On March 23rd I was named Technology Advisor to the 250 year old Saint Charles Royal Academy of Fine Arts by its 56th president, Dr. Manuel Muñoz.
The Royal Academy has the second largest and most important classical painting collection in Spain, after Madrid`s Museo del Prado.
Technology and Art are two of my passions, so combining the two sounds like a very exciting proposition.
We had the pleasure to spend the second half of March with the kids and the rest of the family in Valencia (Spain).
My Canadian in-laws had never seen Fallas, the crazy annual festival that leaves the whole city literally up in flames every March 19th, after over a week of outdoor concerts, food, parades, firecrackers and fireworks.
We enjoyed paella, “chocolate con buñuelos”, live flamenco… but without a doubt, the highlight was to be able to experience the “mascletá” firecracker extravaganza from the most vantage position: the balcony of a private bank’s offices in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (thanks again, Antonio!
March 7th my wife and I traveled to Rome for a few days, since last summer’s cruise visit was too short and left us wanting more.
First we stayed at the Splendide Royal hotel. A “grand dame” with baroque decor and a fancy restaurant full of business people, rich Eastern Europe oligarchs and their lovers.
On the 9th we moved to the Kolbe Rome hotel, a monastery (part of it still in operation) located right next to the Circo Massimo and the Colosseo, where my in-laws joined us from Canada.
On March 6th we were invited, along with my wife, my friend the artist Claudio Zirotti, and his wife, to the opening of the art show “(Female) Art Owners” at the Atarazanas building in Valencia.
After the show we had a nice dinner in downtown Valencia, where we talked about the collective art exhibition I am putting together for next year in New York and London.
Kanteron Systems was selected as finalist, along with British Telecom and nusys, in the IBM Innovation Awards, New Business Model category, for the Split and Pathology Imaging Algorithms solutions. So I went with Juan to attend the IBM Leadership Summit that took place at the Royal Spanish Academy in Madrid (Spain), March 3rd, 2015.
Good Spanish ham, lots of back patting, and the same “good-old-boys” (upper-class white males in their fifties) running the same show with the latest buzzwords and spiffy marketing.
This past winter I met Sandy and James from Open ITP in New York, and Pepe from Valencia. They were organizing the Circumvention Tech Festival to be held in Las Naves, Valencia (Spain) March 1-6.
They invited me to give a talk, which was eventually scheduled for March 4th at 3pm. I titled the talk “When privacy does not mean the same to you and me”. It was meant to generate debate, to expose other people’s points of view, rather than to be a unidirectional speech.
Yes, the rumor is true: my wife and I are moving to London.
Now that Kanteron USA is solidly stablished, and profitable, I must proceed with the expansion plan, and make sure to grow both Asia and EMEA markets, which I plan to do from London.
So, although we are moving April 25th (more on that in another post, since it will be quite a singular “adventure”), this was our last weekend in New York because this upcoming weekend we will be in Canada, and next Friday we fly to Europe, where we will be visiting Lisbon, Valencia, Rome and London.
