How I Got Started
on Technology
If I have to say one of the main feature that define my personality is of being curious and technology is an endless field for curiosity. What technology allows you is to stratify knowledge where what you learned yesterday serves you for what will come tomorrow and what will happen tomorrow will be a lot. The word technology is tomorrow itself. Over the years and after being in constant technological learning at all levels, technical, design and market, it has allowed me, among other things, to be able to forecast. This characteristic is nourished by information and intuition and is one of the virtues that makes me build robust visions. Maybe my best skill. I can say now that what you live and breathe when you are a child determines your future, which is my case.
Childhood
I remember my first contact with technology, regularly, was with an Atari at home at the age of 8 years old where I played games like Pacman and Space Invaders with my brother Fede and friends. The robust joystic was intuitive enoguh to allow a full experience and interaction with different games inserted as cassetes into whats was then going to be called a console. A perfect match (perhaps one of the best) between simplicity and innovation in something that many years later would be called user experience. |
My second relevant interaction with technology came aproximately at the age of 10 when my father boguht a Apple IIe (the first personal computer) in the US and placed it at my roon. It had a green screen and two 5¼ disk drives. By then mouse did not existed and was introduced later with Macintosh. I recall using basic program and playing Combat but nothing much sophisticated since by then I did not considered myself techy yet. I was just a child playing with something without noticing its importance.
These two beuties marked my childhoood. I was able to early enjoy what would then later become revolutionary and far-reaching for me. Without noticing I was exposed to two of the most iconic products of the computer era. |
Technology and innovation are absorbed in the least expected way. When one is a child and begins to receive stimuli from the world in abundance, that is where tastes, preferences and curiosities awaken. Not only in terms of technology but music, art and culture, even cartoons mark us in life.
If something marked me during my childhood and pre-adolescence, it was a very advanced series that was replayed on television called Robotech. The technology, the design, the music (specially the opening), the characters, the plot and innovation blew my mind. Certainly a technological and emotional concept charged with adrenaline that captivated me and continues to captivate today. I will love Rick and Lisa Hunter forever ❤️. |
Officehood
During my adolescence, end of the 80’s beggining of 90’s I also had a lot of contact with technology in my father’s company Vigil y Ocampo Ingenieros (aka V&O) located in the center of CABA. The engineering company designed and built works for the distribution and classification of hybrid seeds for seed companies such as Pioneer, Dekalb, among others. Therefore, it had servers, communications, plans, plots and computers of the best level. Some time later I would realize that this place was truly a technological amusement park. during the officehood I established a real connection with technologies that were used by people I knew whose impact on their work was significant, consequently on my life. Some of the most iconic machines from those officehood eras are these three:
I remember staring at the Telex machinge working, I reacll well was a Siemmens Telex T1000 making a lot of noice punching holes in a tape. I also remember playing with the Macintosh mouse (the first computer with a mouse) moving through the courses was already an adventure. It was also crazy to watch the plotters of the time work, the HP 7580 Pen Plotter that drew the plan like a robot with interchangeable ink tips. This is how my childhood passed in this office environment, my officehood.
Summer Work
Later in the 90s and during the summers he worked as a V&O cadet carrying envelopes to the city centre. Technology had changed a lot. Telex was replaced by fax and communications were made by telephone call using copper cable. In fact, at V&O the first point-to-point connection script was presented with Impsat to send and receive blueprints. with the US. Ethernet networks already existed with hubs and servers with Windows Servers. Although I ran errands, I liked going to the technical area with the engineers and I curiously observed the person who managed that network, Rodolfo Benbenutto. He showed me how the network worked, Windows Nt 4.0 Wokstations, Windows SMB Servers, mapped shared drives, file servers, hubs, ethernet cabling and other interesting setups that I was intrigued about. By then I did not know I was going to work doing that exact job afterwards although he allways joke about how dangerous my mouse finger click was. What a paradox.
