Photo: PKM Summit speaker page
Dutch technology philosopher and stand-up philosopher who argues that anyone can own and reason over their own information, and that a well-built personal knowledge system makes you sharper, not busier.
Field / lens: Personal knowledge management, Obsidian, information autonomy, digital fitness
Based in: Groningen area, Netherlands
Timezone: CET (UTC+1/+2)
Why they matter to the Guild
Martijn has spent 25+ years connecting people and ideas at the edge of technology and human behaviour, and he turned that into two practical movements the Guild cares about: a Dutch-language on-ramp to Obsidian that treats note-taking as owning your own information, and Digital Fitness, a framework for working smarter and healthier with digital tools. He founded the European PKM Summit, which has become the meeting point of this whole field in Europe. He is also building in the open: his Live Lens System is a public, brain-inspired architecture for a personal knowledge operating system.
The arc of their work
- Before — Two decades as a speaker and connector on the network and information society, with co-authored Dutch bestsellers Easycratie and Nooit Af / The Permanent Beta Principle. Through this he developed the idea that institutions are too slow for the pace of change, and that individuals need their own capacity to think and act.
- The landmark — The shift to hands-on tooling: co-founding Digital Fitness (with Mark Meinema) as a five-pillar framework for knowledge workers, founding the European PKM Summit (first edition March 2024, Utrecht), and writing the Obsidian books (Starten met Obsidian, 2025; Verder met Obsidian, 2026) that became his most practical, widely used work. The English edition, How to Begin with Obsidian, brings this to a wider audience.
- After — Building the Live Lens System (LLS) and ThetaOS in public on GitHub: a brain-inspired, structured-data approach to a personal knowledge operating system, with an AI layer that retrieves rather than generates. This is the frontier of his “own your information” thesis.
Key ideas and terms
- Information autonomy — the principle that individuals should own, structure, and reason over their own information rather than renting access to it inside someone else’s platform. See Glossary — Shared Language.
- Digital fitness — working smarter and healthier with digital tools, across awareness, hygiene, skills, PKM, and wellbeing. See Glossary — Shared Language.
- Live Lens System (LLS) — his open, brain-inspired architecture for a personal knowledge operating system. See Live Lens System (LLS).
- Permanent beta — the idea (from Nooit Af) that nothing is ever finished; work and skills stay in continuous development.
Their works
Books
Communities
Find them
- Site: https://www.martijnaslander.nl/ · https://martijnaslander.international/
- Newsletter: Martijn Aslander
- GitHub: martijnaslander · GitHub · LLS: The Life Lens System — Martijn Aslander
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijnaslander
- Instagram: @resourcerer
- Speaking: Martijn Aslander | Future & Technolgy Speaker - Speakers Academy EN
Related leaders
- Nick Milo — fellow Obsidian/PKM thinker; both spoke at the PKM Summit and share the “linking your thinking” worldview.
- Tiago Forte — Second Brain author; spoke at the first PKM Summit; Martijn’s Obsidian work is a tool-specific cousin of Forte’s tool-agnostic CODE/PARA.
- Sönke Ahrens — smart notes / Zettelkasten; shares the “structure beats volume” premise that underlies Martijn’s LLS.
- Frank Meeuwsen — Dutch PKM blogger and co-author of Verder met Obsidian; close collaborator in the same scene.
Sources
- martijnaslander.nl — official Dutch site (primary)
- martijnaslander.international — official English site (primary)
- PKM Summit — Martijn Aslander — speaker bio + photo (primary)
- Digitale Fitheid — Over — Digital Fitness, founders and pillars (primary)
- Starten met Obsidian — Van Duuren Media — publisher page (primary)