Spotify me muestra la semana pasada “mi año en música”. Porque estamos en Diciembre, y en Diciembre es el mes en que evaluamos nuestro año. La fecha exacta: Viernes 6 de Diciembre. Cuando falta casi un mes para que termine el año. Un mes de 12 que pasaron volando, obvio. Pero me pongo a pensar, ¿por qué Spotify me está mostrando lo que más escuche este año cuando todavía falta tanto tiempo para que sea el 2020? …

Léelo en Español aquí

When we started building ON Lab, we set an ideal of our company that was true at that time. But along the way our vision has shifted to become something, to out understanding, far more mature and real. Our initial dreams transformed, after many books, talks, discussions and moments of meditation into a WHY that recites the following:

We believe in the pursuit of happiness by building a dream team that creates, with passion, purpose and joy, beautiful software.

The words in bold highlight what we consider important. It’s not about the software. What is important was discovering why we do what we do. …

Read it in English here

Cuando comenzamos a construir ON Lab nos planteamos un ideal de empresa que era verdadero en aquél entonces, pero con el paso del tiempo nuestra visión cambió para constituirse en algo, a nuestro entender, mucho más maduro y real. Nuestros sueños iniciales se transformaron, luego de muchos libros, charlas, discusiones y momentos de reflexión en un WHY qué recita lo siguiente:

We believe in the pursuit of happiness by building a dream team that creates, with passion, purpose and joy, beautiful software.

(Creemos en la búsqueda de la felicidad construyendo un equipo estrella que crea, con pasión, propósito y alegría, software hermoso.) …

On June 1st Instagram started to apply the new API policy announced last year.

From the end of 2015 all new applications that use Instagram’s API need to be submitted to Instagram for an evaluation. First you need to complete a form indication what your application does, record a video showing how it works. Also, they present you a list of use-cases they allow to use the API and you must choose the one that fits the most with your app. If your app doesn’t fit one of the use-cases listed by Instagram, then you hold no chance of getting them to approve your app. …

Two days ago I was a bit bored doing home office. I love tea, and in between meetings and emails I decided to make myself one. Somehow I thought it was a great opportunity to create a stop-motion video. Never done it before in my life.

I set up the stage using two large books, two drum sticks and my iPhone. I plugged the earphones so I could shot the photo without touching the phone (this is very important to keep the stop-motion efect working).

After preparing the tea (and taking lots of photos of the process) I downloaded the images to my mac using Image Capture (a small software that comes with the mac. …

Long story short, I think it’s never too late.

Now, long story long, it’s probably not the best time to start changing it.

The past week I’ve been reading Creative Schools by Sir Ken Robinson, and has inspired me to reflect about higher education (where I’ve been working for the past two years). I have an Engineering degree on Computer Science and I love being part of the university I graduated from as a professor now.

For the past decade the education revolution has been a repetitive topic here in my country (Uruguay), but things have not improved as drastically as we need them to, despite the fact that everyone is talking about it. …

Since November 2014 I’ve been working with Alina -another professor from the Catholic University in Uruguay (UCU)- in the redesign of an existing course called Technical Communication Skills (TCS) for Computer Engineering students.

This course is taught entirely in English. I was her student when I attended UCU on 2011, and it was a wonderful experience. She managed to do out-of-the-ordinary activities in class, like roll playing events, hosting radio interviews, having global classes with professors or students from other countries, and many more things.

On the last class we had to write an essay about the course and I wrote that I wanted to work with her at some point in my career (I swear I didn’t do that to have a better grade!). …

Some time ago (I don’t remember now when it was exactly) Rafa (my partner @ ON Lab) and I started to do this thing called “Walking Meeting”. We’re Spanish speakers, but we actually called them walking meetings in english.

The concept is very simple: have a meeting while taking a walk. We usually do it around our Lab at Montevideo (located at Sinergia Cowork), and we take as much time as we need (usually we don’t need more than 30 minutes).

We like this meeting style because it really helps us exchange opinions when we are on a different environment than the one we work all day long. It also helps us empty our minds, change the air on out lungs, do some exercise, and avoid being sat down at all times. …