Even though most of our clients are from the US and Europe, lately we have been getting more and more projects in Latin America, specially in Mexico. You’ve probably heard about a large project we started in Mexico recently. We also signed two smaller projects in the last month, and last week I was on-site at a customer in Mexico D.F. working on yet another one.
The thing is that in Mexico, even though still in Latin America (remember that we are based in Costa Rica), there were a couple of cultural differences that really caught my attention.
First of, the schedule. We in Costa Rica usually have lunch between 12 and 1. In Mexico it is usually between 3–4pm, 3–5pm or 2–4pm, depending on the company. That is a bit late for us… let’s just say that by 3pm I was starving.
The second one was the dress code. Normally in Europe and in the US, IT departments are very laid back, and have a very lax dress code. Through out Latin America, however, it is mostly suit and tie. Only in a few places can you show up with “business casual” or even “casual” clothes. This is changing, though, and going more and more casual.
All in all, going to Mexico was a nice experience. The people I worked with were really nice, and treated me well (other than keeping me hungry until the mid-afternoon 
). I hope we sign this project, so I’ll be able to go back!
Some time ago I was interviewed (via email) by El Financiero, a weekly business-oriented newspaper from Costa Rica, regarding 64–bit technologies. A small quote from the interview was published a couple of weeks ago, along with some information I gave them on the advantages of moving to 64–bits.
The technical journalist from the newspaper did an article on how the Costa Rican Central Bank, BCCR, is moving their payments system (SINPE) from 32–bit to 64–bit servers, and the benefits they are getting from the move. These benefits include enhanced speed and database performance, given the large memory capacity of the new architecture. This is a fairly large system that handles over 3 million financial transactions per month.
ArtinSoft had some involvement in moving this system from Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET some time ago, in the dawn of the .NET era. There is even a published case study on the system – you can find it here.
Their plan currently is to slowly move all their systems to 64–bit over a period of 2 years.
You can check out the article here: BCCR ajustó tecnologías (you may need to be registered with the site).
The other day I had a meeting with a client that is considering converting his Informix 4GL application to Java, using our tools. It was an interesting situation, since he was a in business development, and not really a programmer. He then asked me if I could recommend him some books on Java from a business perspective. I agreed – without knowing how difficult that task could be.
I couldn’t find any recent books that would give an overview of the platform for non-technical personnel, especially decision-making managers. I found a couple of books from the start of the Java era, 1996/1997, that talked about what I was looking for, but they are out of print and it doesn’t look like they were ever updated. They are:
Does anybody know a good Java book that meet the criteria that I’m looking for?
Leave a comment with your recommendations!
I was featured on the June issue of IT Now, on an article they wrote about blogs. For this article I talked about how some attendees to one of the virtualization seminars in Zaragoza, Spain, recognized us from a solution he found here on our blogs. Since the magazine is in spanish, this is a rough translation:
Jose Aguilar, one of the most recognized company bloggers, comments: "I think that the most important thing is the communication channel that you open with the readers. Another importat thing is the name that you create for yourself, your reputation. Recently, on an international seminar, one of the attendees recognized us from a problem he was having, and he found the solution on one of our blog posts.”
Click on the image below to get a high-resolution scan of the article:
IT Now is a magazine about business and teconology for the Central American market. You can check out their website here.
A quick note – I just noticed I recently went over the
100-post mark here in my blog... yoohoo!! I never thought I would get this far with it. I have to accept that it took me a little over a year to make it, but I finally did it. Hooray!!
Right now my colleague
Stephen is delivering the last hands-on lab of the
Virtualization for Developers Lab Series. This means that one of the most interesting trainings I have delivered is now over. It has been a good run, and, even though we sometimes didn’t get the attendance we wanted, a great experience. Some of the highlights of the series include:
- Meeting all sorts of interesting people with interesting (and crazy) projects at every location
- The experience of getting the setup process for the labs almost fully automated - learned a lot about Windows in the process
- See Windows Server Virtualization live for the first time on a presentation by Arno Mihm at a Redmond event
- Going to a tapas bar (“de tapeo”) in Huesca with some of the attendees at the Zaragoza event
For the next few months we’re going to be working on some new trainings and in some other exciting projects. I’ll keep you all posted. In the meantime, remember about the HP Integrity labs – that’s where I’ll probably head next!
A quick post to wish you all a happy new year!
This is going to be an interesting year, with the release of Windows Vista, possibly Longhorn Server, and all the virtualization products on the pipeline from both Microsoft and the competition. I also think that this year 64-bit usage will increase significantly on the home and workstation front, given the release of Vista 64-bit and the fact that drivers are starting to show up.
So, best wishes to you all, and hope you have a great 2007!!
The Windows Live team recently launched the Live Writer tool for writing blog posts. This is a sample post made with the tool. So far, it looks nice, with most features already working.
One of the nicest features is Live Map integration:
San Jose, Costa Rica
I think I am going to stick with Blogjet for the time being (especially for the flickr integration). But it won't harm you to check out Live Writer as well.