De hecho la cosa se me ha ido tanto de las manos que mi acompañante ha acabado trabajando allí y estoy escribiendo esto porque este fin de semana se celebra como cada año el Evento Blog España en Sevilla y no podría saludarles sin que se me cayera la cara de vergüenza; aunque me estoy desviando de la historia, aquí he venido a hablar de mi libro la fiesta J&B The Party Project en Valencia el pasado 20 de Julio de 2008.

Como ya he dicho esa noche iba perfectamente acompañado por la señorita Coco* y antes de que empezara la fiesta fuimos a cenar por ahí para calentar un poco la noche. Después de que se nos hiciera un poco tarde (como no) nos acercamos a la Feria de Muestras que era el lugar escogido para celebrar la gran fiesta. La verdad, yo me imaginaba que iba a ser algo más reducido, con menos gente pero menuda tenían allí montada: autobuses, colas… una fiesta como dios manda!

En cuanto conseguí encontrar aparcamiento nos pusimos en la cola donde unos señores la mar de curiosos (no se me ocurre otro calificativo) nos entretuvieron hasta que al final nos acreditaron y conseguimos entrar. Si por fuera la fiesta ya parecía impresionante por dentro lo era aún más. Un montón de gente bailando y disfrutando al ritmo de la música que los DJs pinchaban mientras algunos artistas realizaban sus performances; aunque personalmente lo que más me gustó fue poder jugar un ratito con la ReacTable.

Nos invitaron a un par de bebidas también muy exóticas aunque yo no bebí demasiado ya que luego tenía que conducir y llevar a la damisela a casa, después de que acabásemos rendidos por toda la noche de fiesta.

Sin duda me lo pasé muy bien y puedo recordar que esa noche fue muy especial. Para que lo veáis con vuestros propios ojos os dejo con las fotos que sacó Coco*.

Aunque yo me quedo con esta, sacada desde la playa cuando ya se hacía de día

Last August (damn! we are in October now!) was celebrated the most famous competition in the Ruby on Rails community which consists in setting a functional webapp and deploy it in less than 48h: the Rails Rumble.

The spirit of it is very similar to iWeekend and they share a lot of things; however, besides similarities they are quite different starting by the number of components which can form the team: as much as four, which let you have some programmers and fewer designers.

I really felt like taking part in such an event while commiting (nice word, huh?) one of my new year’s resolutions, so I proposed this to Felipe Talavera one of my partners in the startup we cofounded almost a year ago Biblioteco. I’m not part of that project anymore but I really admire the work the developers did then in order to have everything up and running. With no doubt they are part of the elite spanish rails developers.

Anyway, I was talking about the Rails Rumble. I came up with this and he told me that they already had a team, the Mallorca team where I gently was invited.

What came after were 48 hours of real extreme programming and some glances of design work. I would like to make a deeper analysis about the importance that the interface had in the final polls or the feelings I had about not being able of putting in the par of the rest of the members but as I said before I don’t really know how to express this.

Which remains from this great experience is a great mail voting system, Letsdecide.us and some impressions like the fact that 4 people were more capable than 40 to have a fully functional webapp.

I also want to congratulate the other Spanish teams which I only can bow to their work:

• Lets Wadus
• Diversion
• Parlio

And a enormous thank to the Mallorca team to let me join: Rai, Felipe and Fer. I’m so grateful for such an experience!

Extra balls: Fernando Guillen also posted something about this + Photo album +  Video demo

Si estáis como yo, sin un duro en el bolsillo, una buena alternativa a ganarse la vida sin necesidad de deslomarse de sol a sol es jugar a algún juego de apuestas. Sin embargo esto implica algunos riesgos por lo que mejor que desperdiciar todo nuestro dinero en algún juego de azar en el que no sabemos si nos va a tocar algo o no lo que podemos hacer es apostar en algún juego de cartas que podamos aprender (como por ejemplo el poker) y así aumentar nuestras probabilidades de ganar.

¿Pero donde hay una escuela de poker? Pues yo os lo voy a contar.

La gente de Pokersapiens se ha montado una página bastante curiosa en la que aprender (y dominar) el noble arte de este juego de cartas; con diferentes lecciones según tu nivel y recompensas para apostar según vayas avanzando. De este modo podrás llegar a convertirte en un jugador profesional de poker totalmente gratis.

Además tienen un montón de material que podrás consultar, recopilado directamente de la página Noticiaspoker, que también administran y donde podrás informarte y estar al día de las últimas noticias, artículos informativos, torneos y demás cosas interesantes para cualquier amante del mundo del poker.

Si conseguís haceros con algo de dinero espero que por lo menos os acordéis de quien os recomendó esa página y no desaparezcáis en un viaje a las Bahamas. Yo por mi parte ya tengo para comer mañana de menú en el chino de aquí al lado.

En esta ocasión me hace especial ilusión puesto que vuelvo a la bal de Chistau, concretamente cerca de Plan, ese pueblo conocido por la caravana de mujeres pero que yo recuerdo mejor por ser uno de los lugares en los que más he disfrutado otros años realizando excursiones a sitios tan mágicos como la Bassa de la Mora o la ascensión a mi primer 3.000, el Pico Forqueta.

