Jurgen Appelo is a writer, speaker, trainer, developer, entrepreneur, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, and freethinker. And he’s Dutch, which explains his talent for being weird.

After studying software engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and earning his Master’s degree in 1994, Jurgen busied himself either starting up or leading a variety of Dutch businesses, always in the position of team leader, manager, or executive.

Jurgen’s most recent occupation was CIO at ISM eCompany, one of the largest e-business solution providers in The Netherlands. As a manager, Jurgen has experience in leading software developers, development managers, project managers, quality managers, service managers, and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally.

He is primarily interested in software development and complexity theory, from a manager’s perspective. As a writer, he has published papers and articles in many magazines, and he maintains a blog at www.noop.nl. As a speaker, he is regularly invited to talk at seminars and conferences.

Last but not least, Jurgen is a trainer, with workshops based on the Management 3.0 model. His materials address the topics of energizing people, empowering teams, aligning constraints, developing competence, growing structure, and improving everything.

However, sometimes he puts all writing, speaking, and training aside to do some programming himself, or to spend time on his ever-growing collection of science fiction and fantasy literature, which he stacks in a self-designed book case that is four meters high.

Jurgen lives in Rotterdam (The Netherlands)–and sometimes in Brussels (Belgium)–with his partner Raoul. He has two kids and an imaginary hamster called George.