Arturo Calvo - Blog

I just finished reading " The 7 habits of highly effective people ", a best-seller by Stephen R. Covey, that has inspired me in many levels. I am sharing some of the learnings I got, mostly as a personal bookmark, but hopefully this post can be useful for the community. Habit 1: Be Proactive It is not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.  There is a space between stimulus and response, and the key to our growth and happiness is how we use that space. While reactive people feel victimized and out of control, proactive people have the power to choose how to respond to any circumstances (i.e., smiling with bad weather). We must focus our efforts on the things we can do something about, and accept what we can't change (past events, weather,...). Try replacing victimized language (i.e., " There is nothing I can do ", " I have to do it ",...) with proactive language (" Let's see all the options "...

I recently had the honour to speak at the Ethics in Research and Innovation workshop  organized by ADAPT Centre in Trinity College Dublin. The topic of my keynote was " The Business Value of Ethics ", where I reflected about the need to practice ethics in research and innovation environments, and the benefits that these practices can bring to an organization or company. Here I leave some highlights from my presentation. Why Ethics in Technology is a must? Emerging technologies such as AI, Connected Home, Autonomous Vehicles or Human Augmentation have unprecedented levels of potential harm in our society if ethics are neglected. The impact of these technologies can be spread from 0 to billions of people in a matter of hours. High-tech is no longer a privilege of large corporations and organizations. Access, development and knowledge of cutting-edge technology is now affordable and available to SMEs as well, which account for 99% of the businesses in the EU ...

Some weeks ago I published a post  on Linkedin  asking my connections for their  best tricks to have more effective meetings .  This is a summary of the techniques that are being used successfully in world-class companies and institutions: Invites.  State a clear purpose, specific agenda points and share the slides upfront (if available). Make sure you have invited only the right participants by stating the roles and responsibilities for each one in the invite. Set up.  Prepare the context to start on time: room, tooling, material, connectivity, etc. Be on time.  Start your meetings at :05 to allow people to arrive from other meetings and grab a coffee.  No devices.  Mobile phones are not allowed on the desk or attendees' hands. Laptops are not allowed in the room except for the presenters. Stand-ups.  Meetings that are about status and decision making shouldn't be long. Chair-less rooms are ideal for this. Meetings ...

Tengo el honor de ser profesor del curso Startup Innovation Lab , del Plan de Empleo para la Educación Superior , en el que jóvenes canarios en situación de desempleo descubren las principales técnicas de emprendimiento siguiendo la metodología Lean Startup . Dado que no hay muchos ejemplos prácticos y en español sobre cómo completar el Lean Canvas , he creado un vídeo de 14 minutos en el que se explica, paso a paso, cómo completar el canvas utilizando Spotify como producto de ejemplo. Éste es el canvas resultante. Espero que sea de utilidad al igual que lo está siendo para mis alumnos.

I never considered myself a smartphone addict, but it is true that I waste a lot of time checking my phone and responding to personal emails and messages. According to studies  [1]  and [2] , the average user checks the smartphone 80 times per day  for 2.42 hours  and touches the display 5427 times per day . These figures might seem very high, but I tracked my smartphone usage with BreakFree for one week and they are surprisingly accurate. A couple of years ago I started using the Pomodoro Technique  at work, which  blocks smartphone notifications and some websites during the work intervals (25 minutes) and allows you to check them during the scheduled breaks (5 minutes after each work interval). This really helped me be more productive but it requires self-discipline that sometimes I don't have. What if you really can't check your smartphone, personal email or social media because you don't have access to it? A few weeks ago I starte...

Most organisations have security rules that stop non-standard ports on external resources from being accessed from the corporate network. One frequent scenario is when you are running a website on a non-standard port (e.g., 5000 ) on AWS EC2 (e.g.,  52.131.143.12 )  and you try to call it from your corporate network. In most cases, if you open your browser and try to access http:// 52.131.143.12 :5000 ,  the site won't load despite having the port open on AWS EC2 Security Group . To overcome this limitation you can use Reverse SSH Tunneling the following way: Open a terminal and navigate to the folder where you have your PEM key to connect to AWS EC2 Type  ssh -i your_key.pem -NL LOCAL_PORT:localhost:REMOTE_PORT ec2_user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ( e.g.,  ssh -i your_key.pem -NL 8080:localhost:5000 ec2-user@52.131.143.12 ). Leave the terminal open with the SSH command running. Open on your browser and type http://localhost:LOCAL_PORT (e.g., http...

Sometimes, the best way to help the startups you care about is to let them die from starvation. We all know entrepreneurs with terrible ideas, seeking validation, recognition and cash. I was (am?) one of them, and looking back at my startup journey I wish that I hadn't receive the awards and investment that kept me working on the wrong idea for months (although it was a great learning experience). If you really care about your startup friends, I encourage you to follow these recommendations: Feedback / Surveys.  If you are asked to provide feedback about an idea, don't be accommodating. Tell them what you really think, even (especially) if it is not nice. A good entrepreneur will be grateful to learn more about your real needs. Perhaps you are simple not part of their target market. Install my app / Like my page.  If you don't really like a project, why do you have to install their app, register as a user or like their Facebook page? This will inflate their ...