Este año ha sido excepcionalmente intenso en muchos aspectos, aunque sin duda lo más destacable sería que ha sido el primer año viviendo fuera de casa, en un piso en la ciudad de Valencia. También ha sido un año repleto de eventos que me han dado la oportunidad de conocer a gente realmente asombrosa e incluso mantener después una muy buena relación con algunos de ellos; FOWA, EBE, Iniciador, iWeekend… no se si el curso que viene repetiré en todos y cada uno pero sin duda me quedo con los buenos momentos que he pasado, inclusó llegué a intentar lanzar una start-up con algunos colegas con los que me volvía a reencontrar en la red (con suerte dispar, eso sí).

Pese a que también han habido algunos momentos regulares he adquirido un montón de experiencia en diferentes ámbitos; aún así he sabido sobreponerme frente a cualquier contratiempo y por ejemplo ahora mismo estoy viviendo uno de los momentos más ilusionantes en el campo profesional, colaborando con gente a la que realmente admiro desde hace tiempo y que me permite crecer día a día a la vez que aprendo y me desarrollo.

De la universidad no es un secreto que estoy desencantado, pese a que continúo mi periplo año tras año mientras intento compaginarlo con esta otra faceta que es lo que al final me apasiona de verdad, aunque en ocasiones se hace bastante difícil y necesito tomarme un tiempo (como ahora mismo) para organizar mis ideas y coger ambas cosas con ilusión y ganas.

En fin, otro año/curso más en el que aprovecho para poneros al día a la vez que personalmente hago un pequeño repaso (y publico una entrada en castellano, en lugar del habitual inglés); esta vez, siento de una manera muy especial que he dejado atrás una época de transición con la que no estaba demasiado contento y me alegro de tener a mi lado a gente que de un modo u otro también ha colaborado en ello.

For some time now I wanted to share some tricks and recommendations I follow in order to enhance my productivity and as some great people have shared theirs recently and others asked me to do so, it wasn’t a really hard decision to take.

There are many resources out there that explain what is GTD, and this kind of methodologies focused on productivity. Of course, if I had to recommend you anything about it besides all the links I provide in the post I would say you to read Getting Things Done by David Allen, take a look at Wikipedia which always helps, and if you speak Spanish (surely, though you are reading in English now) subscribe to Think Wasabi, it has some great articles about productivity.

Now that we are in context I have to tell you that all that is bullshit.

Well, not really, but if you want to get your things done stop reading about it and DO them indeed. Now. No matter what. In fact you shouldn’t be reading this (well, we are not perfect). Furthermore all these methodologies impose some rules that aren’t applicable to everybody and if you are longing to be more productive at your work you must set your own rules (rules that work, obviously).

Knowing this I will relate my rules and what works for me. My method consists in three basic pillars which is the same as saying that my method consist in three basic apps: Gmail, Things and iCal (or Google Calendar). The first one for email, the second one for tasks and the last one for appointments.

Gmail

If you have an Internet related job, or you have to be connected almost all day like me, email is surely one of the most important sources where almost every task come from. The way I get on with email is very similar to what Eduardo Arcos does; anyway I will explain how do I deal with them.

First of all I follow the Inbox Zero rule as it was a commandment. “Thou shalt not have any email unprocessed”. It has a lot to do with the broken windows theory. And almost more important than that, only check email some times a day: early in the morning, before lunch, after lunch, in the evening, and just after going to sleep. So, ¿how do I process all that mail?

1. At the very moment I receive new mail I read it if it’s important, short or doesn’t need much of my attention; otherwise I mark it as unread and apply some labels in case it wasn’t filtered previously.
2. If the purpose of the mail isn’t carried out, it remains in the inbox waiting for an answer or if it request an action from me (as a reply or whatever), it gets starred. At the right moment the subject is accomplished it gets archived.

Moreover I have some labels that let me know at a glance what my correspondence is about. The important labels with children categories are preceded by @, the important and single labels begin with #, and the rest receive an automatic alphabetical order; all this with some color to make it more friendly. With the last changes of Gmail I can even hide the still or finished projects!

And to complement this and be more effective on this bulk processing I have some powerful filters that automatically label my emails and in some occasions archive them so they don’t disturb me (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, mailing lists and such).

Things

There are a lot of software for productivity for all platforms, anyway this is the best. Period. It’s only available for Apple computers but, I think this is more a feature than a bug because if you want to be productive you must make use of tools that help you to be productive, and if we are talking about Operative Systems, Mac OS X has no rival, perhaps some flavor of GNU/Linux.

In a nutshell Things let you organize your tasks in a very efficient way giving a lot of importance to focus on the context you are working in that precise moment. That’s all, you have areas, projects, tasks and you can arrange them in the predefined contexts that GTD methodology suggests in order to follow its principles: Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do. That way you have the Inbox tab to collect and the Next to put there your tasks organized by projects. Furthermore you have some more options like Schedule and Someday.

iCal / Google Calendar

And finally as I don’t trust my memory for dates and rendez-vous, I must write them down somewhere. Previously I used Google Calendar and now I make use of Mac OS X integrated calendar, iCal. I don’t really have any preference for one, maybe if you have an iPhone you prefer iCal better than an Android phone and vice versa.

