Beyond the Badge Episode 1 ft. Jan De Ridder

Hey, my name is Sawan and I’m a Content Strategist at fielddrive! Usually, much like a certain caped crusader, I work in the shadows, you know, splitting infinitives and selecting which keywords to use like an internet god! 

However, for the next couple of weeks, I will be stepping out of the shadows so that I can introduce you all to some of our amazing team members! 

Starting today, we’re kicking off our Beyond the Badge campaign— an eight-week-long blog post series during which I will be sitting down with some of our team members and talking to them about their jobs, their hobbies, their favorite superheroes, and most importantly, their favorite brand of beer.

So join me as I launch my campaign to invade the privacy of my dead, DEAR colleagues and ask them the internet’s most burning questions!

For our very first post, I sat down with the one and only Jan De Ridder, Logistics Manager at fielddrive, who was nice enough to give me some time out of his busy schedule.

Getting to Know Jan

‍Sawan: Thanks a lot for doing this Jan! I’m excited for this!

Jan: No problem. The pleasure is all mine!

Sawan: Alright, to start off, let me keep things very simple and ask you: what can you tell us about yourself, Jan?

Jan: I'm 30. I studied event and project management, and before that, I studied informatics. So, I'm kind of a combination of tech and project management. I live very close to the office; it's only a 10-minute bike ride, if I'm riding slow. I have one kid, Leon, who's a year and a half, and a four-year-old dog called Bono. He's a Bodeguero.

Until recently, I played basketball, but due to injuries, I had to stop. Now, I'm trying to replace that with running and biking. Besides that, I play some games on PC and PlayStation, and I'm getting into 3D printing. I just bought a 3D printer, and I'm learning or trying to learn how to paint the figurines, but I'll need some more time for that. So, I guess that will be for when the kid gets older and he starts entertaining himself a little bit more so I can have some time to do that. 

Jan's Role at fielddrive

Sawan: That’s great! So, can you tell us a little more about your job? What is it that you do and what are some of your key responsibilities here at fielddrive?

Jan: Yep, so as the Logistics Manager here, my job involves a bunch of things, but I've narrowed it down to the four most important ones. The first one is getting the quotes to make sure the equipment gets shipped in time for all of the events, which is very important. Otherwise, the events won't happen. The second one is making sure the equipment is maintained and everything's in working order. 

Thirdly, it's ordering consumables and replacement parts like ink, badges, and cables. And lastly, I do a lot of testing for the project managers, testing badge sites, testing scanners, and testing QR codes. 

Sawan: That’s a lot! But I’m curious: what's your favorite part of the job? What do you enjoy the most?

Jan: My favorite part is making everything work, getting a puzzle done, and making sure everything's in place for the next events. In the end, seeing a busy period come to a good end with minimal or no errors, preferably, just making sure everything falls into place. It's seeing the puzzle work basically. I make a puzzle a few weeks in advance, and then afterwards, seeing everything fall into place and everybody doing their events. That's my favorite part.

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Sawan: Got it! So you love it when things just go smoothly, am I right? 

Jan: Essentially!

Funny Moments on the Job

Sawan: But you can’t always have complete control over everything, can you? Things go wrong, even for someone who’s as organized as you. So, my next question is: What's the funniest thing that's ever happened to you while on the job? Any mess-up that wasn’t funny at the time but now is?

Jan: So, I don’t have a mess-up story to share with you but I do have quite a few funny ones! One of them is definitely the event in Manila. I'm quite tall, about 6'4", and the staff there was all very short. There's a picture of me with the staff that's here on the office wall. 

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After the event, I stayed a few days to explore the city and ended up playing street basketball with some locals. I didn't know at the time, but I broke my pinky finger. I was traveling back to back after that, going to events in Barcelona, London, and Paris. I didn't get it checked out and kind of fabricated something myself to keep my fingers together so it didn't hurt. When I finally went to a doctor because it kept hurting, it was already too late because it had started to set. So now my pinky finger is a little bit crooked. It's funny now, but it wasn't that funny at the time.

Travelling the World

Sawan: I know what you mean. I injured my ring finger once while dancing,  yes I used to dance, and yes I was horrible, but still, I used to do it! Anyway, so, I broke my finger and till this day, it’s slightly crooked. But coming back to you, Jan: Do you travel a lot for your work?

Jan: I used to travel a lot. There were periods where I had three to four events per month. When I saw friends and family, the standard greeting was often, "You're finally back in the country" or "How long are you in Belgium?" I love traveling, meeting new people, and doing these events. But when my son was born, I told the team that it was impossible for my girlfriend to do everything alone—the dog, the kid, and her job. 

So, I reduced my travel to basically zero and focused more on my Logistics Manager role. Luckily, around the same time, we got some extra project managers and extra OPMs, so my not traveling as much didn't really impact everyone. It's given me more time to focus on what my actual job description is—being a Logistics Manager and making sure everything's on time.

In the future, I've already told multiple people and project managers that if they need me for an event and it's just a couple of days, I'm happy to go. Especially now that my kid is a year and a half and not a baby anymore, he's starting to be a toddler. As soon as he goes to school, I'll have more time to help with events that require travel.

Jan's Favorite Beer

Sawan: Alright, that’s enough about work. I finally want to get to a question that the internet really cares about: Jan, what's your favorite beer?

Jan: My absolute favorite beer in the world is Duvel, which is brewed 10 minutes from our office here in Belgium. And if I'm abroad, I enjoy Tiger Beer and Chang Beer from Thailand. But Duvel is my favorite, even though it's not that exotic.

Jan's Message to the World

Sawan: Wow, that’s quite a list. You’re clearly a man of good taste! I’m a simple guy. Give me a Tuborg or a Bud and I’m a happy guy. Now, I know you’re busy man so I just have one last question for you: If you could put one message out into the world, something you could say to every human being on the planet, what would that be?

Jan: My message would be to use common sense more often. I feel like not enough people use common sense. If more people did, everything would work a lot better and smoother, and everyone would be a lot happier. 

‍Sawan: I can second that! Alright, that’s it, Jan, we did it! 

Jan: Yay!

Sawan: You’re a free man now!

Jan: I had a great time, thanks a lot!

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