Fabien Pinckaers was only eighteen years old when he started his first company. Today, over ten years later, he has founded and managed several new technology companies, all based on Free / Open Source software.

He originated Tiny ERP, now OpenERP, and is the director of two companies including OpenERP S.A., the editor of OpenERP. In a few years time, he has grown the Tiny group from one to sixty-five employees without loans or external fund-raising, and while making a profit.

He has also developed several large scale projects, such as Auction-in-Europe.com, which became the leader in the art market in Belgium. Even today people sell more art works there than on ebay.be.

He is also the founder of the LUG (Linux User Group) of Louvain-la-Neuve, and of several free projects like OpenReport, OpenStuff and Tiny Report. Educated as a civil engineer (polytechnic), he has won several IT prizes in Europe such as Wired and l’Inscene.

A fierce defender of free software in the enterprise, he is in constant demand as a conference speaker and he is the author of numerous articles dealing with free software in the management of the enterprise.

Follow Fabien on his blog http://fptiny.blogspot.com/ or on twitter fpopenerp.

Els Van Vossel always had a dedication to both written and spoken word. Clear and explicit communication is crucial.

Educated as a Professional Translator in Antwerp, she worked as an independent translator on the localization of major ERP software. Els acquired ERP knowledge and decided to start working as a functional ERP consultant and a Technical Communicator for ERP software.

As such, the world of OpenSource software became more and more attractive. She started working with OpenERP software in her free time and doing so, Els really wanted to meet Fabien Pinckaers to share thoughts about documentation and training strategy. Now Els is reviewing and writing OpenERP Books.

Being an author of several Software Manuals, she finds it exciting to work on the OpenERP documentation and continuously take it to a higher level. Please note that this is a hell of a job, but Els finds great pleasure in doing it!

Follow Els on her blog http://training-openerp.blogspot.com/ or on twitter elsvanvossel.

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