If you have read until here I love you but still aren’t convinced about being productive or don’t think this will work for you or didn’t felt like reading all this, I strongly recommend this video which explains more or less the same (but hey, it’s a video, and it moves!).

Furthermore in the last days some people have warned me that I should not give up posting and write more frequently. It’s a bit difficult because right now I’m so immersed in my Industrial Engineering exams and all the work I do as a freelance web designer that I simply can’t spend my time writing. Anyway, once I read “there’s always time for the things you really like”, so I think I don’t really have an excuse.

Talking about university, one of the subjects I had this year was Industrial Economy; I have become more and more interested in this field for some time now. This interest mostly comes in terms of my field – if I really have a field where I grow and develop – from the preoccupation of not only provide users with tools so they can kick ass, but also make it in the most efficient way; i.e. do great shit.

Anyway, it usually doesn’t work like that. And this conflict is what Economy is all about.

If we come back some posts ago I wrote that there’s always somebody who will explain whatever you are dealing with much better and in a more intelligible way than you. Then I was talking about Punset and now I confirm this with a book I have recently read, Freakonomics. It doesn’t have a real line of thinking but recount how the World is controlled by the everyday details and the fact that we usually don’t notice this relationship due to their relative minor importance; all this studied from the point of view of an economist.

In due time reading Freakonomics I could find a plausible answer to my Openness concern, which is based in the fact that when there’s a lack of openness, or as they properly name it Information Asymmetry, somebody expects to make a profit somehow or other. This phenomenon happens in Economy as in the Real World™; in fact if how we would like the Real World™ was belongs to moral, Economy explains how really is.

Returning to my Economy classes something we studied was price elasticity of demand, which is the reaction (more or less marked) of the consumers to an increase or decrease of some product price. This involves a pile of factors that are involved in the behaviour of every consumer such as its income or the prices of the rest of the products, which finally determine the elasticity or inelasticity.

So, why not extrapolate the elasticity to web development? Not that elasticity. What I am saying is that we could explain the users reaction to a redesign, to the inclusion or removal of functionalities, etc, through the elasticity associated to every website or web service. They definitely don’t feature the same characteristics and not every user will respond in the same way, because of their inherent factors that we can devise somehow through agile methodologies and iterations; release early, release often. Moreover if all this work is supported by measurement and proper analysis of metrics we can be ahead and anticipate what users demand and the coolest thing: put all the efforts in those modifications that in the end will reinvest in the own web service by a positive reaction from users.

And this is my favorite part, where somebody has already rambled on this topic, and explains it much better than I. Now I have to find it and learn as much as I could.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticity_(economics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand

Anyway, I wanted to pick one of her songs. I’ve spent such a great time beside her that it’s the least I can do.

The Killers – The World We Live In

This is world that we live in,
I feel myself get tired,
This is the world that we live in.

[...]

Lesson learned and the wheels keep turning.

[...]

I guess it’s the world that we live in,
It’s not too late for that,
This is the world that we live in,
And no, we can’t go back.

Simply, things don’t go as expected.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you that I’m immersed in the organisation team of three very interesting events in the Valencian area that will be hold soon in the next days.

BarCamp Valencia

You already know the first of them, I’ve already told you about it. Barcamp Valencia is an unconference where we will talk about Web2.0, Social Media and Open Source. We managed to Yahoo! to sponsor the event but we are still looking for a place. At first we thought that some of the Valencian universities would help us to promote a cultural event but all we have received instead are difficulties and refusals.

Anyway I know we will finally find a nice place (even if we have to go to the pub).

iWeekend Valencia

Then it comes the iWeekend. If you don’t know what it is about I will tell you that it’s a celebration where many entrepreneurs with many diverse backgrounds (design, marketing, code…) meet one weekend (d’oh) to create a fully functional startup.

It will be hold on the first week of June and we are still defining all the details. Inscriptions are still open so, I invite all you to join us because there are still vacancies, specially if you are a designer or a programmer.

Iniciador Castellón

And finally Iniciador Castellón, the one which will be my first raid into the events organization and has kept me awake the last days. I hope everything will go great but, frankly I’m a bit nervous. In some hours I will be picking up Mr. Rodolfo Carpintier from Manises Airport and then we all will go to Castellón and celebrate the event.

Wish me luck!

First of all, what is a BarCamp? As Wikipedia says:

BarCamps are user generated (un)conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. They focus on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

It perfectly fits with what we wanted! So now we need few things in order to this come real:

• A group of people that want to plan and organize all the tinglao. I think this is covered.
• A place where we could meet with a minimum of infrastructure: not really much, Internet connection and a projector. we can speak with UPV and let’s see if they let us one of the CPI rooms.
• Attendees; some will take part in the talks, others will just listen, but we need people to come.

And I think that’s pretty all. We need these kind of events in Valencia, which in my opinion has become a referent regarding Open Source, Innovation and all these beauty words.

Update: Reidrac has made a move; bought a domain, designed a logo and set a blog. Great!