This is the English 🇬🇧 version of my about page, the Dutch 🇳🇱 version is located here.
The story about Camiel Schoonens started in 1978 in the south of the Netherlands. I don’t know a lot about my time in that region of the country anymore as we moved around quite a lot as family in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Together with my parents and two siblings, we lived in several different places in the Netherlands and in the USA. Specifically in Cupertino, California, a city now very well known due to Apple being founded and headquartered there. My experience in the USA as a young teenager formed me more in life then I would have expected at the time it happened. I’m certain that it’s one of the main reasons of why I like working in international environments today.
Today I’m living in the lovely town of Oudewater, I live here since 2006. I’m happy here with my wife and family and it’s the place I always love returning too from any travel that I do.
My hobbies and personal interests are (in random order):
☀️🏖️🏂🚴🏻📸🖥️👨🏼💻👨👩👧👦🍇🍻🤓🏃🏻♂️🏑🏎️📚
- Beach holidays(☀️🏖️), at least once a year in the summer and when possible I’ll try to catch some sun around Christmas too. My favorite holiday destinations till date are: France, Italy and the Dutch Caribbean. My wish is to add South-Africa and Sweden to this list very soon.
- I like to snowboard (🏂) in winter season, both with family and with friends.
- Cycling (🚴🏻) isn’t something that I do often these days but I still enjoy reading about cycling a lot. There is a form of romance around this sport that I really appreciate.
- Photography (📸) is something I like to practice since the mid-nineties. I make most photo’s during my holidays and business travel. I take photo’s with both my iPhone and my Canon EOS R camera. With the latter I appreciate working with prime lenses (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) the most.
- I’m an Apple fan boy (🖥️) and I love my work (👨🏼💻). I read a lot about Product, Technology, Organisational Change and Innovation to stay up to date with my knowledge (🤓). Some of the articles that I read get bookmarked in the ‘Bookmarks’ section on this website.
- I’m a father to three children and I’m happily married since 2007 (👨👩👧👦). As I work and travel a lot I choose to spend the remaining time with my family and friends consciously. I enjoy drinking a good glas of wine (🍇) or beer(🍻) and my favorite recipe’s come from the Italian and Indonesian kitchen.
- If I would be practicing a teamsport it would be field hockey (🏑) again. Nowadays I’m at the hockeyclub every weekend with my children and I try to visit some matches of our Dutch National Team (m/f) a few times a year.
- I started running (🏃🏻♂️) in 2016 as it’s hard for me to combine work with a team sport. I try to run 2 to 3 times a week and I use a running schedule to practice with a reason and goal. I ran 5 half a marathons in the year of 2017, my fastest time for this distance is 1.43.27.
- Formule 1 (🏎️) is my favorite sport on TV. For me this is the sport where man, machine, technology and innovation come together at it’s best. I’ve been following Formule 1 since the late 80’s thanks to my father and grandfather.
- I read (📚) quite a lot and a least every night before I go to bed. Reading helps me relax and end the day. I read just about anything, from science articles to novels and from biographies on remarkable people to thrillers. The most recent books that I read can be found on the bookshelf.
Last update:
- 23-07-2023 – Some updates to links on this page.
- 10-04-2023 – Some minor text and formatting updates.
- 21-03-2023 – Translated the Dutch version of the page to this English one.