Aldo, in love with technology!

          ’’Aldo is the bBox member with most IT ‘girlfriends’: his personal MacBook, his iPhone, an iPAD, a Mac Book Air…and he loves them all. No need for sales skills, he is so passionate, that he would convince anyone to buy such devices from Apple. And he could also promote Fiducia’s canteen and German food everywhere in the world. So, feel free to suggest other German dishes for him to try.’’ (bBox Team)




 University: Technological University of Panama

 Field of study: System and Computing Engineering

 Favorite developer tools: XCode, Interface Builder, Notepad++, Netbeans.

 Favorite (technical) website: http://www.see.stanford.edu,   http://www.developer.apple.com, http://www.blog.iphone- dev.org

          Someone in our office is always HOT! He is quite a weird Panamanian for, instead of freezing here in Germany, he would really enjoy the chilly weather in winter and always keep the windows open… to our despair. : )

Claudia Corches: ''Aldo, speaking of your country, I would start by asking what do you love the most about Panama? And please don’t answer ‘Apple!’: )''

Aldo Castro: ''Well, I really love  so many things about my country, but let’s just name some: the beaches, the sunshine and the twilight; the people, always committed to make a better country out of Panama; the tourists that come from around the world; the mixture of the technological and traditional, the growing business medium and large companies, and the Panamanian food, of course, Claudia!''

Claudia Corches: ''Alright! My next destination: PanamaJ But, back to Germany, what is the first useful thing you feel you really learned since living here?''

Aldo Castro: ''I feel I have learnt a lot, especially from a personal and professional point of view. First, the discipline from the German culture, has helped me become more precise and a better planner. Second, I really improved a lot my leadership skills, and also grew as a team worker in my lovely programming team.''

Claudia Corches: ''You are a System and Computing Engineer Licentiate. Why did the bBox project attract you so much?''

Aldo Castro: ''Wow! The bBox Project really caught my attention because my background knowledge and experience really fitted the job description. But also because the project was made in Germany - the country that I always wanted to study and live in for its amazing culture and constant technological innovations, among other things.''

Claudia Corches: ''Almost a month and a half ago, we were finding ourselves in the 'choosing device' stage, analyzing both the Android and Apple platforms in the context of a really challenging bBox competition. What was your task?''
Aldo Castro: ''My main task in this competition in the begging was to guide Clara and Delyana, into the Objective C (programming language for Apple devices): just giving moral support and transferring my little knowledge so that they could reach the goal of the competition… In the end they both made it as planned- built an  easy application using gestures as suggested. What makes me happy is that the girls really learned this language from scratch in just one week, because from the beginning everybody thought that this could be a barrier to achieve the aim of the project.''

Claudia Corches: ''Please describe for our friends, why?''

Aldo Castro: ''Well, everybody was a Java developer and I was the only one with Objective C skills.  Fortunately, after only one month and a half, since their first contact with this programming language, I can say that I really achieved my goal with this amazing programming team (Felipe, Delyana, Paulo and me).''

Claudia Corches: ''What did you achieve in the end?''

Aldo Castro: ''We have learnt great things together like giving and receiving feedback  with having a lot of fun in between.  This makes it easier for us to go through the ideas and make them real. So us working as a team, for real, is my greatest achievement in bBox!''

Claudia Corches: ''Super! Than what was the biggest challenge in bBox so far?'' 
Aldo Castro: "Every idea in the bBox Project is a challenge, and I am really into it!  I enjoy this so much, that I dream them at night, always thinking about solutions,  going through the best approach to make that idea become reality. Now,  to answer your question I called the biggest challenge in bBox 'Make the iPads talk to each other',  feature that is actually present in the application itself for more functions that you can imagine.''

Claudia Corches: ''You are a specialist in iPhone programming and also, very passionate about Robotics. What were your most interesting projects or achievements?''

Aldo Castro: ''You are right Claudia, I am very passionate about robotics and mobile device programming because I find both areas as already making the trend for the next generations. Besides, as an engineer, I feel committed to solving problems for the very sake of science ; in this context I have developed applications starting with web applications for dentist clinics, hotel businesses and other web solutions for web advertisement and promotion, in general; also, for a year and a half now, I have experience in developing mobile applications in Apple devices such as iPhones and iPads.

About my knowledge in robotics… it all began in the university, in the last four semesters, when I took courses of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Formal languages, Automata  and Compilers. In my last year, in a group of 6 students, we developed a robot with Lego Mindstorms Technology that could write numbers. After that, we rebuilt this robot to make it pick up an object and give it to another one, in a robot community made for the entire student’s course – it was a final project of six months.''

Claudia Corches: ''I am pretty sure that your work in AIESEC must have been interesting and important, since you programmers now rule the world. :) What were your responsibilities?''

Aldo Castro: ''In my lovely LC UTP, 'Local Committee of the Technological University of Panama', I was a member of the Marketing and Information Management, in charge of sending spams about local seminars held for non-AIESECers in my university. Yet, my most relevant experience in AIESEC was as a member of the MC CAS, 'Member Committee of Central America and South', with the role of WebMaster: I made the new design of the entire web site of our region, Costa Rica and  Panama . At the same time, I was the leader of the Webmaster team of CAS, I supported and led this team to create and rebuild the web page of the five Local Committees of the five different universities, in countries of our region.''

Claudia Corches: ''Any next challenges after the internship?''

Aldo Castro: ''My next challenges… Actually, right now I have two in my mind: firstly, I would like to continue my studies and follow a master’s program or a PhD related to one of the following subject fields: IA, Robotics, Home Automation, Business Process Management (BPM), hopefully here, in Germany! And my second challenge is to build my own business, for now starting with iOS Applications.''

Claudia Corches: ''Good luck, my friend! And thank you!''