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Ventures
Symposium Media symposiummedia.com under construction
Symposium Media is dedicated to the development of applications and widgets for social networks. We are currently focusing on Facebook where we acquired several applications and created our own. Symposium Media serves half a million users with more joining every day.
Bocazas S.L. bocazas.com 2001 to 2002
In 2001 I decided to take a leave of absence from NYU and go back to Spain to gain some professional experience. While working I had the urge to test out several of my entrepreneurial ideas. I talked to a couple of friends and decided to give it a shot by starting a company that focused on developing support software.
The two main products were a java webchat and an online customer support system that were developed during the night, after our full-time work. The products were great, they won numerous awards and they could challenge any other similar product on the market. But, competition was fierce and powerhouses like Live Person and BoldChat were taking most of our the potential customers.
By the end of 2002, the market was a plethora of start-ups dedicated to the same market we were chasing. We figured we didn't find a niche market and decided to cut our loses short. I returned to NYU to finish my degree and gave the webchat away for free. Bocazas Webchat got more than 1 million downloads in a very short time and kept winning awards for several years. The website is still partially running but it isn't updated any longer.
Union Latina unionlatina.org ~1995 to ~2001
When in 1994 my friend Jose Domenech and I decided to help a BBS move from FidoNet to the Internet, we couldn't imagine we were establishing the building blocks for one of the biggest spanish speaking network in the world.
This was a time when hardly anyone in Spain knew what a modem was and less the Internet. FidoNet was the network to use at the time. It allowed BBSs and people to exchange messages in a way similar to today's newsgroups, but the routing of the messages delayed hours and even days. It was mainly used by technophiles, magazine writers and academics. As a hobby, Jose and I, decided to create a chat to better communicate while helping the BBS migrate to the Internet. Since we were doing the work for free, the owner agreed to give us a machine to keep our project running.
We taught the BBS users how to join the chat. They quickly fell in love with it. The idea of instantaneously communicating without having to wait for FidoNet messages or emails, was innovative and appealing to everyone.
By 1995, the potential of our chat platform had became clear to us. Exchanging information instantaneously opened up a new set of applications but only corporations and universities were able to provide the fast internet connections we needed.Some of them were already running their own internal communication network but they weren't willing to share their resources. These institutions wanted to keep their individuality and they didn't want to be under the umbrella of a single corporation.
That's when the idea of Union Latina came to life. By creating a non-profit organization, we would achieve our goal of creating an international spanish speaking network that would promote cultural exchange among people of latin origin.
Jose and I built the required software and infrastructure. We pitched the idea to different institutions and we agreed to publicize their services in exchange for resources and sponsorship.
It was a success, by the end of 1995 we had the support of more than a dozen universities and corporations spanning from Argentina to Spain. To mention a few: University of Guadalajara in Mexico, University of Valencia in Spain, Tinet (Spain), Terranet (Argentina), Interlink (Spain), Caleb (Mexico), DDNet (USA) and many more.
In 1996 Union Latina had grown to more than 30,000 people and a team of more than 50 volunteers helping manage the network, design web pages and promote interesting subject matters on the different chats. It had also grown a strong community that spawned dozens of personal web sites around the Internet. It was featured in numerous magazines and newspapers.
What has happened since?
Around 1998 Jose decided to drop the project due to his workload at school. The management team continued moving Union Latina forward, mainly with invaluable help of Juan Ignacio Gelos and Rodrigo Gallego. In 2001 I delegated all my duties to the management team so I could pursue other opportunities. By 2007, instant message networks had taken away most of the user base of Union Latina and most people on the management team had moved on to start their own ventures. I bought the domain name for nostalgic reasons and put a simple web site running without any official support. Today is mostly used by Peruvian and Spanish students.
Finance
Alpha Watcher
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I have some work in use at several trading desks in the country but most of it is propietary. On my free time I started designing and planning a trading application for the mobile market. Alpha Watcher is the result. After a bit some more work I will release it for the iPhone and see how it can be incorporated into some of my business ideas.
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Games
Airplane War- December, 2002
On December 20th, 2002; anxiously waiting for Microsoft release of their DirectX Managed API, I decided to take on the challenge of writing a flight simulator. Nobody knew yet how to use Microsoft's library and since I was betatesting it, I thought it to be a good way to help the open source community. It required knowledge of physics, a lot of math and programming skills so it was the perfect challenge during my vacations before going back to NYU.
After 24 hours of madness I released Airplane War to the open source community. I asked for feedback and help from 3D artists to create models for the game and you can see the end result on the screen shot. You can download the original file in Programmer's Heaven or in Code Project.
When I went back to school I dropped the project and let other programmers take over it. I was happy to find out that it was been used to learn DirectX and several people modified it for their own projects. Last I've heard, Bruce (on codeproject.com) was utilizing the knowledge for his Glider simulator.
Classic Out Run- In 1999
Call me nostalgic but when I was asked to create a simple game, the first thing that came to mind was Out Run and its Ferrari Testarossa. I lost my final version but a playable one can still be downloaded here.
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