Curriculum

Experience

As a Team Lead (2016 - 2017)

I led the charge of an innovation team working for a multinational. As a seperate entity we were allowed, expected, to work outside the legal and bureaucratic restrictions.

We started from scratch. Recruitment, setting up the tech stack, configuring Jira from the ground up, making mistakes, reiterating, (bi-)weekly demos, … The list goes on and on. We learned a lot. We screwed up a lot.

Today the project continues as an actual company with thousands of active users.

As a Developer (2000 - Ongoing)

Fifteen years ago I started developing dynamic websites. I’ve always been keen on delivering clean, readable code.

My interest in design patterns and well structured app designs is genuine while the numerous years of experience are invaluable.

Today I am a productive front-end developer and a driven iOS engineer.

As a Business Owner (2006 - 2011)

I dedicated 5 years of my professional life to Mr. Henry BVBA. What started out as a bootstrapped, creative tag-team, became a small, independent studio which is still going strong after I left the team in 2011 to pursue my personal goals as a freelancer.

Working Experience

Developer & Trainer at Webdevotion

Training and Development for iOS

January 2001 - Present

Webdevotion.be - Q2 2018

My tiny company needed a new website desperately. After having my always up to date, no plugins used, WordPress installation comprimised several times in the course of one year it was time for a structural fix.

For reasons of stability, speed and ease of development I chose Hugo, a static site generator written in Go. The theme of my choice is Hyde for it’s simplicity and solid foundation for future extensions.

For the typographic logo I used Wild Spirit.

Handwritten name of website, with a paint brush, in purple.

Screenshot of the 2018 design of Webdevotion.be

The Banking Scene - Q4 2017

Blurry background image in blue and green tints offering an impression of the 2017 edition, white and blue copy on top with logo and slogan

Screenshot of the 2018 design of The Banking Scene 2018

The Banking Scene is a website to present the 2018 installment of this yearly congress on the future of banking in Tour & Taxis in Brussels.

The stack is a combination of static html, PHP templates, Gulp workflow, and Docker build components. Important parts of the websites are generated by consuming the API of Sched.com. After parsing the relevant data in PHP, the user is presented with a custom design on top of Sched.com.

iOS App POM - Q3 2015

Easily pay your personal SEPA bills with POM. Integration of payment and cloud storage solutions.

Green background with Pom written over it in a very bold, white font on a green backdrop.

Pom logo

As the sole developer for iOS I introduced new features and maintained what was already in place. Pom is doing well these days thanks to the passionate team of founding members behind the project.

WWDC - Q2 2015

Bright background of colorful, overlapping circles. Tagline: The epicenter of change.

WWDC 2015 Logo

In 2015 I won The Lottery and attended WWDC in San Fransisco. Everything I’ve heard and read turned out to be true. What a blast.

iOS App Hangover - Q2 2015

Hangover app relies heavily on the MPC feature of the iOS SDK, connecting peers without access to the internet while still being able to sync files. Ideal for those moments when you are sitting in the back of a pub with bad cell reception or when you are at a crowded event.

Impression of the Hangover application with horizontally sliding, cards with a bright greenish thick border, against a black background.

Hangover Screenshot

The hardest part of the app was the actual testing. MPC is a weird beast. There are differences between hardware, there is a certain delay, a certain timeout, things hang once and a while.

The differentiating feature of the app is the fact that images and videos will only be unlocked when all the users of the original group are back together in the same physical space.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

iOS App bambuba - Q2 2015

Smiling baby face

Bambuba Logo

Quickfixes for Bambuba app. I jumped in at the client’s request and fixed some quirks with the data fetching using Parse’s SDK. This resulted in a less then optimal user experience.

The client was happy with the fast turnaround and was able to push a new release to the app store with various bugfixes.

iOS App ( NDA ) - Q1 2015

This app ( under NDA ) consumes the Foursquare API and looks for interesting restaurants in your vicinity. It was really nice to work with geolocation while keeping the presented data as relevant as possible.

The app is currently under review by the board of investors.

Training - Q1 2015

I gave a three days, in-company “Beginning iOS Development for iPhone and iPad” training here in Antwerp, Belgium. Starting from scratch and ended up with a simple drill down app using UINavigationController and UITableViewController.

Front End Development - Q1 2015

Building the prototype of the frontend of a Symphony powered PHP appliction for The Red Cross. Lots of fun to experiment with complicated workflows for their backend users.

Conferences and Workshops - 2015

Early 2015 I attended the “Stuff That Talks To The Internet” workshop so I could get some hands on experience connecting stuff to the … internet.

Big circle filled with solid, bright yellow. With the word dot in black letters in the center

Dot Swift Conference

Followed by one of the very first Swift oriented conferences in the world in Paris, Dot Swift. Right before Apple released Swift 1.2 and the updated toolchain ( Xcode 6.3β ).

Conferences and Workshops - 2014

Two square brackets enclosing a tilde in the center. At the bottom it says NSSpain.

NSSpain logo

While iOS projects where replaced by Frontend Development ( see below ), I still attended NSSpain, NSScotland and UIKonf to keep up with changes in the API, toolchain and the new language introduced by Apple, Swift.

