Designed the brand, tone of voice, public messaging, and resident-facing communication that kept the initiative legible and trusted.
Glasvezel De Wolden
Resident-led fibre initiative built around public tooling and locally controlled systems.
2016-2020
Glasvezel De Wolden
Manager Communications & Technology, 2016-2020.
This was a resident-led fibre initiative with real adoption pressure, public scrutiny, and eventually national and European visibility.
My role combined communications and technology: brand, tone of voice, public trust, resident self-service tooling, automation, and the systems underneath.
We began on a simple VPS. When redundancy started to matter around 2017, I chose Kubernetes over Docker Swarm and Nomad and moved the project toward a more resilient self-hosted setup.
European Commission record of a resident-led fibre initiative that later won European recognition.
Scope
Public messaging, resident tooling, and operations in one role.
From the outside, the role often looked like spokesperson work. In practice, I was combining communications, tooling, automation, and infrastructure decisions in one job.
That mattered because I wanted the initiative to stay self-hosted and operationally under local control rather than outsourced into a generic provider stack.
Built the website, postcode checker, provider wizard, and the public flows that let residents understand rollout status and act on it.
Ran newsletter tooling, Mantis issue tracking, Metabase, GitLab, PostgreSQL, mail services, and the automation around them.
Started on a simple VPS, then moved toward a redundant self-hosted setup around 2017 and chose Kubernetes over Docker Swarm and Nomad.
Systems
Resident tooling and a locally controlled stack.
Residents saw the public side of the work. I also had to make the back end reliable enough to support it without losing control of the stack underneath.
Resident-facing tooling
Build public tools people could actually use.
I built a postcode checker so residents could see when work in their area was planned, plus a provider wizard that guided them toward the right next step for subscription and activation.
The point was not just information. I wanted to lower friction, answer questions early, and keep trust high while rollout work was still in motion.
Website, postcode checker, provider wizard, newsletter flows.
Infrastructure and operations
Run the project on systems we controlled ourselves.
Behind the public site, I ran Mantis, Metabase, GitLab, PostgreSQL, mail services, and the automation needed to keep the initiative running without surrendering operational control.
Choosing Kubernetes over Docker Swarm and Nomad early was part of that. It let the stack grow beyond a single VPS once redundancy and operational resilience became necessary.
Self-hosted infrastructure, automation, issue tracking, BI, mail, GitLab, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes.
Public record
The Commission record is the main public proof.
The Commission page is the strongest public source. After that, national and technical press show the same work from other angles.
Primary reference
The Commission record makes the project understandable from outside.
We won a European Broadband Award and built a public identity around local ownership: for residents, by residents.
Public coverage often described me as communications advisor or spokesperson. The work also included resident tooling, automation, and infrastructure decisions behind the project.
Commission page →Institutional validation
European Commission
The Commission success story documents Glasvezel De Wolden as a European Broadband Award winner and includes me in the public account of the project.
Read the Commission page →National coverage
NOS
NOS quoted me on the project’s practical internet constraints and the public demand behind it.
Read the NOS article →Technical press
Tweakers
Tweakers shows that the initiative was taken seriously as real infrastructure work, with scale, ambition, and industry attention.
Read the Tweakers article →Local visibility
De Wolden Nieuws
Local coverage shows the citizen-led approach, the public accountability around it, and the visible public role around the project.
Read the local article →Next
Elsewhere on this site.
Earlier work in De Wolden. Oegema is the current role.