The office had cutting-edge technology with very powerful computers for that time, including Micron and Gateway workstation (Gateway 2000 Series) to handle Office, Autocad smoothly. 50-inch Gateway monitors (that weighed their equivalent in kilos) to work with plans and HP plotters with ink cartridges. |
Without realizing it, I was working in a very advanced environment in software and hardware, feeling comfortable with technology. Although I did other things and did not believe that would be my destiny but design, time showed me that those first experiences marked me in my understanding of technology and today I can say that I am a technocrat partly because of that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gateway_2000_P5-120_front_view.jpg
Supported University
Although during high school I had to write software in a basic way for school, until that moment it did not attract my attention or like it, which is why I never considered myself a nerd. Nor did I feel an affinity for technology or recognize my attributes to be a programmer. In fact, when I took a vocational test in high school, he told me that I should study Industrial Design and I did so. It was in this context where my creative part emerged towards design where I began to study at the UBA (University of Buenos Aires) at the age of 19. By then I mastered Corel Draw 4, Autocad 12 and 3D Studio MAX.
The University molded me as a product creator and given tools for solving problems while undertanding the user better and better. Putting myself in the user’s shoes came naturally to me. I naturally started to invent things with inmense creativity. I came up with an idea for a toothbrush system for a US company and filed a Patent Application in Argentina at the age of 20. I have proven good skills with computers and things went naturally with design programs, also in music programs with midi and sound edition. By then I explored computers for the sake of creativity only.
However I also had to make a living speccially to pay for my studies. Expensive and intensive in time consumming I had to work. I tried to get a job as an Industrial Design trinee but was useless. Technology made the call and suit well.
First Job
University was really tough and I had to somehow maintain my expenses therefore I looked for jobs as an Industrial Designer trainee however the experience was not good therefore I started looking elsewhere.
The opportunity came to work when I got a job as help desk and support at a company called Step Online for an ISP (Internet Server Provider) for Apple Computers. By that time there was dial up connection with modems and you had to install Open Transport into old Macs which sometimes ended up as a mess.
I started to get more involved in communications, I was already running AT commands on the modems and doing diagnostics. I installed a lot of software too.
However, out of those issues I ran into I also learned and I was able to do it by myself. I realized I was good with computers however by then also in love with design.
Vocation
One day while working at my first job in the ISP for Macs, tipically giving support to custommers, taking calls and scheduling installation visits I saw something significant that caught my attention. My boss opened a beutiful and colored box and took out a rounded computer. It was an iMac!! and looked like an aircraft 🚀.
Shocking and impressive, the first computer that I saw connected to the Internet natively without an external modem. Came in different colors, was fast and elegant. It was the first state of the art computer product I fallen in love with. Then the team that built it, then the company. I started dreaming big.
I was very impressed with the iMac by the amount of creativity that could fit in a computer, the more I found out the more I realized the immense field that I had in front of learning everything about computers. Even the wafer on the invoice was designed, there was nothing that was not new or innovative, they even hired a candy company to make the colored shells. A before and after for me who was in love with design and I loved computers. I saw my future.
It happened to be that the owners of the company had close connections with Apple Argentina (by that time present in our country) not yet into the market. Curious, I was very intrigued and started asking questions. That was the first time I heard the name Steve Jobs. I jumped into it.
It also happened to be that for creating the iMac Steve Jobs worked with a group of Industrisal Designers leaded by a design leader Jonathan Ive, my head blew up and I thogut this is what I want to do in life ❤️. Design, technolgoy, creativity … and power 💪🏻. My vocation. |
I knew by then that in order to reach my dream I had to roll up my sleeves and get dirty with technology. I knew that I had to become a bad ass nerd and that pairing it with design would lead me to achieve that dream, that of creating technological products with good design.
Ever after every desition I have taken has been towards technology.
Information Technology
As preliminary information, Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve and exchange all kinds of data and information. A network administrator is a person designated in an organization whose responsibility includes maintaining computer infrastructures with emphasis on local area networks (LANs) up to wide area networks (WANs). While Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components.
Network Administrator
After the ISP server, I went to work as a help desk in pharmaceutical laboratories such as Richmond and then went to the Obra Social del Personal Grafico aka OSPG (graphic union) where I began to provide help desk support and stayed for years maintaining the network until I was responsible for the area of technology.
