My name is Tiago Espinha, I am years of age, from Portugal and the developer of the application TeddyBearNotes that you will be able to find in this blog. This application is now quite outdated so use it at your own peril, and feel free to contribute code for it.

I have a BSc from the School of Technology and Management of Leiria (ESTG Leiria) in Informatics[sic] Engineering. My major (known as branch in the Portuguese naming system) is in Information Systems. Since I always strive to be the best at what I do, I felt that my education was a little short to have significance in the labor market; with that said, I went to the UK in September 2009 where I have obtained my Master’s degree in Advanced Software Engineering at the University of Leicester. On top of this main educational path, I also have other certifications such as the Computer Technician degree obtained in High School and the Cisco Certified Network Associate 1 (CCNA1).

As of September 2010 I was accepted as a PhD student at the TU Delft, in the Netherlands, where I am currently spending four years doing research in the field of multi-tenant software systems. This is a very exciting new endeavor in my life and one that I am really looking forward to. For more information about my research, please feel free to have a look at my department website, where you can also find all my publications so far.

At heart I am a programmer and I love developing in general, be it web applications or regular standalone applications to use on your computer. So far TeddyBearNotes is my flagship creation but I have been part of other projects as a developer, like the MMORPG Mafia game, Omerta. More recently I also entirely developed a website for a hairdresser business, of its name Paula Espinha Cabeleireiros.

As side projects I have been participating in some of Google’s contests, such as the Google Code Jam or the Google Summer of Code. I was a participant in the 2009 edition of the GSoC and I completed it successfully. It was a wonderful experience which provided me with plenty of knowledge and also quite a few soft-skills. As last year’s experience was so rewarding and fulfilling, I decided to apply for GSoC again in 2010 and completed my project successfully once again. As of my last participation with the Apache Software Foundation, I was voted and accepted to become a committer within the ASF ranks. As a reward for my continuous collaboration with the ASF, and after mentoring two other students through Google Summer of Code, I have recently been promoted to the Program Management Committee of which I am now part.

I keep this blog because I am thoroughly fond of writing, and because secretly I have the fantasy that people will care to read it. Or actually, since I’m being paid to write some of the posts I write (the sponsored ones), you could say that I’m actually a professional writer, but I’ll let you be the judge of that!