Hi, I am Daniel Ostkamp, born 1986 in Germany, and currently living in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

daniel ostkamp

I was born in 1986 in Ibbenbüren, Germany, and grew up in the small village Riesenbeck.

In 2006 I decided to study in Emmen, the Netherlands, and subsequently moved there in the summer to start with the study ‘Mens en Informatica’ (in English: Human and IT), focussing on developing software, and the interaction between humans and software.

Then, in 2010, I moved to Groningen to write my Bachelor-thesis at Logica, a big IT-consulting company in the BeNeLux, analysing what features an IDE needs to support writing code for a self-developed business programming language, which can translate business language into a programm with a UI.

Work⌗

After finishing my bachelor in 2010, I directly started working at Logica to develop apps for iOS devices. After one year, I moved to the department responsible for delivering central market systems. In particular, I joined the project that developed a central market system for the Danish energy market, where ENDK is responsible for. I learned how to write software based on SOA principles by using Tibco software. After gaining some experience as software engineer, I joined the maintenance team. Quickly, I became responsible for several processes over time: release-, change-, incident and problem-management.

Then, in 2017 I decided to move to Ordina, another big Dutch IT-consulting company to work in a high performance team delivering software that supports local bank employees within the Rabobank.

In October 2019, I started working as a consultant for IMG, Instituut Mijnbouwschade Groningen, and was responsible for the migration project of the damage claim handling system.

Master study⌗

In 2020 I finished my master study - which I did next to my job - in Software Engineering at the Open Universiteit, and cosequently, I can call myself now ‘Master of Science”. The title of the master thesis is “IRMA and Verifiable Credentials”, where I researched what the relation is between the IRMA identity platform and the Verifiable Credentials data model specification.

PhD⌗

In 2021 I started with my PhD at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen. The project is also related to IRMA. For more information, see this post. Then, in May 2021, my girlfriend and I moved to Nijmegen, which I wrote about here.

Interests and hobbies⌗

Obviously, I am very interested in technology. Not only in technology itself, but also how it impacts society as a whole. The topics security and privacy are essential to me. I like free software as I think it has several benefits to use it more in public. In my opinion publicly funded code should be freely available, see also the initiative PublicCode. Hence, I was very happy that I could write my master thesis about IRMA as it is related to privacy and security, and it is free software.

Furthermore, I started playing piano and tennis in 2019. Another big interest is football, more specifically I am big fan of the football club Borussia Dortmund. ALso, I like to go clubbing or to festivals once in a while, dancing to house and techno music. Last but not least, playing games with friends or colleagues is an entertaining alternative to just sitting in front of the screen all day.
Still, I don’t want to miss out on good movies and series.