Amongst other infrastructure responsibilities I was keeping over 100 computers connected to a Microsoft domain network running Windows NT4 with Active Directory running on top of a Compaq Proliant Server 5500 with Oracle Database and custom health systems. I was responsible for backup and disaster recovery Veritas Backup with tapes. At that time I really liked working with irons, I also put HP and AS400 servers to work, however the Proliant marked me at one point in my life. Where I understood the power of what is now defined as the cloud computing. This incipient knowledge helped me to understand a lot what could happen in the future. |
fixed computers hardware and software, also cloned them and wrote sophisticated login scripts for automation.
I learned many things on my own that marked me forever in a real technology playground. I remember two significant events linked to a consultant Jose Lipari who had introduced me to work where in a random conversation about software he asked: Do you know what a variable is?. I answered I didn’t. From that point things started to look different. Similar to the Eureca Moment and during the same time, I began to believe. I began to believe that I could also be capable of writting softeare. I was not a kid, nor young but a massive passion of y dream drove me to start learning. It was at that time that I started learning how to write software, on my own of course since by 2001 there was already an incipient Internet full of new resources.
Software Developer
Althoguh I did computer programs during my secondary with the first series of cloned computer running DOS. I was only then around the age of 25 when I came across scripting with real needs. I was working as Network Administrator while stuing Industrial Design so I was in conctac with differnet tools and platforms available to start scripting. Notice that by then sofware was not object oriented and learning to code was kind of lineal. The more commands you learnt the more powerful you became. I also had experience with command like what made things easier. The first approach to scripting came with VBA (Visual Basic For Applications) where I connected a Word form to an Oracle Database via ODBC. I was so happy to se this working and solving a problem to for a customer service area that solved a big problem that they had to print a receipt for each member. I couldn’t believe that I had been able to do that and it worked. That was the first moment I surprised myself about this new ability and I liked it.
With that confidence I began to look for how to solve problems in the network and with the recommendation of the person who took me to work at the graphic union a scripting programming language similar to C++ called Kixtart (kixtart.org) that allowed to automate tasks of logging computers to the network. It was at that time when I really learnt how to program learning how to parse strings and handle single and multidimensiontal arrays. It was robust, flexible and data capable with huge possibilities for automating whatever in a computer when logged into the network. Was compatible with Windows NT Server and I was very happy to code. I ended up writting multiple automations that prevented me from going through the 100 machines on the network and that way I could install software, map drives, remove or copy files, shortcuts, touch the windows registry, connect to a database and many other things. My days working as Network Administrator became very joyfull coding login script The full story about how this language and its great community opened my mind in many ways and can be found below at KiXtart.
First and Dearest Community
It was one day when I ran out of ideas that I came across the KiXtart.org Bulleting Board where I could ask questions to the community and get answers. However, instead I met this incredible community of people who I became friends with and I was so pleased to interact with.
Having interacted with this community in my formative years was a key and significant fact for my professional life. Establishing a link with people throughout the world through the Internet with a common goal, technology and knowledge applied to work were key so that I could later establish many links through the same medium with people outside my country in a natural and I have done it countless times in different projects.
Learning to ask questions allows me to solve complex problems. When you have to solve a complex technological problem it is a challenge for yourself, but it can also be a challenge for others and that can even be fun. It’s not for nothing that special people who are rockstars in technology find that challenging. That is why inviting them, challenging them and questioning them is a way to get their attention and collaboration. To ask for help it is necessary to show that you did the task, that you exhausted absolutely all instances and that only someone special can help you, a person who wants to take on the challenge and hack it.
For example, years later, working at a company called PoinPay where I developed an Android application that allowed me to control a means of payment, I found myself faced with a low-level challenge and asked for help in the place where the rockstars were, HDA, another community in the Which one did I learn. In this case I had to ensure that when a cell phone turned on when it was plugged in and made a well-made request for help. The post on the forum as Boot On Charge allowed us to reach laufersteppenwolf “the wolf”, who accepted and helped solve the channel.
