Biography Chris Sonnemans was born in 1943, not far from a Roman road to Germany and an ancient crossing place over the river Meuse near Roermond in the Southern part of the Netherlands. At the age of 4 the family moved to the city of Roermond, close to a farm. This farm became a second home for me and influenced my later life very strongly. I learned harvesting the oldfashioned way with the scythe, but also feeding the animals and having fun in the hay. As a young boy I was reading the stories about the adventures of cowboys and Indians. At highschool I was especially fond of the Dutch poetry in the Middle Ages and 17th century. But the greatest fun was the annual theater play under the critical eye of the chaplain. At an age of 18 I moved to the Agricultural University in Wageningen and I dreamed of becoming a forester, but soon I learned that trees don't talk back. I became a member of the International Club and trained my English with students from all over the world. As a student I pretended to be a poet, a theater writer and an actor, but failed to make it a profession. After finishing my duty in the army and my studies as an (Agricultural) Economist with a specialization in (Extension Knowledge) Communication, I started as communication researcher for the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, Teleac/NOT in 1971. From 1971 till 1987 I did scores of pre-tests and evaluation studies. I was a producer of several multimedia ( television, books, audio-tapes, radio and study groups) productions: Introduction to Development Problems (17 x 30 min.), Photography and Filming (12 x 30 min.), Chinese Language and People (13 x 45 min.) and French Language and people (20 x 30 min). My favoured writers were, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Marilyn French, Lisa Alther, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Joseph Wambaugh, James Hadley Chase and Mickey Spillane. In April 1987 I was asked to be the Head of the Television Production Department. From April 1987 till april 1995 I was responsible for about 600 hours of television production. From 1987 on I have developed also Acquisition, Sales and Co-production. International co-productions to be mentioned are New Age, New Man (1 x 60'), Greek Fire (10 x 26 min), Spaceship Earth (10 x 26 min), Inside the Global Economy (13 x 60 min), The Power of Place (26 x 30 min), History's Turning Points (26 x 26 min.) and the future co-productions: In Search of Wisdom 26 x 30 min, A World of Music (13 x 30 min) and Europe: Beyond 2000 ( 13 x 60 min). Since April 1995 I have been Manager of Acquisitions, Sales and Co-productions and in April 1996 , becoming 53, I decided to change my career towards cyberspace and to the new multimedia world. In 1988 I started to discuss the possibilities of the development of interactive CD-I's Already in 1990 we organized a CD-I demonstration at the Telelearning Conference '90 in Miami. The decision to change to cyberspace led to The Global Distance Learning Channel on the internet and the urge to try Multimedia Scriptwriting. And than it became an obsession with: The Challenge Channel, Europe Beyond 2000, In Search of Wisdom, The Rotterdam Market and many more. The production of multimedia courses and the international co-productions always have been a thrilling challenge. But now cyberspace takes over. The most fascinating work I do now is the development of an online Dutch language course for English speakers Learn Dutch. Besides Internet I like mental jogging and cooking, stopped smoking in 1979 and love my Macintosh Computer.