Biography of Gerrit Schoenmaker

Studying Biology at the Free University in Amsterdam, Gerrit Schoenmaker has specialized in Microbiology. As PhD student he did scientific research for several years on membrane bound enzyme systems in bacteria. After about 4 years of scientific work he changed his life style and took over his parents dairy farm. In the early 90's he became a dedicated user of IBM's computer operating platform OS/2 because of the need to run special software packages for the agriculture business (mixture of OS/2, DOS and Windows 3.1 programs) in a multitasking environment. However the political, agriculture and physical climate in the Netherlands has changed and after about 24 years of farming he decided to flip over his life again. After 1 year of employment at the sales department of an IBM premium business partner, he got a job as product manager for NetOp© Software in The Netherlands at Mensys BV, which was at that time also developer and distributor of modern OS/2 releases under the OEM name "eComStation" (eCS). Working all day with NetOp© and OS/2 might explain why Gerrit became chairman of the Dutch OS/2 and eCS user group also.

After being employed for about 12 years at Mensys B.V. Gerrit Schoenmaker has taken early retirement. However that doesn't mean that he has left the ICT world. He became board member of the international OS/2 VOICE foundation (www.os2voice.org) and is still active as chairman of the Dutch OS/2 and eCS user group. Furthermore he has been given more time to spend on his hobby model train automation.

Nowadays he lives in a small village with two cats in the yard and a lot of USA model trains in the "upper east side" of the Netherlands close to the National Park "De Weerribben".

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Gerrit Schoenmaker
April, 2015