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Man… what a year!

Around this time last year (2019) I made a post doing a personal review of the year. Something I have been doing for many years now. This year in 2020 I want to do the same but… oh boy! what a year this was!

2020 is a year for the history. A year when the World stood still and begun a battle against a virus which has cost about 1.8 million lives (up today) and has shown up the great and bad of us. I am reading what I have just written and sounds like a science fiction novel or movie… but it is real. That is the feeling when something happens that will be marked in history.

I am not going to dive too much into this topic (we are overwhelmed already) but obviously this is the event that most impacted me this year (like everyone). The drama is too much to cope in any country; no matter colour, politics or approaches to fight against. Really no measure has been proven better than another and giving the same results: uncontrolled situation, race against the clock to try to fix things, surprisingly a lack of scientific view (this is the most concerning on my view) and lots of deaths.

What happened then? Well… I am not the best to tell; global leaders should stand forward already and answer this question. But humbly I think one of the main reasons I could see is that governments and health systems were not ready for something like this. At some point this year a lot of people were surprised by an old video that went viral where Bill Gates made a speech in a TED conference warning, with an eye-opening accuracy, that a global pandemic like this can happen very soon and almost no country had the minimum plans with tested measurements to safely overcome the situation. It was back on 2015 and that was just a clever conclusion from one of the best minds we have after lots of time researching, reading, consulting to high-end scientists and experts on the subject. That’s all. Not a super conspiracy to rule the world with George Soros and bla bla… The worst is that the World did not listen to him and others with similar conclusions…: “Science? yeah… great, but let’s talk about it later…”. Until things happens. When studies like this will be put in the front line of parliaments discussions? Until 2020 they were considered almost like miscellanea… And we must not forget the increase concern of astrophysics about the difficulty to detect on time middle and high risk meteorites that can impact Earth! Will we do the same ignoring it until the worst happens?

Time to move on… (I said I will not dive too much!). In 2020 I saw a society going through big changes and, guess what, adapting generally well. That is good news! It shows the enormous adaptation capacity that humans have and we can prevail through the toughest difficulties. I hope the people will realize this because it can be the first step to greater changes such global warming acknowledgment, more tolerant politics and laws and better society in general. Crisis like the one we are living now can be the trigger to better changes so we must take the opportunity.

For a more personal stuff, there is something that has surprised me on 2020. In the similar post of last year I talked about how I pushed forward my creativity. Two years ago was the creation of this blog, last year was to start experimenting with electronic music and this year I pushed myself to something I wanted to try for some time: become a streamer on Twitch and revamp my YouTube channel. I said surprised because I though that I was not made for it but… it turns out it is not that complex (after spending time to setup and I am still learning) and if you find your place to be confortable, anyone can do it. I have a lot of hopes on this new version of my creativity and I cannot wait to make great things on 2021 about this!

On the professional side, 2020 has been a complex one: we moved to work 100% from home since April (not very big deal as we are used to work remotely), we had the most complex issue we ever had to fix on our platform (my area) and we have pushed other areas of business. Overall we had multiples ups and downs, more than in previos years, but we manged to go through with good work and this is very valuable in these times… so kudos.

To finish, I would like to mention a couple of books that more have impacted me this year.

Yo confieso. 45 años de espía from Mikel Lejarza and Fernando Rueda. This book collects the memoirs of Mikel Lejarza (also know as “El Lobo”) written by Fernando Rueda, a well known Spanish writer expert in intelligence agencies and secret services. Mikel Lejarza is a living history of the battle against ETA in Spain. He was the man who, under Spanish secret service, undercovers inside ETA organization earlier on its beginnings and helped on the greatest operations against the terrorist band. In this book, “El Lobo” shares details about some of his missions, how was his live with the terrorists and the relations with the Spanish secret services. I knew some of his story but this book impacted me on the human side; how someone can leave ALL behind for a major purpose and still go through. Although with the high compromises for the rest of his life (still today he needs to remain anonymous).

Editando genes: recorta, pega y colorea: las maravillosas herramientas CRISPR from LLuís Montoliu. With this book I made a marvellous discovery: did you know that the CRISPR tools have a common source discovered by the Spanish microbiologist Francis Mojica? I did not! Him with his team discovered the mechanisms of how bacteria can replicate/copy DNA sequences and he named it CRISPR. Later this was the base to develop the famous and well known genome editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9. This book goes through Francis discovery back in 1993 and explain how this tool works in a very easy and divulgate way. Very recommended to read if you are interested on how CRISPR tools work and specially to know who is the person who named them and probably will be first Spanish Chemistry Nobel prize in the near future after 2020 Nobel prize was given to the CRISPR-Cas9 developers: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

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A year in words

It is that time of the year when some of us think on all the things that happened this year and make our personal review. In my opinion, it is a very healthy and enriching exercise that I strongly recommend everyone to do. I have been doing this for many years now and this year I though to share it.

