I was born in 1967 in A Coruña, a mid-sized city on the north-west coast of Galicia, but I spent most of my life in Santiago de Compostela, 70 km away from A Coruña and capital town of Galicia. I also spent some time in Madrid, Sydney and Bizkaia. Now I live in Santiago de Compostela.
I first became involved with computers in 1983 (age 16), and soon started writing my own programs in BASIC. As a teenager I experimented with hot topics such as cellular automata, artificial life, fractal images and simulation of living processes during my undergraduate years. After getting my BSc in Marine Biology in 1990 from the University of Santiago de Compostela, which included a dissertation on data acquisition and processing (with dangerously cast-lead homemade sensors and software), I moved to Madrid to get an MSc in Applied Electronics in 1992 from the School of Industrial Organisation. I learned structured programming, metrics and "serious" software development, and I firstly came exposed to the object-oriented paradigm through a BOOK by Brian Henderson-Sellers (I could not imagine that I would end up working with him). I found my first job in Madrid at the Open Systems department of Unisys Spain, where I learned the intrincacies of those gray Unix machines with an Intel 386 processor and a whopping 128 MB of RAM.
I went back to Santiago and joined the Laboratory of Archaeology and Cultural Forms (LAFC) at the University of Santiago in 1993 as a computer geek, and gained some experience in network deployment and administration, as well as in dealing with people from humanities disciplines. There I met Isabel, my would-be significant other, and started thinking about doing some research in object-oriented methodologies, since the information about this topic that I could find in Spain didn't seem totally appropriate for our needs. I got involved with object-oriented databases (CA Jasmine in particular), workflow systems, project management issues, geographical information systems (GIS) and some other topics, including a nice theoretical approach to representational systems. We tailored the Fusion method and used it for some mid-size software development projects for the internal use at LAFC and also for external customers. I wrote my first papers related to software engineering in the mid 90s, while still working at the LAFC (which had grown from 8 to 40 people) as IT Coordinator. My boss (the director of the LAFC) convinced me to go for a cross-discipline PhD on software engineering & archaeology, which I started then and finished 2 years later. At the same time, I began to use my spare time to develop my own object-oriented methodology, using ideas in TeamFusion as a starting point and as many additional sources as I could find. I named it Metis after a greek godess known by her cunning intelligence.
In 1998, in a pioneering initiative, the University of Santiago launched the necessary infrastructure to foster the creation of private companies co-owned by university researchers and the university itself, and I used this opportunity to create Neco. We converted some software applications we had developed at the LAFC into full-fledged products aimed to individual and corporate professional archaeologists, but our market projections failed and we were forced to re-orient our business plan. I managed to turn directions and use my past experience in project management and OO methodologies to convert Neco into a consultancy organisation that could help other IT companies to transition into the OO paradigm, implement Metis and learn about software project management. We were quite successful and established a strong link with Nática, an IT company that was our customer at the moment, spending some years worked in tight alliance and undertaking quite large custom development projects for both government and private organisations. I sold most of my Neco shares in 2003 to my best employee.
In 2000, still at Neco, I co-authored a paper about the Metis methodology for Dr Dobb's Journal, which put me in contact with Brian Henderson-Sellers. I joined the OPEN Consortium, reformulated the Metis methodology from the OPEN Process Framework viewpoint, and extended the methodology with a comprehensive, powertype-based metamodel. I consequently renamed it OPEN/Metis. In December 2001, I decided to apply for a position at the University of Technology, Sydney and move to Australia as Isabel jumped on to the adventure.
Almost four years later, and with a growing desire to return to Europe, the European Software Institute offered me a position and I accepted it. I spent 18 months there, after which I decided to quit and go back to my hometown of Santiago de Compostela. After a few sabbatical months that I spent writing a book, I was offered a Senior Researcher position at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to work in the application of information technologies to the management of and research on cultural heritage beginning in July 2008.