About me

I’m Antonio Liñán Colina, father of two, husband and tinkerer.

I have a Dalmatian, my wife has a cat that hates me.

Born in Cartagena, Colombia - now traveling to “B” cities, as I have lived in Bogotá (Colombia), Bilbao (Vizcaya), Barcelona (Catalonia) and now in Berlin (Germany).

I’m your type of geek: I like Star Trek the same as Star Wars (kind of), I have read all Harry Potter books and saw all movies, own my own dwarven pipe (an exact replica of Gimli’s from The Lord of the Rings), collect sonic screwdrivers, and proudly follow One Piece’s emission every Sunday for the past 4 years (and counting).

I love technology.

Academic background

I’m an Electronic Engineer with a focus on Telecommunications. I got a Master’s degree on Computer Science, and my research area was about Wireless Sensor Networks, particularly on designing lossless compression algorithms and packet leveraging, to save energy in highly constrained wireless sensor networks.

In Coursera I have taken courses on Python development, algorithms, and others - I have been an autodidact programmer, driven mostly by curiosity and work challenges. I always enjoy going through a tutorial and document my findings.

I’m currently planing to take a stab at Go and Rust, but my preferred weapon of choice will always be C and Python - however, tools are just tools, and any would do a job mostly the same.

Published work

I wrote a work book to enable people develop their own real Internet of Things applications, namely “IoT in five days”, because at the moment there was not any Contiki user-friendly guide, and too many books preaching about IoT, but few from any technical perspective.

Ah yes, it is freely available on-line, ready to be compiled in different formats (PDF, ePub, HTML5) and it was published twice for workshops in Italy and Colombia, and it has been translated to Spanish and French. This work was heavily sponsored by the ICTP, in a joint effort to share this knowledge to developing countries. In total, I was a lecturer and hands-on tutor of the Internet of Things track in six worldwide workshops, in locations like Italy, Argentina, Costa Rica and Colombia. More info in my Project page.

Professional summary

In my professional career I have been:

  • An Embedded Firmware developer, working and contributing to Open Source Operating Systems like TinyOS, Contiki and RIoT. I worked with MCU like the MSP430F2617, CC2420, CC1200, CC2538 ARM Cortex-M3, Nucleus, … I like really embedded platforms and developing applications able to run on batteries for years - I know Linux too!

  • An NOC level two Engineer, managing on-site technicians and solving networking issues remotely from the Network Operation Center. It was brief, but I learned to manage 12-14 support tickets and technical incidences at the same time in any given day, which earned me the title of Zen Master.

  • A Product Manager, designing, maintaining and releasing commercial development platforms for the Internet of Things (IoT) market, both for industrial and academic users. I have gained a deep insight about product design, gathering and crafting user requirements, and understanding the business side of the equation, to ensure the product success. I have successfully developed and taken from development to industrialization four (4) electronic products, for the IoT and the lighting consumer market

  • A CTO (Chief Technical Officer), which is a nice title to have, but I have plenty still to learn about it…

  • A Project Manager - been there, done that, I was great and projects timing were up to date, but not one of my favorite roles to be honest, still it gave me a great mindset and organization skills, specially to preempt problems and blockers with enough time and flexibility to solve

  • A Technical Manager, my latest position - I’m running a team of almost nine (9) people, with the most diverse backgrounds and roles (field engineers, software developers, full-stack developers, embedded developers), in a Professional Services Organization. I’m in charge also of the vendor evaluation and management, which involves not only parts and device vendors, but also external contractors, system integrators and partners

I have worked in the following companies: