Weblogger, designer, photographer and cinephile, Michel studied Law then History, but neither could harness his restless energy for long. In 1995, he left university to embark on a career that began as a film projectionist and quickly moved to product design for on-line and off-line applications. Describing himself as a jack of many trades, he is also the author of blog.zog.org, a weblog with cult following and an editor of the metroblog gentblogt.be, both good examples of the many activities Michel manages to pack into each day. He lives in Ghent with his partner, their four young children and one cat. He joined Namahn in November 2006.
I wouldn't want to change a thing—I've met too many people and done too many things I never would have done if it hadn't been for my law studies. But in retrospect, I should have chosen history. I can get passionate about history.
When I get involved in something I'm passionate about, I try to do it as well as I can.
Yes. There's a saying (or if there isn't there should be) that every person who dies is a library that's lost. I'd like to do something with private history, photos and videos and stories, the history of a person, or a house, or a street, or part of a city. I've long had this vision of a huge multidimensional database, where you could see, say, a street in 3D, and then move a time slider. You'd see houses appearing, being renovated, torn-down. This is actually possible right now—"we have the technology!"—to quote the Six Million Dollar Man.
I've known of Namahn for years. I always saw it as a sort of unattainable ideal—the kind of work I'd really like to do, for interesting clients, with great colleagues, in a stimulating environment. I wasn't really looking for a job, and they weren't really looking to fill a position but both of us were on each other's radar, I guess. What clinched the deal, so to speak, was meeting my potential future colleagues over lunch.
The moment I saw my first computer—a TRS-80 Model I—I was hooked. I've been making things and doing stuff with computers ever since. Programming, gaming, writing, databases: you name it, I've probably dabbled in it. User interfaces and interaction design: I think I've seen and used the best and the worst. And learned from them.
At various times over the years I've taken on the role of developer, designer, project manager, consultant, not to mention client on projects ranging from tiny to quite large. I think that's a plus: I can (from experience) approach a problem from many different angles, and on any given project I can speak to those involved in their own language.
I've had personal websites since the early days of the worldwide web. Every single day since July 2002 I've written at least one entry in my weblog. I see it as a way of keeping in touch. There's a show and tell aspect to it too. I used to be that annoying kid who would constantly tell people to listen to this! or you really should see this! I'm still like that, but now I tend to do it via my weblog. I call my weblog a diary, but it's a public website and no substitute for Real Life Conversations.
It's going to be ubiquitous, and it'll blend into our lives. We won't even realise it's there.
Comedy: the 1930s Marx Brothers; anything with or by Buster Keaton; Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, both masterfully combine parody and homage. I also love science fiction movies, both recent and not so recent. I'm a big fan of westerns in general and many, many more films, too numerous to mention. Apart from films I find that many of the most interesting stories are being told on TV. I never miss an episode of Battlestar: Galactica or House MD.
It's not just insects it's anything small and alive really. The idea that there's a world right under our feet that we don't know about is something I've always found fascinating. Literally any house, garden, plant or rock is home to an entire ecosystem that would put the average science fiction story to shame. The photography started as a way of collecting the animals in my garden, a garden safari of sorts. And once you're bitten by the virus of macro photography you're lost: there's always a better lens, better lighting solutions, better software to do focus stacking or panoramas, better arrangements of tubes and extensions and dioptre adapters.
Without a shadow of a doubt, our children: Zelie, Louis, Jan and Anna.