Over the years I realized how important it was to participate in the beautiful Kickstart community and how grateful I will be to it for having trained me.
Learning with an IDE
Learning with an IDE after being trained running Windows Operating Systems (setup-wizards-next-next-finish), my approach to development was not “text only” like every nerd makes his way into the world, ie C++, Bash (Unix shell) command line and modern back-end lower level languages first and foremost. In my case, and coming from design, I started very slowly using very friendly programs like Microsoft Access where I learned to play with relational databases, query interface and VBA as programming languaje (thanks Valeria Rios 😉).
Since I came from design programs like Corel, Illustrator and Photoshop I was very familiar with them therefor when Macromedia launched Flash in 2004 everything started making sense. It was the first fotware that was capable of hadling design with animations powered by a scripting language called ActionScript robust enoguht for Youtube first site ran under Flash. They were the beginnings of the internet and a fashion where almost all modern sites had Flash animations. I jumped into it and became a good developer and producer. By that time I graduated and left OSPG because I knew I wanted to develop software and it was the closer position I could be in touch with my two worlds, design and development including technology. Then the evolution of Flash with components evolved to Flex after Macromedia was bought by Adobe and the story with Flash ended the moment Steve jobs decided not to include it into the forst iPhone meaning EOL in short RIP 🪦. However this technology marked my life for good since allowed me to get my fist job as a real developer and most important to lanch my humble and efficients dynamic charts published and consummed on the real web. More about that stage at Dynamic Chats.
Software Factory Experience
In July 2008 and after the company Arinware Intelligent technologies S.A. for which I worked as a Flash AS2 developer closed due to bankruptcy, I found myself having to find a job to support my family. Even though by that time I was over 30 years old and mostly had a Network Administrator background, decided to learn everything I could about development and started my developer carrer.I was so motivated to learn how to program and learn technology than to decide to work in a software factory. Why? Because in a factory there are many technologies. Side-effects, in a factory you work as a worker, a young and unsatisfied worker.
While I was working on my first ideas about Roaming Keyboards I found a job on a software factory called Truelogic at the same time when other companies with the same hot seat model were consolidating in Argentina such as Cubika (adquired by GlobalLogic) and especially Globant. At the same time when other companies with the same hot seat model were consolidating in Argentina such as Kubica and especially Globant. This ulitma, the one that grew the most internationally and is listed on the NY Stock Exchange, the one that represented an example to follow as a model.
Here downsides of a software factory without making comments nad how that led me to lead correctly.
Mobile Developer
While in 2007 the iPhone was beginning to be advertised as the new personal computer of the future, only the possibility of learning a technology that runs on those wonders of technology opened my mind and I projected myself into the future. Apple with its Apple Store and Google with its Market (currently Google Play) empirically showed me that it was possible to develop software and grow exponentially. Just imagining that highways were being created and race tracks paved was enough to make me believe that I should build the cars of the future to run on them. That exponential thought that through software you could reach all people in the world of all ages was the motivation that led me to learn and not stop trying to work with technology as an added product value.
Java Android, PointPay, RollerShow, Rocket Launcher towards learning by building plus Gamves.
Learning by Building
All tech I learnt building statups. How I got into AI and BioTech. How I continue.
Where did I learn the most technology? Without hesitation and by far where I learned the most about technology is by building and undertaking my own ideas. There is nothing more immediate than having to develop technology in order to gain a space in the market. When technology is created in search of value.
Both network administration and software development have been trades that I learned on my own, with the Internet, with search engines, being mostly Curious and Self-Taught. I did not dedicate myself to studying IT at the university, I did it working and most important building. The best way to learn has always been building, by far and building at all risks and to the limit. That makes you really have to understand things by hook and by crook. It is what I have done in the last 20 years.
There is no more efficient learning in life than having to learn to survive. But not only survive yourself as a human being, survive as an entrepreneur, that our company does not sink or have to be disconnected. It is not the most recommended but it is certainly an efficient way to learn. I must say that I learned a lot.