Portfolio & CV
Developer, trainer, author and event organiser in the Magento world.
Founder of Yireo, author of two books, three-time Magento Master and co-founder of Mage-OS Netherlands. Currently working on Loki Extensions and vice-chairman of the global Magento Association.
From a world trip and UNIX system administration to Joomla, Magento and organising international developer events. For more than twenty years I have been building extensions, giving trainings and bringing developers together — from MageTestFest and Reacticon to the MageUnconference NL.
From Meet Magento and MageTitans to Magento Imagine and JAndBeyond — a selection of the international conferences where I have appeared as a speaker.
Where I am currently putting my time and energy.
Een overzicht van mijn loopbaan — van wereldreis en systeembeheer tot Magento, events en de Loki Checkout.
In 2026 I became vice-chairman (and secretary) of the global Magento Association. In the first quarter the board immediately decided on a reorganisation of the Magento Association itself, followed by a reform of Meet Magento events.
In 2024 I began a new adventure: an Alpine.js-based checkout for Magento 2 - Loki Checkout - aimed at solving numerous shortcomings in other Magento checkout extensions.
Besides the Loki Checkout, the portfolio of Loki Extensions expanded quickly: Maps, admin components. And above all lots of integrations (such as shipment and payment) with the Loki Checkout.
In 2023, 2025 and 2026 I organised the MageUnconference NL together with Ruud van Zuidam at Fort aan de Klop in Utrecht, supported during the event by a team of volunteers.
Because of a lack of an official Dutch Magento association, in 2022 I founded the Mage-OS Netherlands association together with six others. From 2022 until early 2024 I was its chairman. In early 2024 I - together with secretary Sander de Graaf - deliberately stepped back from the board to make room for new faces.
In March 2018 the Yireo team (Janet, Ruud, Sean and myself) organised an event around Magento frontending (with the name "Reacticon" hinting at the new headless React frontend Magento PWA Studio). A second edition followed in October 2018. In 2020 Reacticon 3 and 4 took place, which also saw the launch of the Hyvä Theme, held online because of COVID.
In 2017 the Yireo team of myself, Janet, Ruud van Zuidam and Sean van Zuidam organised a MageTestFest event, with a pure focus on Magento & testing, at the Prodent Factory in Amersfoort. In 2019 a second edition followed in Florence (Italy) with the help of Marco Giorgetti.
In 2017, 2018 and 2019 I was appointed by Magento as a Magento Master "Mover" for distributing various open source extensions and organising developer events (such as MageTestFest and Reacticon) and hackathons.
In November 2015 Magento 2.0.0 was released. Right away, in February 2016, I organised a half-day Magento 2 Seminar together with Janet Iljas that drew 130 people. In October of the same year we decided to organise a second, full-day seminar with 220 visitors.
In a new phase with Yireo - from 2014 onwards - I focused on Magento extensions and Magento trainings. From November 2015 this took off thanks to the arrival of Magento 2.
In 2011 Yireo split off from Jira ICT, with Yireo continuing as an independent maker of MageBridge and other Joomla and Magento extensions. In addition I wrote a second (English-language) book "Programming Joomla Plugins" which unfortunately sold considerably less. This disappointing result and a decline in demand for Joomla programming courses moved me definitively from Joomla towards Magento.
Between 2003 and 2008 I was active as an IT administrator at the Tibet Support Group Netherlands. In 2008, 2009 and 2010 I visited Dharamsala (India), where the Tibetan government-in-exile resides (including the Dalai Lama). There I helped the IT department of the Tibetan Government in Exile with training and consultancy. Together with the Tibetan Children Village I organised open training sessions for web developers (Tibetan and Indian). And I helped various Tibetan freelancers to sharpen their skills. As the icing on the cake, in 2010 I gave a presentation on digital security to all the secretaries of all the ministries.
In 2004 I founded a company called 12Mambo together with Ray Bogman to build a Mambo site in three online steps. Because the Mambo community moved to Joomla in 2005, the company was renamed to Jira ICT. At first Jira ICT focused on Joomla web design and hosting. With the arrival of Joomla 1.5 came training for both users and developers. On top of that I wrote a book "Designing Joomla! Templates" that was published in 2008 and sold more than 9,000 copies in the Netherlands (a bestseller). I was also the lead developer of MageBridge, a bridge between Joomla and Magento 1.
From 2001 to 2006 I followed a part-time Computer Science degree in the evenings while working during the day. My final grades were above 7 with an average of 8.4. For my graduation project I designed a PHP-based application for HP Education to manage classrooms via SNMP and install them remotely (via PXE) with either Linux or Windows, along with various additional applications pre-installed.
From 2001 to 2007 I worked at the UNIX specialist Open Solution Providers (OSP) in Diemen. It started with system administration at HP Education (Windows, Linux, HP-UX, MPE/ix, network management), which gradually led to giving trainings in Linux and HP-UX. Later I travelled across the country as a VMware ESX instructor delivering trainings.
In 1998/1999 I went on a 22-month world trip through South-East Asia and Australia. In Darwin (Australia) I worked in an internet cafe, was offered a manager position at a 24-hour food cafe, and became co-owner of an internet service provider called Ozbyte (which unfortunately went bankrupt two years later).