Willy Dobbe - My life in Business Cards

2006 Getronics-PinkRoccade Business Consultant

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:09:02 +0100

2005 PinkRoccade consultant

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:59:03 +0100

2004 pinkroccade ict architect

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 01:08:47 +0100

During 2003-2004 I was the lead architect for a Server Based Computing environment. In total about 15k users were on the platform. Though we dont use the system internally anymore, it was a state of the art environment with delegated user rights, budget holders and real time billing.

2002 pinkroccade tc ist

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:24:37 +0100

During 2002 / 2003 I was "team coordinator" of a group that was doing the webhsoting. The group grew from 10 persons we started with to 35 people 1 year later. It still it the basis of our webhosting proposition, though we now have several 100 people managing and building sites.

2003 pinkroccade naamloos

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 02:19:14 +0100

during 2003 I changed titles and functions so often, I ordered an "empty" Business Card. We changed our email addresses to @pinkroccade.com after the "mono branding" period. Mobiles were still not on the Business Card, on every desk there was still a wired phone.

2002 pinkroccade nerd-geek

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:05:53 +0100

Around 2001 I returned to PinkRoccade. I worked as an architect for the "Architectuur en Innovatie" department. During that time -it was still the late dotcom period in the Netherlands- I made this special Business Card. Now having a card with the function "nerd/geek" would be impossible to get, during that period someone just called me what a "nerd/geek" was, I answered "someone who is good" and they printed it

Note that our email addresses changed to user@businessunit.pinkroccade.nl, there was still no corporate email system within PinkRoccade, just a buch of loose exchange and novell server. Branding towards sub.pinkroccade.nl was an easy first step to integrate.

1999 KPN

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 03:46:35 +0100

I missed one card between PinkElephant and this one. I should have a card labbeled "Unisource Business Networks Netherlands" but dont have it anymore. During the time I had this card, I did design and operations of the internet of KPN, AS1136, later AS286. I also was shortly in the core of UniCERT.

KPN also has a policy of using "Drs", and my department illegally used KPN.net which we bought, while the rest of teh (non internet workers) had to use KPN-Telecom.nl.

1997 pink-elephant intranet management services

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 01:28:02 +0100

Not my first business cards I think, but the oldest I still have. The one before probably read something like "IT Trainee", this one is from around 1997. I started at this department in Voorburg but they moved to Amsterdam shortly after I joined there. I like most of the people there, especially Pim Berger, Eltjo van Wijck and Paul Geurts. Those last two still work at Getronics-PinkRoccade.

A couple of things to note:
At this time all the operational units of PinkRoccade used their own domains, I work for "pink.nl". The company was founded by some students from Delft, hence the name Pink Elephant.

The second thing, there was a policy to display your academic tittle, in the Netherlands "Drs." for Master of Art/Science.

And third, my Christian names are "Elibertus Mariunus Tobias". My first name is "bert". I never ever called myself something like Bert "M" Boerland. I dont know where this mixed came from but not from me, I am not a "ooh, look how creative I am" Rolf "X" Wouters, Japke-"D" Bouwma or Peter "air" de Vries.

During this time the company had the most stupidest user name convention I am aware of, 3 or 4 letters from your business unit, first letter of your first name, first letter of your second name and then a number. So when you moved from one unit to another, your account was deleted, created and the data moved. And you could get really funny names. For example, someone was named Ixxx Sxxxx and workped at the business unit Pink Elephant Netherlands (the holding). Can you make the username for her?

My latest account is this range was pimsbb2 (Pink Intranet Management Services) and I still use that one on all my unix servers.