Alberto Roura

About

Hi! This is https://albertoroura.com. As of 20 October 2024, there is a total of 427 posts in the blog dating back to 2002.

Also, there is a generic gallery and some other galleries if you want to see some pictures taken by me.

This site is a personal, long-term project, and is where I keep in writing everything I feel worth sharing. Consider this blog my personal diary, a place where I share anything that crosses my mind. You can think of it as my way to keep some order in my thoughts. And, who knows, you may be interested in some of the stuff I post. Probably I was just born with a curiosity about the world surrounding me, making me try and learn everything about it. And then sharing it.

I also have a keen interest in entrepreneurship, finding great pleasure conceptualizing and bringing new ideas to life, not only for the potential profit but also because I enjoy long processes & documenting the entire journey.

Who is Alberto Roura?

As you probably guessed, it's me! From Spain🇪🇸. Yes, the one writing here. As a matter of fact my name is Alberto Roura Martínez Formoso Serrano Vieta Olmeda Ballesteros Bermejo Paz Córdoba Porrúa Elvira Gili Cuesta Longa Garrote González Del Saz . There you go, 18 surnames. You are right, I do enjoy learning about my roots. Through history books, local registries and online connections I was able to track my family all the way to the 17th century. I know, not enough, I’ll keep digging…

I love travelling and learning about the history of the places I visit. So far I visited (and learned about) France🇫🇷, Portugal🇵🇹, Colombia🇨🇴, Germany🇩🇪, Poland🇵🇱, Slovenia🇸🇰, Andorra🇦🇩, Australia🇦🇺, New Zealand🇳🇿, England🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, China🇨🇳, Singapore🇸🇬, Thailand🇹🇭, Netherlands🇳🇱, Indonesia🇮🇩, Taiwan🇹🇼, South Korea🇰🇷, Japan🇯🇵, Laos🇱🇦, Cambodia🇰🇭 & Myanmar🇲🇲.

1994 (6 years old)

Coding, contrary to many people, came quite natural for me. I started programming on the ZX Spectrum 128K +2 my family had at home. I suppose you could say I spent half my time learning cursive and the other half smashing code, so it’s kind of a second language for me. You could think that’s the reason I love being in IT so much, but there is more: As technology is always changing, I can fulfil my goal to never stop learning, growing and improving. Working in this industry makes me regularly learn new frameworks and platforms to optimize resource usage and to work on ingenious ways to solve complex problems.

2000 (12 years old)

The year I discovered Linux! After using Windows 3.11, 95, 98 I gave a try to OS/2 Warp 4. It made everything feel more stable, and I was able to focus on my stuff more than just “making Windows work”.

But the big revelation came when a family friend (who started an early “cloud computing” company in the 90s, way ahead of everyone else) gave me the chance to get my hands on several mainframes, networking devices and a CD of “Hispafuentes Linux” 7.0, a very well-made Red Hat-based distribution developed in Madrid, Spain. From that first distribution, I kept jumping through several ones like Mandrake,Knoppix, Gentoo, SUSE and finally landed on Debian Potato. This made Debian my all-time favourite, still using it nowadays.

This exposure, later in 2006, led me to the opportunity to run a regional LUG (Linux User Group) in the Basque Country where we even had the opportunity to organise 2 events with Richard Stallman himself. Apart from this, I helped in a very cool project called TuxSM, a Linux port for ARM-based phones before Android was even a thing.

2002 (14 years old)

I learnt HTML and created my first website. By using a very simple text editor and lots of spare time I somehow created a simple site with some pictures, links and random stuff for me and my friends. Then, I learned how to use a hosting platform and uploaded everything to their FTP server.

Said site, in 2003, evolved into this very website after learning proper CSS & PHP. Programming made me curious. Or I was curious already and programming gave me wings?

Finally, in 2007, I had my first home-based server, an HP NetServer E45. This website, albertoroura.com, started to be hosted from my own room under a dynamic public IP, where I had a plethora of routers, switches, hubs and Wi-Fi access points. You can imagine how much fun I had creating networks and testing all kinds of attacks, tests and security-related stuff (well, ok, it was fun for me).

As a side note, later in 2009, this experience made me create a startup called “Track’n’View”, where I manufactured low-consumption vehicle-tracking devices, effectively making IoT before it was cool.

2010 (22 years old)

Volunteering in “Guifinet” (A community with over 37k active nodes and about 71000 km of wireless links), I helped to bring Internet into rural areas in Spain by using mesh networking, solar-powered APs and many, many PoE-powered antennas. It was gratifying to see remote rural councils fully connected to the main cities around.

2011 (23 years old)

My first successful online adventure! I ran an e-commerce site in the digital camera space, called “elfotometrodigital.com”. This site had a technical blog, allowed bookings for 1-to-1 photography courses and a shop, where I mixed drop-shipping with local stock for the best-selling products. I was amazed how, with no investment in advertising at all, the site got so many sales just by word of mouth, quality blog posts and good SEO.

2014 (26 years old)

I moved to Australia and had a once-in-a-lifetime experience around the Asia-Pacific region. Living and working in that area of the world exposed me to countless new ways of doing things, observing life and thinking outside the box. Being away from home for so long, travelling and meeting very interesting people, also pushed me to start my own adventure with guztia.com. I worked for amazing companies in all Europe, America, Australia, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia & Thailand.

2018 (30 years old)

I got some recognition from one of the biggest cloud providers in the world, Alibaba Cloud, by receiving the MVP (Most Valued Professional) award in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023, and the “MVP Of The Year” in 2019, being the only person in the world to achieve all of this so far. Apart from this, I’ve been the top #1 go-to person globally since 2019 when it comes to Chinese cross-border communications and Alibaba Cloud expertise.

Now, 2024 (36 years old) - What keeps me busy?

Open Source projects I collaborated with:

As part of my personal and professional development, I make an effort to give back to the open source community in the form of code contributions, code reviews and opening the source of my own projects. I like to do this during my spare time, and I welcome donations to support my work.

Some examples of notable open source projects that I have contributed to include:

Need help with DevOps/SRE things?

Specializing in Cloud Computing, I can provide cloud solutions and DevOps/SRE expertise. Having extensive AWS experience and also focusing on Chinese & APAC cloud providers I can help you architect single and multicloud platforms including also Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu Cloud and Huawei Cloud.

Also, if you need help with ICP License Filing, cross-border communications or Site Acceleration in China, I will help you architect the most suitable solution for your business needs. Check the services I offer on Cloud Consulting.

You can also check out my calendar if you want to have a chat.

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