A bit about me

Bart Van Loon

I suppose the secret to happiness is learning to appreciate the moment, Bill Watterson has Calvin say this in his iconic comic series. I have made it my own little secret too.

I'm an entrepreneur, geek-for-life and public keynote speaker. My love for the stage has lead me to become a professional improviser, dance teacher and pianist as well.

I was an active member of the Scout Movement in Belgium, where I was assigned a totem animal describing my personality: Lively Lion Tamarin.

This little monkey has a long, silky coat with a mane on its head. The Lion Tamarin is pleasant and cheerful all day and very lively. It is handy and a fast climber. The Lion Tamarin lives in family groups and takes good care of the young, even if they aren't its own.

Personal Details

Name:
Bart Van Loon
Date of birth:
20th January 1981
Nationality:
Belgian

Hobbies

There are a lot of things I enjoy doing. As my hobbies, I consider:

  • long-distance walking
  • reading novels
  • messing around with Open Source
  • immersing myself in new cultures
  • playing the piano

Jobs

There are more things I thoroughly enjoy and consider as my jobs:

Fun facts and numbers

Random facts about me

  • Many people know me as BBBart
    I called my first computer "Bart's Bytes". This inspired my first IRC handle "BaBy_bart", which then later degenerated into BBBart.
  • I always wanted to be an inventor
    As a kid, I was very inspired by Professor Barabas from the Spike & Suzy comics.
  • Music is what I miss first
    Whenever I am travelling or away for a long time, I quickly find myself searching for music; I cannot go without!

The universe by numbers

  • 3.14 When I first met my wife
    My wife and I celebrate π-day on 14th March yearly since that's the day we first met.
  • 1985 My first computer programme
    I was four years old when I discovered BASICA on our Intel 286 computer and started playing around with it.
  • 18 Books read per year
    According to Goodreads I read about 18 books per year.

About Zeropoint

About Zeropoint, the offshore talent partner

International family

In the early eighties I was raised in Saudi Arabia where my father was working. My younger brother was born there.

Later, our father lived in Malaysia and China (北京), while I completed my university studies in Norway.

When my younger brother turned 18, my parents moved to China (上海) again. Meanwhile, my younger sister lived in South Africa and is currently raising her children in Switzerland.

This has sparked in me an insatiable interest in foreign people, languages and cultures.

Kashmir Earthquake

In 2005 the northern areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and India suffered from a major earthquake. My friend happened to be in Islamabad when it happened and decided to volunteer for the rescue mission of the United Nations. Later, I joined him from home.

Key learnings

This experience lead to us to realising the following:

  1. Higher education in Pakistan is at a good level;
  2. but, economically, Pakistan is doing badly;
  3. which leads to a lot of untapped potential in the Pakstani labour market

Market trends in favour of offshoring

Early 2007, Zeropoint opened office in Pakistan and Belgium, bridging the gap between the labour markets in those two countries.

Ever growing investments in technology increases the pressure on companies to hire technically proficient talent. However, a strong decline of IT graduates can be noticed in the EU and US.

On the other hand, an English speaking generation, well versed with digitally maintaining relations across the globe has entered the global economy. At the same time, more and more companies are seeing the benefit of remote working, be it from home, satellite offices or international branches.

These trends lead to Zeropoint finding its place in the market in Belgium and the neighbouring countries for helping companies set up their own offshore teams in South Asia.

Investment and acquisition

In 2012, Zeropoint was approached by a Belgian/Sri Lankan company for supporting their offshore operations. Long story short, in 2013 Zeropoint secured private capital investment and proceeded to acquire the Sri Lankan side of their business.

This means that Zeropoint's recruitment area from now on covers a population of about 200 million people.

In 2014, a management buy-out of the investor completed the merger of Zeropoint Pakistan and Zeropoint Sri Lanka.

The future of Zeropoint

Our long term goal is to help solve the global work force puzzle.

Zeropoint envisions a future where any company can source the global talent pool to expand its workforce. We are riding the wave of the ongoing globalisation and digitisation of our society.

This means we are open to discover any recruitment opportunity on our planet en help establishing and maintaining long term professional relationships between organisations and international employees.