I’m happy to inform that I have a new job at Microsoft. Effective January 2008 I work as a Technology Solution Professional for SOA & Process Platform based in Mexico City. I’m very excited about this new challenge in my professional life since I’ll get to know new technologies and products. I’ll be primarily focused on technical presales for Biztalk.

Just as a reminder, all views and opinions expressed here are my own and not my employers.

I just got back a week ago from Santiago, Chile. I went to teach the WebSphere Adapters PoT that I created earlier this year. It was my first visit to the southern hemisphere, and quite a long flight.
Santiago is a nice city, similar in several ways to Mexico City (unfortunately including the pollution). Since it’s almost winter down there it was a bit cold, but bearable. In my free time I got to visit several historic sites mainly in downtown Santiago, and an area called Barrio Bellavista, but couldn’t visit any museums. I also visited some nicer neighbourhoods called Vitacura and Providencia. Continuing with my subway photo series, I took a few pictures of Santiago’s ‘metro’ which is quite modern compared to others on my “series”.

Enjoy the gallery by clicking on this panorama of the Cathedral. Please note that I decided to leave all captions in Spanish.

Santiago, Chile 2007 Gallery

The Hundred Percent Club is an award trip for IBMers who exceeded their previous year sales quota. Since I work in Technical Sales, I was selected to attend this event which consisted of three days in Puerto Rico with a morning conference and some recreational activities. Some activities were cancelled due to bad weather, including the Golf School which I was looking forward to. However, I was able to go on the Catamaran Snorkel Cruise to Icacos Island. I’m usually not much of a beach kind of person, since my skin burns fairly easily, but it was a real nice trip, after a couple tons of sunblock :P.

I stayed for an additional day to visit some of the historic landmarks of San Juan, which apparently is one of the oldest US cities with two major fortresses: Castillo de San Felipe del Morro and Castillo de San Cristóbal.

Click on the following picture of the beach to jump into the gallery.

Puerto Rico 2007 Gallery

During May I attended IBM’s Technical Leadership Exchange 2007 in Anaheim. The event was held at the Anaheim Convention Center, just across the street from Disney.

It had been a while since my last visit to Disneyland, sometime during 1992 or 1993 with my friend Yamil. I decided it was time to return. I had a fun time with some IBM colleagues trying to get the most out of the park in just a few hours, the newest for me was Indiana Jones Adventure.
As part of the event, IBM reserved a few attractions from Disney’s California Adventure exclusively for TLE’s attendees, so I had a chance to enjoy the park with smaller lines.

As usual, I was prepared with my camera (Sony DSC-H1) and cell phone (Sony Ericsson k790a) and took a few pictures, which are available now by clicking on the following image of the Disneyland Castle:

Anaheim 2007 Gallery

I’ve been travelling a lot lately and it’s about time I start posting some of my famous picture galleries. I will do this in chronological order, so I’ll start with a few pictures from my trip to Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. I was there for a week working on a Proof of Concept using WebSphere Process Server. Karla, a colleague who works in the Monterrey office was kind enough to show me around a bit, during the short periods of time when we weren’t working. I liked this city and was grateful to go there when the heat was not so intense. Below is the link to the gallery, with a picture from the famous “Cerro de la silla”.

Pictures

Enjoy!

I am really excited because I just won a Leadership Award for my work as a WebSphere IT Specialist for IBM in Mexico. Aside from the recognition, I get a 4-day trip for me and an “adult guest” to New York. Since I’m single, I still haven’t made a final decision as to who will be my guest, so submit your application ASAP (women only please) :P. I’m also accepting suggestions regarding must-see places.

In recent news, I have been appointed as the WebSphere Integration Solution Architect Leader for Latin America, which makes me the focal point to guide other IT Specialists in the region interested in pursuing this competency. I am still figuring out the specific action plan, but it seems like a good chance to get to know and collaborate with fellow IBMers.

Finally, frequent visitors might be aware of ads appearing in some of my pages. I decided to experiment a bit and will evaluate if they should remain after a trial period.

Second trip this month. This time to Miami to attend the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Jumpstart Bootcamp at the Colonnade Hotel. The course wasn’t exactly what I expected, but I couldn’t turn down 5 days at Miami. As usual, instead of taking pictures of things that have been photographed over and over again I try to take some unconventional shots. Judge for yourself:

Photos!

One of my coworkers bought a MacBook while we where there, on the day in which they were announced. You’ll find some unpackaging photos. It’s a really nice laptop, but I still prefer my PowerMac G5 2.0 Dual.

I just got back from Culiacán, Sinaloa, where I taught a Rational Application Developer workshop. It took place at the Universidad de Occidente (UDO). My students wanted to see some of the pictures that I took, so here they are:

Pictures from Culiacán

Please leave your comments and let me know if you’re interested in higher resolution pictures.

Last January, I was in Las Vegas to attend IBM’s Software University 2006. I just posted some pictures from the event. You can find them at my .mac site, since it’s easier to publish pictures using iPhoto and iWeb than posting them in this blog. Click the following link to check them out: SWU 2006 Pictures.