Dirk has been an active participant of the open source community for years. Having positioned himself as a specialist in the usage of Perl in a Win32 environment, he became a regular contributor to the Belgian Perl scene in 2006. His involvement grew and he joined the organisation of the Belgian Perl workshop the following year. As the organisation experienced difficulties in 2008, Dirk took the lead role, organising the event in 2009. He will also be the lead organiser for 2010.

The 2009 Belgian Perl workshop was held on 28 February. The event consisted of over 10 presentations spread over 2 rooms and was attended by nearly 50 Perl fans and programmers from nine countries.

Dirk is also a regular attendee and organiser of the Flemish Perl monger meetings that are held monthly in cities around the area.

Cf. http://vlaanderen.pm.org

Expanding his interest to Linux and other open source software, Dirk has become active in other organisations and has become a regular participant of the FOSDEM event. His active participation in the Perl scene means he has a large network of experts in Perl and other open source software.