Presentation Miguel Cordero

Honestly, I don’t know how to start. Starting is sometimes the most difficult part in some aspects of my life, even though I know I’ll enjoy the activity or it is beneficial for me. That is why when my colleague Javier suggested the idea of creating this platform I was on board since the first moment because I loved the idea and I had thought about it for several years but never had the drive to do it.

I would like to take this opportunity to warn the readers that English is not my first language, so I hope I can be forgiven for any minor mistakes or poor choice of words from now on. I hope that an improvement can be seen in the following articles and opinion pieces.

Who I am

Now that the ice is broken I will move on to present myself. As you can see the author’s name is Miguel Cordero, which as you have correctly guessed is my name. Usually, in most situations you know to what degree of depth you should introduce yourself, but now I’m everything but sure. 

I’ll start with the easy stuff. I was born in Cangas de Narcea, a small village in Asturias, in the north of Spain and when I was seven years old I moved to Málaga. My childhood was a normal happy one, spending the summer on my grandparents’ village walking through the mountains with their dog, playing with other kids, going down a slope sitting on a skateboard and trying to catch geckos. 

Everything I have I thank my parents for, the English I know is mainly because I was sent to Ireland for a month every summer since I was 8 years old, when I got older I went to England and the US too. My father was the one who sparked my curiosity. when I had a question he used to tell to go to the encyclopedia and learn by myself, which was a great advice at that time.

I’ve always been interested in technology, I don’t know when it started but I remember being quite proficient with my father’s computer ever since I started using it, mainly thanks to Google, because when I didn’t know something all I had to do was to go find it, as my father taught me. I remember editing videos or designing logos and similar stuff when I was around 13 years old, starting with easy stuff like Windows Movie Maker and Paint but little by little I got into better editing software like Adobe Premiere or Photoshop for example. 

Every opportunity I could get to be on the computer, I used it, I remember lying to my parents about doing some school assignment to play some flash games on minijuegos.com or miniclip.com, I also remember browsing google images and downloading everything I found interesting, such as cars, jokes, logos, etc…

The biggest step was when I was around 14, the iPod Touch was released, a lot of people had it and I got enough good grades to convince my parents to buy me one, it was incredible, I could do much more and faster than with the computer, and I had control over it, I started downloading music or watching tutorials about how to jailbreak the iPod Touch for example. During that time I internalized how important and effective technology was to change the world and our lives, and how knowledge was there for anyone who made the effort to get it.

From that time until a few years back I have to admit that I was not the most productive person with my time on the internet, but gradually, mainly thanks to the youtube algorithm, I started discovering educational videos and that channeled all the curiosity I had into more useful things, which has been a big part of my life in the past few years, learning about everything: philosophy, personal improvement, coding, economy, sociology, musical production, gardening, woodworking, cooking and any topic related with science or technology. All that through books, articles, videos, podcasts, lectures or documentaries. In the future, I’ll write about different recommendations on these topics.

I should also mention that during that time I studied Industrial Engineering and learnt a lot, especially about myself, but I’ll talk about it and other aspects of my life in more depth in other articles when it is relevant to the topic.

Currently I’m studying my Masters degree, the International Master for Industrial Management (IMIM), where I’ll have the opportunity to study in three different countries with people from all over the world, which is one of the main reasons I chose this master. The curriculum is quite open and interesting, the first semester “Projects and Operations in an Evolving Industrial Revolution” in Edinburgh, second semester “Strategy, Resources and Data in an Increasingly Digital World” in Madrid, and finally, the third semester “Entrepreneurship & Technology Management” in Munich (probably, because I have other options for this semester.)

Why I’m doing this

One of the main reasons I wanted to participate in this project is because it gives me a great excuse to spend even more time learning than I do now, to write down all the ideas I come up with, and to improve my English. Writing is a powerful tool because it makes you really think, while you write you have an internal debate about what you want to talk about and you dive deep into the topic instead of checking the surface as we usually do.

Technology has the ability to change the world for the better, in the last 50 years our world and its inhabitants’ quality of life have improved enormously, but it could be faster, and I would like that growth to be sustainable and to tackle all the negative repercussions of such improvement, as is pollution and the depletion of non-renewable resources. There are a lot of interesting companies and brilliant people who are working on this, and I want to be able to contribute as much as I can to make this possible, this project is part of that.

Now it is time for me to give back a little bit of what I learnt and will learn, and I could not be luckier regarding the people I’m starting this project with. I think in a few years I’ll remember this decision as one of the best ones I took.

See you soon.