Teacher in the spotlight: Herman Maes

In this section, we want to put a teacher in the spotlight by asking them a handful of questions posed by DPI.

Herman Maes, Freelance Privacy Officer, Martech strategist, and teacher, is happy to answer them.

Interview

Can you briefly explain your role within DPI and what type of training courses you provide?

With a background in IT consulting and as a marketing strategist at a marketing agency, I am a lecturer at DPI in the Data Protection & Technology program and in courses on privacy in marketing. We also offer these courses through DPI as customized programs in-house.

What do you consider to be the biggest challenge for professionals in your field today?

Due to the impact of privacy legislation, companies and suppliers of technical and marketing solutions are increasingly looking for solutions that often border on the permissible. These increasingly technical solutions (such as server-side tracking within web analytics and API integrations between companies) are more difficult to understand for DPOs with only a legal background. As a DPO, you must therefore continuously update your knowledge of both legal and technical aspects in order to keep up with these developments.

How do you try to combine theory and practice in your courses?

Anyone who has taken one of my courses knows that you will see many practical screenshots. Every day, I take screenshots of practical examples, which I store in a folder system. This allows me to show good and less good examples to frame a specific problem or technique. I also work as a DPO myself. In that context, showing a concrete example from another company often adds significant value.

What motivates you to share your knowledge with students?

I have been sharing knowledge for more than 20 years through my own blog (Dailybits), teaching in higher education, and giving evening presentations for parents. This passion for education was definitely instilled in me at home. But perhaps it also stems from the fact that, as a college student, I was able to take Peter Berghmans‘ courses Hacking Explained and Network Techniques in 2000. He showed me the passion for transferring knowledge.

What are common questions or themes that participants struggle with?

Finding a workable, pragmatic solution between the wishes of the DPO and those of the marketing department often creates tension. Can we upload this group of customers for customer matching in an advertising platform? Can that web analytics solution still be placed prior to the cookie banner? I often receive these types of questions from DPOs, and in my training courses, I discuss how to deal with them.

Which developments or trends do you follow closely within your field?

The marketing landscape is fundamentally changing with the advent of AI. AI Overviews are redesigning search engines, advertising platforms want more data to allow AI to do its work automatically, and the creation of marketing visuals is becoming increasingly automated. This raises both privacy and ethical issues — precisely in the context in which I work as a DPO.

What do you think distinguishes a strong training program from an average one?

When I take a course myself, I want it to challenge and stimulate me. A course should offer me more than what I could learn on my own via YouTube or a podcast. This can be achieved, for example, through questions and discussions with other participants. I also think it’s important to be able to adapt quickly and integrate recent developments or case law into the course. At DPI, I am therefore invariably asked to review the content of a course and make any additions before it goes to the printer.

What key message do you want students to take away after completing a course with you?

Keep learning and show interest in new developments and techniques. Ask the marketing or IT department for clarification if you don’t understand something. I regularly give presentations to parents about social media and children. My golden tip is to try out an app yourself before giving your child access to it. Keep up with Snapchat, TikTok, and other platforms. The analogy I make is this: my grandfather once refused to learn how to use an ATM because it was too complex. Many professionals today, in the age of AI, are making a similar mistake in their thinking.

How do you stay up to date yourself in a rapidly changing field?

I sometimes demonstrate this in my training courses: I have two methods for keeping up to date. On the one hand, I am still a big user of RSS readers, which make it easy to follow websites and blogs. I have been using Feedly for years, where I follow more than 150 sources as my daily newspaper.

On the other hand, managing a blog and giving training courses forces me to delve deeper into certain topics. Being able to explain something clearly helps me to make connections with other areas more quickly