Artistic impression combining the scottish flag with the Xcode logo. Representing a blue background, hammer, a painting brush and a pencil.

NSScotland logo

I followed Swift workshops by @dimsumthinking ( Daniel H Steinberg ) and Fernando Rodríguez and am still waltzing through “Functional Programming in Swift” by Chris Eidhof, Florian Kugler, and Wouter Swierstra. Mind boggling read.

Bright blue circle with UIKonf in the center. In a bold, white font.

UIKonf logo

iOS SDK Sign2Pay - Q2 2014

Handwritten representation of sign 2 pay, used as their logo

Sign2Pay logo

In the second quarter of 2014 I worked on the Sign2Pay iOS SDK together with the Rails team who provided the supporting API.

The SDK makes it easy to install and configure the Sign2Pay stack in your iOS application. The SDK tracks the user’s interaction with the app where appropriate and provides easy to use hooks to trigger the actual payment procedure.

Since the summer of 2014, the team has continued to develop the underlying technology and are getting ready to go public after intensive private betas.

The year of Front End Development - 2014

2014 was the year of frontend development for me. My client went from startup to Joint Venture with a huge international company. The JV is going public in Q2 of 2015, so I can’t share details. g The rest of my time was spent on multiple websites where I implemented the designs of my clients. So this year I got to work with CMS systems like Umbraco ( .NET ), Craft ( PHP ) and Symphony ( PHP ).

Warthog as the symbol of the Grunt project

Grunt project logo

HTML / CSS / Javascript is built using transcompilation. Haml, Jade, Twig, CoffeeScript, SASS, SCSS, Bourbon, …

Smart Checkups - Q3 2013

Localized iPad-only application for property inspections.

PDF generation Core Data REST Dropbox

Smart Checkups.com Available at App Store

True Notify - Q3 2013

Proof of concept iOS application. Client was doing research on how to integrate push notifications in their new notifications platform. The result is an iPhone application which receives push notifications and keeps an up to date list of notifications on the user’s device(s). Finished the concept, complete with Rails API and backend in 5 working days.

Available at App Store

Reservation System for iPhone - Q3 2013

Second iteration of the Reservation System. A returning client is a happy client, n’est-ce pas?

Plinx - Q2 2013

iOS app that aggregates videos you shared on your Facebook profile. Powered by a Rails API I also developed.

At Home Healer - Q2 2013

iOS app powered by a Rails API. Users can connect with their Massage Therapists. Each Therapist can disclose videos to demonstrate patients how to do given exercises properly. Videos are given permissions on a per user basis.

Night of the Proms - Q2 2013

Event app for multinational. English and Chinese language support. Team of 3 iOS developers + 1 designer.

Fresh Future - Q1 2013

After working on the initial prototype, Fresh Future gave me the responsibility to develop the App Store ready iOS application. Features: API to upload and download files, system-wide “open …” integration ( pdf, ppt, txt, images ) and a lot of attention to user feedback. App sends documents from your device to their printers, installed at various locations in the US.

This project was a complete success! Bram immediately understood the requirements and got started. We were in a hurry to get a prototype working, and Bram delivered in 1 day. In addition to being an expert at his work, Bram is easy to chat with, and very friendly. I would highly recommend Bram! We’ll be using his services again. - Mike Hapner - Fresh Future

Reservation System for iPhone - Q4 2012

I worked in a team of designers, app developers and backend coders to produce a Reservation System app for iPhone. Relying heavily on geolocation and push notifications to support it’s core feature. A lot of customization was needed to satisfy the UX and UI requirements of the project.

Event App for iPhone - Q4 2012

iOS consultancy for a big, recurring event. I was part of a team of 1 designer, 1 Android developer, 1 Rails developer and off course 1 iOS developer. The project required: skinning, geolocation, RESTful API requests, custom views, push notifications …

Gogoyoko - Q3 2012

Universal iOS project for Gogoyoko. Gogoyoko is an Icelandic music store with a worldwide reach. It offers an honest deal for end users and artists. Some of it’s features are streaming, buying, rating and mobile apps.

It has been an absolutely dream to work with Bram on our iOS application for our business clients. Although, he works from abroad it was easy for us to get him working with our team which is spread over three countries. He’s quick to respond to issues that come up, proactive with providing necessary updates for OS upgrades and above all the app worked great and helped us to impress some important B2B clients. Alison MacNeil - CEO Gogoyoko

Training

Managing Partner at Mr. Henry

As managing parter of Mr. Henry I developed the business unit and made strategic decisions. In my role of senior developer I directed the team of developers ( 4 - 9 persons ).

June 2006 - August 2011
Development for the Flash Platform.
Ruby on Rails applications.

Flash Developer

at Atomik Studios

Merged with Duval Guillaume nowadays.
2005 - 2006

Flash Developer

at Alligence

Development of CD-ROM for Lexus owners.
September 2004 - March 2005

Flash Developer

at Kult

Led by Peter Decuypere
October 2003 - August 2004

I had the privilege to work for:

Skills

Familiarity

Bucket list