About
Jaap van Till is a CONNECTIVIST, who specializes in designing disruptive network architecture and infrastructure for improving cooperation between people and collaboration across networks. He writes about the emerging forces of social media driven by smart phones, tablets and the growth of Fiber-to-the-Home. (Powerful stuff!)
His recent essay on The Power of Flocking http://www.scienceguide.nl/200907/technologies-of-flocking-.aspx has been widely discussed on the Internet. Van Till has consulted successfully on using innovative technologies to rethink worldwide networks for Education and Research (NREN’s) as well as huge private company networks, as partner at Stratix Consultants (NL). His consultancy work centres around explaining technology to managers and explaining objectives to network specialists. The canyon between geeks and managers is still wide and deep. Van Till served as Professor for Corporate Networks and Internet Infrastructure at Delft University (NL) and Internet Infrastructure Professor at HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem (NL). His inventions include “Tillegraaf ” baseband modems and “Plector” local multiplexers. Weaving broadband networks between people to work together and create value.
broodjejaap 
I am amending the above with a critical point strangely overlooked but worthy of mention nonetheless: Jaap van Till = ne plus ultra.
Hi Japp, I’ve been looking through some of the link and detailed commentary you so kindly provided via https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/?s=veltman and though I’d send you this note of thanks.
I certainly didn’t know Kim as well as so many other people, especially Graciete Amaro of course, but even so have known him since I was a teenager in London in the 1970s and keep in touch with him ever since.
I certainly miss Kim very much! The strange thing is I took him quite for granted and never imagined a world without him…. he and I were talking at length together over the phone in February this year (2020), then sent each other one or two emails during March. I sent him another email at the start of April, wishing him a Happy Easter and including a funny cartoon and a couple of links to silly things I knew he’d love (I like silliness – hence one of my domain names and favourite email addresses). I was surprised not to hear back from him for a few days but knew how busy he was so didn’t worry….
…then out of the blue (as we English put it) I receive the group email from Myra Koomen saying he was dead!!!!!!!!! Well, at first I didn’t believe a word of it and thought this was some typical Internet hoax, so I immediately called to his home phone, then office phone…. they each just rang and rang…. the truly awful truth gradually started to dawn on me that we really had lost him.
Also, of course, knowing his subtle and quirky humour quite well, I wish I could have shared the joke with him that being dead was a really good excuse for not replying to my email! He’d already been dead for 4 days when I sent it…. but then I felt even worse for realising that I couldn’t share this silly comment with him, then make a few linguistic puns about it as we typically did together because actually he was DEAD, and of course if he weren’t then this whole line of thought would never have come up in the first place!
I’m not sure where or not you’ve already seen it, as it’s been copied to a lot of people now anyhow, but I made a rather unconventional Memorial Portrait of him, as well as a few personal comments by way of explanation. You can find it on http://www.Sophianic.com/ and are welcome to add a link to it on either of your blogs if you feel it worthy – although I expect that will probably happen via this message anyhow?
Also, after now having found and just read your http://www.scienceguide.nl/2009/07/technologies-of-flocking/ article, which I’d never come across before, it has occurred to me that I may have one or two potentially interesting ideas that I’d been planning to share with Kim for the last year or so but we never quite got around to, and now – sadly – we never will.
Kindest Wishes to you,
Barry
Thank you Barry,
Your kind message and link to the wonderful “card” will be posted under the Replies, below the webpage.