Michael Smith is a Belgian born IT professional and software developer. He became interested in computers in the mid 1990's when his friend Eric Paillet and he successfully experimented with data transfer over Citizen Band (CB) radio frequencies, also known as packet radio. His first programming experience was with the Microsoft's Basic language. It was the time that Windows 95 came out and things quickly moved on to GUI programming using Microsoft Visual Basic.

After that Michael became interested in open source software and discovered Linux. His first distribution was a German adaption of Red Hat Linux called BHV Linux. Then he discovered Slackware and moved on to Gentoo, Ubuntu and finally settled with Mac OS X. Michael's first computer was a 386 DX 40 mhz with 5 MB of RAM and a 100 MB hard drive, which he got in a barter with his friend Eric for a table CB radio set.

Michael has a degree in computer science and IT management, but most of his IT knowledge was gained through self study since the age of 12. He made two failed attempts at higher studies: The first in the field of Physics at the University of Antwerp where he failed the first year and gave up before the mid terms of the second attempt the following year. His other failed attempt at a higher degree was in the field of English - Russian translation at the Antwerp College for Interpreters and Translators. He passed the first year excelling in Russian, but became bored with the curriculum in the second year.

With Linux came the study of the C and C++ programming language. This led Michael into the field of hacking and IT security. Together with his childhood friend Michael Hendrickx he moved to Dubai in 2005 to work for a Belgian IT security company called Scanit. During his 4 years living and working in Dubai, Michael gained experience as a System Administrator and Web Developer at THECONTENT|FACTORY, a Middle East integrated marketing agency. That time Michael learned PHP and wrote the early version of TCF's media relations and content management portal. Eager to explore other opportunities he took the position of IT Manager at a Dubai based event management company called Action Impact. And he continued to work for TCF on a freelance basis.

In 2006 Michael learned about web development frameworks and was happy to cast away the tedious programming experience that came with PHP. He discovered Ruby on Rails, its beauty and simplicity, achieved thanks to the ingenuity of the Ruby programming language. Realizing that a management position and "working for a boss" was going against his IT geek heart, he left Action Impact in 2007 and joined a small Ruby on Rails web development startup called Spinbits. It was also this year that Michael traveled to Indonesia for the first time.

After working with Spinbits for three months, Michael decided that his time in Dubai had ended. He moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, married his Indonesian girlfriend and started out as a freelance web and software developer. After a few months in Indonesia he met Anthony Zboralski, CTO of Indonesian based IT security company Bellua Asia Pacific, at an IT security conference called Hack in the Box in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Anthony offered him a consultancy based job as a security engineer at Bellua Asia Pacific. Later on Michael moved to Research and Development to work on Bellua's IT security software products under a part time contract. All this time he continued to work on THECONTENT|FACTORY's media portal site on a freelance basis. Then in August 2010 when his contract with Bellua ended Michael, together with his wife Retno, founded his own Jakarta based IT consultancy and software development company called Treecode. A way for him to unify all the projects he'd been working on over the years and have a platform to unite future projects.

Treecode offers IT consultancy services, web and e-mail hosting management and software developments services.

Not surprisingly, having made his main hobby his profession, Michael keeps educating himself on computers every day. Be it improving his Rails knowledge through Ryan Bates' excellent Railscasts or tinkering with his old laptop converted home media system running XBMC, the geek in him never gets tired of the exciting new developments in the IT world.

Michael lives in South Jakarta with his wife and family. His mother tongue is Dutch. He also speaks English fluently (his grandfather emigrated from Birmingham, UK to Belgium after World War II) and is fair in French, Russian and Bahasa Indonesia.

He loves mountain biking. Especially in the hilly South West Java area.

You can find out more about Michael's professional experience on his LinkedIn profile.