Roberto C. Serrano - the introduction!

Hello World!

A while back I got an invitation from Ivan to start blogging in his house, so, honoured by the offer and compelled by years promising myself that this would be the year I would start blogging, I decided to dive in and blog away.

So, lets start at the beginning, first:  who am I?

My name is Roberto C. Serrano and I am a passionate technologist that, ever since I was 11, dedicated countless hours to indulge my mind in these curious machines called computer.  For me, it all started with my collection of micro-hobby magazines dedicated to the infamous Sinclair spectrum, and for years to come I chased the illusive dream of "understanding everything what made the machine ticked".  

Overtime, understanding everything, gave way to understanding PCs  (DR-DOS  anyone?), then understanding programming, then understanding mobile development and software processes, and finally and what made me cross journeys with Ivan:  Context aware computing.  

In a short sentence: my passion is to understand what's at the heart of technology.

What is my background?  You may ask next...

I started my humble professional journey at the Academia Nuria de Gava (Barcelona) after completing an FP diploma in Computers and Management (Informática y gestión) and quickly went into Multimedia development (remember those pesky CD-Roms?) I developed with some colleagues quite a few for Grupo Z, while teaching people the trade.  Eventually we formalised our relationship in Inter. Actividad, a cool Engineering boutique with a focus on providing development services to designers and agencies.  We were hot for a while, but it did not take time for our main client in Grupo Z to realised that they would be better off moving the talent in-house, and personally left me a bit disenchanted and ready for the next challenge:  to get a more comprehensive education.

So, young but already married to a beautiful American woman, around the 2K, we decided to fulfil this higher calling in the US of A, and we left to settled in Chicago.  Funny enough an inflating bubble (.com boom anyone?) meant that our goal was delayed 4 years more.  During that time, I did my share of Web App development, until I got caught in he eternal cycle of maintaining a poorly design web app (by me), fact that clearly illustrated the need to go back to school!  

So by 2005 I was full in with a declared CS major in the Engineering program at the University of Illinois, in school while in the process of discovering what takes to become a good developer, I fell in love with all things open-source and dedicated countless hours to learn, Java, OOP, C++, Software Engineering, etc... but spent almost as many hours advocating (and founding the Flourish Conference) - for all of those in the know, I was the guy in the penguin suite!  Thanks to the opportunity I spent countless hours expanding my personal network and honing-in my people's skills.  More importantly though, I started developing a taste at guessing where tech is heading.  This thirst, with time has become an interest in understanding the intimate and transformative nature that technology has on all of us.

By 2008, I had already played a little bit with the Android SDK (remember that white blackberry looking thing they had for the emulator?).  Little did I know that for years to come Android was going to be the center of my professional life (even today at my present post @ Accenture).

Well, remember the network I develop along with Flourish? Upon graduating Motorola came knocking at my door and offer me a role as a Developer Advocate as part of their Linux-Java platform... the platform that would soon after become the central team behind the Motorola Droid.  The role was short-lived, since I ended up having my first born just after the first year at Motorola, and ended up moving close to family (darn European customs!).

The last 5 years brought about founding a couple Android communities around Barcelona and working in various roles as an Android Developer and more recently as a Project manager.  Over the last year, the call to understand the transformative nature of tech., has become a passion for what I personally think will likely be a comparable shift to what mobile started 6 years ago with the iPhone:  context aware technologies.

As you've been introduced so well by Ivan, here, here and especially here, Context (and Intent), bound in the actions and activities we conduct daily and potentially unlocked through our smart-phones (and other channels) have a transformative power that no other tech has had in at least since the introduction of the iPhone, emergence of Android, and the smart-phone taking over our lives.

So what can you expect from me?  

From time to time, I hope to offer an additional voice and perspective to this fine Blog initiated by Ivan with a particular focus on Mobile, Agile, and Context related tech, especially the latter.

So here!  This is a quick history of me for those interested in getting to know me.  Leave a note if you want me to expand on anything.

In the meantime:  may love, creativity, and peace always be with you!