Today we have Mr. Hackathon 1 (since there is another Hacker out there as well, more on that later).
Maurice Kevenaar!
Geoff: How did your career in IT start? Did you have a plan B?
Maurice:
My career in IT was spoon-fed. When I was 5, I somehow ended up in the “basic” prompt on our MSX game computer. My dad gave me “The Basic Cookbook”, telling me I could type in the words in a specific font and press F5 to run the code. Some years later, he had a VAX/VMS mainframe terminal on our kitchen table. I asked if I could also have a “screen”. I got an account, and my dad started to send me emails via the terminal. Ten minutes later, I sent emails back to him. Computers have always been part of our household. The oldest I can remember was an IBM computer with Windows 3.1. There has never been a plan B.
Geoff: What was your first job in Tech, can you tell us about it and any funny stories?
Maurice:
The first summer job where I applied for an IT job resulted in data entry at an insurance company. I was young, and the IT team didn’t think I could be of any value to their team, so they shoved me into data entry with information about colostomy patients.
The year after that, I applied for a summer job at our local hospital. I cleaned all the printers in the whole hospital, from the polyclinics to the IC to the Operating rooms. I ended up walking through the hospital in full OR clothing with a printer.
My dad had his own company, supplying IT solutions for small companies. I helped a lot on Saturdays and during holidays.
Geoff: When did you first start working with Veeam Software?
Maurice:
The company I currently work with already used VBR 7 when I joined them in 2013. We didn’t use it much, only to replicate some VMs between two locations. We never got failover to work as it should due to the IT company managing the other side. That server got upgraded to VBR 8 at one point.
We started using Veeam on a bigger scale in 2019 with VBR 9.5 U4. I learned a lot about the VBR “On the Job” and created Veeam Chocolatey packages. That required me to make an extension for Chocolatey as well, which was needed to mount an ISO file.
Geoff:
That is perhaps the longest IT story that I have heard, you are a true veteran since you started at 5!!!
Ah you mentioned Chocolatey Packages, that is how I first heard your name by the way 🙂? Tell us about Chocolatey and how you got involved with that project?
Maurice: I have an old coworker who is legally blind. He uses screen reader software with headphones to handle his computer. Installers are notoriously bad for screen readers. One of Chocolatey’s goals is to have repeatable, silent (automated) software installations. He told me about the project, and as a hybrid sysadmin (Windows, Linux and macOS), I was looking for an apt, yum, homebrew equivalent for Windows. When I like something, I take a deep dive into it. I started creating my own Chocolatey packages for software I used that didn’t have Chocolatey packages. I Took over some packages, and many years later, I maintain over 200 packages with close to 60M download
Geoff: What is your favorite Veeam Feature?
Maurice:
It's hard to pick; SureBackup and Instant Recovery are close. IR has saved my bacon several times, but SureBackup helps you identify potential issues and allows you to test changes on your (production) machines in a sandbox environment.
Geoff: What do you think lies ahead in the future of IT? Should we be worried as IT professionals because of AI?
Maurice:
AI is here, and I don’t think it will go away. However, we need to ensure it won’t cloud our knowledge. Generated documents and texts from “generic” AI can be so bad. I may be old school, but writing documentation, guidelines, or how-tos is better when you write them yourself.
It’s hard to tell where IT will go. Unfortunately, I do believe that we will continue to play " whack-a-mole” with hackers and ransomware.
Geoff:
I can't finish this interview without asking about the Veeam Hackathon, which you and Jonah May ran last year will be running again this year.
What is it all about and why should someone take part?
Maurice: The Veeam Community Hackathon is a fun event for everyone. During this event, teams will collaborate to create something on top of the existing Veeam products. One of the examples would be the Grafana Dashboards by Jorge or the As Build Reports.
