness, but if you are curious contact me and I can provide them. Below some of my more recent presentations and productions for which there is a paper trail or media recording.
Upcoming Live Events:
These productions were all made in collaboration with the mediateam of Centre for Innovation and I credit them with the quality of the production.
Some of the games and game resource sites I worked on are no longer live, so I provide no link to them, but you can contact me if they are of interest to you. I do not list the games that I was not a founding member of.
I intend to allow comments/reactions on my website, in particular at the blog. That requires some basic rules (as is my expertise).
TL;DR
It is simple really: behave as you would in my living room meeting me face to face, and I will too. I am generally speaking a very kind and welcoming host. This website exists for my personal pleasure, so try to keep it fun and light with the occasional political engagement where warranted.
The Extended Version
As there are always rules lawyers in any game, let me expand a little bit on my philosopy on community guidelines or house rules: