Guadalajara, Guadalajara

Today I am finishing a one-week consultancy in Guadalajara. It is my first time in Mexico. In previous occasions I had just made connections in Mexico City.

Guadalajara is a really nice city. It is quite big (4+ million inhabitants), but the people is really nice and warm.

I did a consultancy at a grocery distributor in the city. From a work perspective, it was very interesting to see a company that supports its entire operation on a computer system. Nothing moves if not through the system. They are planning to move the system from Informix4GL to Java using ArtinSoft services. I really hope that the project comes along, because I really enjoy working in Java and making things happen for customers.

My hosts were really nice people. I got the opportunity to try the "tortas ahogadas", a typical dish from Jalisco, and some other really good food and beer.

On the personal side, I got myself a protective cover for my car's hood and front bumper. This is a really necessary gadget when you drive on streets that are being repaired, and a lot of small rocks can scratch the paint of your brand-new car.

I'll keep posting on how this conversion project goes.

Viva Mexico!!!

First Scrum Experience

On Wednesday and Thursday, I attended a certification course on Scrum - one of the most widely used agile methodologies around - that was quite a surprise to me.

I work currently a ArtinSoft, a company that develops A.I. technology for software transformation (source code to source code). The company is using Scrum in one of its research projects, but the methodology is not currently widespread. When I first heard about Scrum, it looked to me as one of those "flavor of the day" approaches, that go away as fast as they come.

After the CSM (Certified Scrum Master) course that I took, I must say that the methodology is quite appealing and quite cool, especially for development of software from the scratch. I still have some reluctances as if Scrum could be applied to software projects where the customer is difficult to convince of getting involved as the methodology requires.

Anyway, the course was really fun and entertaining, and I could get my CSM certificate after paying 50 bucks ...

Hello World!!!

Today I inaugurated myself as a blogger! I must confess that I was quite skeptic to this new trend at the beginning, but I fell to it once I felt the need to share some random thoughts about this and that. I intend to post entries about my experiences as a software developer and as a still-on-the-making cooker. I hope anybody who stumbles to this site either by intention or not, find it enjoyable.