About Me — Bart Roossien
Building a more sustainable world. Entrepreneur. Software developer. Energy consultant. Hiker. Scale modeller. Gamer.
Bio
Hi there! I’m Bart Roossien. I’m an entrepreneur and work in my own company as an energy consultant and, digital product developer. I spend my free time on scale modelling, hiking, gaming and enjoying the little things in life.
I am of the Star Wars generation, currently residing in the town of Alkmaar, known for its cheese market, in the Netherlands, married to an amazing and lovely kiwi wife and accompanied by our dachshund Artemis.
Professional background
I hold a Master of Science in applied physics from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. I graduated in 2006 on computational modelling of bio-polymer networks under stress. My thesis is publicly available.
Research
After my graduation, I worked almost five years at the Dutch Energy Research Centre, on the topic of integrating sustainable energy in our existing energy infrastructure using smart grids. Two notable publications are:
- Characterization of Li-Ion Batteries for Intelligent Management of Distributed Grid-Connected Storage, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, 2010
- Field-test up-scaling of multi-agent coordination in the electricity grid, Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution, 2011
Additionally, I gained a patent on distributed electric power flow calculations using agents-based technology.
Entrepreneur
In 2011, I co-founded a consultancy and research company working on a flexible and sustainable energy supply. As a senior energy consultant, I mainly provide technical-economic analysis on energy transition topics for local and national governments, energy agencies, industry and small-medium enterprises.
Throughout the years I have automated some of the elements of these analyses by writing software for them. These tools contain digital twins of individual real estate objects and infrastructural assets and use machine learning and GIS technologies. In 2020 a spin-off was created through which these software tools are directly sold to customers.
I have developed the software in ASP.NET Core with Entity Framework and deployed it cloud-native to Azure. In addition, LeafletJs and PostgreSQL/PostGIS are used for managing and displaying geographical data.
Personal hobbies
Hiking
If I’m not working, I love going on a hike. I’m lucky to live near the beach, dunes, forestry areas and flower fields that provide for great hikes. But if I get the chance, I’ll go abroad.
I’ve hiked in Austria and Italy and love the Dolomites mountain ranges, mainly of the moon-like landscapes they provide. Additionally, the First World War remnants there (including trenches, barbered wire and tunnel systems) are impressive.
My favourite hiking country is probably Norway with its beautiful Fjords, impressive mountain systems in Jotunheimen and the plains of the Hardangervidda.
I fell in love with New Zealand when I saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Fifteen years later had the opportunity to spend five weeks there exploring film locations and enjoying the beauty of Nelson City and Abel Tasman national park.
Scale modelling
When I was 12 years old, I received a Revell plastic model kit of an F-104 Starfighter that I built and painted with my father. After that, plastic model kits were on the birthday wish list, or I bought them with the little pocket money I had.
Around the same time, I followed workshops in which I built wooden balsa glider planes and participated in the yearly glider competition. Not with any winning success though.
With the university demanding most of my time, scale modelling was shelved. I recently picked it up again for bad weather days. I now build scale models from plastic model kits and enrich them with dioramas and electronics. For the latter, I recently started an online electronics course.
Gaming
When I was 6 years old, My father bought our first home computer, an Amiga Commodore. It had no hard drive, everything was on 3.5'’ floppy discs and it had a whopping 1MB in memory.
Before long, we had 100’s of floppy discs with gaming on which I spent many hours. Gaming has never left me, although there were periods of lesser activity.
After graduating, the disposable income I received allowed me to buy a high-end gaming machine, providing me with entertainment and distraction in the evenings after work.
2013 was my top year of gaming when the game MMO FPS PlanetSide 2 was released. I joined the DeathWatch Gaming clan and spent every night fighting a futuristic war.
Nowadays, most games I play are single-player as I don’t have the time to practice the skills for multiplayer and nobody likes to get fragged by a 10-year-old. I much prefer strategy games such as Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV, with the occasional Farming Simulator.
Medium
In the past, I infrequently wrote articles or commentary pieces on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, LinkedIn’s system doesn’t provide good tools for writers nor is suited for article topics outside the work environment.
In 2015, I started a personal blog, where I spent more time on its technology than writing articles. After a year and 6 articles, I canned it.
Although I had heard about Medium before — I sometimes found a (free) article that discussed a topic I was searching for — I never had considered writing for it.
Trying it out, I quickly fell in love. Its limited formatting allows me to concentrate on the writing. And with all the tools present, there was no need for me to tinker around.
I write about both my professional knowledge (digital product development, software engineering, climate change, sustainability and energy transition) and my hobbies (hiking, scale modelling and gaming).
I have no intention of becoming a full-time content creator. I hope that with my writing I can share my professional and personal knowledge with others.
Contact
In case you would like to contact me, there are several ways to do so:
- Add a public comment to this post.
- Using Mediums private note system for personal messages or when you want to exchange email addresses.
- Use LinkedIn for professional related questions. Send a connection request with a proper introduction and reason (I ignore connection requests with the default text unless I know you) or use the InMail system.