I will try to go through some of the hightlights of the year but focused in my persona and the things that were somehow important for me.

I will start with the topic that most influenced me this year: the 50th anniversary of the first man walking on the Moon. I was really commited to give my small contribution to celebrate this huge and transcendental moment in our history. By doing this, I have learnt even more about how this feat was done with movies, documentaries and books. And I am even more convinced that it was the pinnacle of human endeavour for a single goal to push further our bounderies. Truely this made me realize how good we can do as species, how much technological potential we have now and how much to learn we have yet about our very near universe.

This year also I was shocked by events to the opposite side. Horrible things that really shakes our morality and shows how evil we can be. We are all playing the macabre lottery just by living on this society and sadly some people get the winning ticket. This things must show us what really matters in life and how we must protect it above any other thing.

And going down to things more personal, this year I managed to push further my creativity. If last year it was the creation of this blog, this year I started to experiment creating my own music with a synthesizer keyboard. It showed me new ways to express myself through music and opened a window to many ideas that I have in my mind. Soon I will have a couple of new creations to share but the two bellow opened the path.

On the professional side, this year has been a busy one specially towards the end. But busy means we have done important and complex things which is always good. Of course there are ups and downs like in every place but in general I am happy with what I had done and with what I have learnt this year.

To finish, I would like to mention about the books that more have impacted me this year.

Life 3.0: Being human in the age of Artificial Intelligence from Max Tegmark, a Swedish-American physicist and cosmologist from the MIT and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization backed by big names such Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking, and whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial. The book talks about AI today and the paths it is taking for the future; all from a technology perspective.

The NASA Archives: 60 years in space. A collectors book built in very high quality by Taschen. It tells you the details of all NASA’s history since its creation until today accompanied with new high definition pictures. Very recommened if you are interested on space exploration.

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You own it, you have it

I have been thinking a lot about this post mainly for two reasons: it is about a complex topic, and it is some kind of a tricky thing to talk about. Bear with me if I ramble too much. 

During my sort professional career (almost 9 years) I have been involved in various tricky situations, I have been working with different kind of people’s profiles and I had the luck (I believe) to work and know several parts of a company; even to know ins-and-outs of how to manage an organization. With all of this I was able to get, not only a great professional and personal experience, but also to being able to experience and create my own vision of what “work” means and how to do it.

Talking about work, normally it is though that it is something “mandatory” that we must do to pay bills, taxes, buy things to eat and being someone in life… And this makes people to do their daily tasks as they have been told to do, barely covering the expectations and that’s all; probably also, giving that extra mile from time to time (but only if there is an extra payment or some kind of compensation).My approach about his is different. I see the work as place where you either are the real “owner” of what you need to do, or you will never be able to take control of it, learn, grow up and, eventually. succeed.

But… what means to own your work? The answer goes beyond being the owner of the company. Really the most important key for this is to be aware of what is really your job, understand very well what you need to do and take it as your own. This may sound very obvious and that we have all heard about but… how many people do this really? Take your job as your own is not an easy job; you cannot achieve it in months, neither by having big responsibilities within the company. Basically I would say it is a state of mind; a vision of how things work in general: if you do something, DO IT. But do not do it because your boss tells you, because you have been told to do or because the society tells you to do it… Do it because you really want to do it; like if you had created the job and it is your product. If you ever get that conscience, you will be able to control everything around your job and take better decisions. 

I know this is a very controversial topic and not always it needs to be this way. I understand very well that there are cases where people have to work to subsist and they do not have any other option than work in something that they do not like, but it gives them enough to pull forward. Only I am trying to explain what I have learnt until now and I believe that this positive and ownership approach in your job (at any level) is the key to keep growing in your professional and personal life.

And I am very much looking forward to knowing what I will learn within the next years. Until today, as the CTO of EthosData, I have been able to realize this and I think it is a path I must follow. In this job I had the luck to see all the layers of a company: starting as an internship until work side by side with the CEO and management. Is it possible that this flexible environment has been crucial to learn this?

Finally, I would like to make it clear that I am not an expert on this (if ever experts really exists in something…). Only I am talking from my own experience, from what I can see around me and from what other people tell me with more experience. At the end, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, merely I have 9 years of working experience.

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