nicoux-blog2

[nicoux-blog2]

Future

In my need of finding ways to write posts i came with the idea of writing from the future to myself. For some reason it made sense for me to do it at least one last time, the final one. But here i encountered an obvious problem, see: how can i write something to myself, about what i have learned and what person i've become after the bootcamp, without being in the other side of the river, without the bittersweet taste and nostalgy of the one who writes to the past? I have no doubts how this experience has found its way on my own story but this fruit is still hanging to it's tree.

Thanks for reading these notes, this little journal of past rain and sunlights and i'd like to think, since i can't write from the future, that these posts will provide some confidence and be some treasure map of some sort. Thanks y'all.

[nicoux-blog2]

Humble

We're getting closer and closer to the end of the bootcamp and i can see how everyone is starting to cultivate a sense of awareness of their place in the exterior bubble that the world is.

Octavio Paz, when speaking about poetry, said how our creation as artists is tied with our comprehension of the world: the art is a manifesto for ourselves that exclaims our right to exist.

Every now and then i like to remember his words (that at this rate, are not even his, more than mine) specially when we're confronted with the proofs of our identity. And so, a sense of joy comes when i talk and hear my cohort express their feelings towards the near end we're facing. It's obvious not everyone is standing in the same place: we are all in different points of our journeys and UX has meant different things for everyone.

And to proclaim justice about our stories, irreductibles, humility has no space.

tl;dr: i hope everyone around here understand they're amazing people.

[nicoux-blog2]

Adults

So we're just done with the 6th week in Ironhack, 6 of 9, that is starting to have that smell of nostalgia before the time of tears come. A Saudade of sorts, right? And tears? they will find a way.

The experience here has been quite intense as it has been marketed but the emotional luggage has come in unexpectedly. We're now grown humans, bipeds, with thoughts ready to be claimed as ours.

[nicoux-blog2]

The case study factory.

The bootcamp concept was first introduced to me by a former bootcamp-er, and i know it's been the same for a good amount of people around me. And of course, with the speed at which the tech job market has been evolving it should come with no surprise the need of more workforce that all in all isn't a complete stranger to the techworld.

Everyday there are new projects that embodies the imagination of the limits of what's feasible.

With that perspective, bootcamps are relatively new as a phenomenon that promise new transformation that goes along with the use of technology and the natural evolution of teaching methods. The case of this essay, then, just happens to be in the center of the table where several actors dialogue: may it be teachers, students, families, expectations, economical endeavors, etcetera.

And for us, who are already here, this comes particularly as a challenge: how to shape our understandings in a meaningful way when the pace is so intensive? How to apply our experience in a personal manner when the experience itself is still crawling like a baby?

For me, it correlates a lot on how craftmanship has existed in our history: learning by doing, doing by challenging, challenging by the need to adapt.

It is natural and reasonable to critic the way the case studies are right now, especially when they're done with a concrete objective which is to find job, right? And also goes a long way, since we're learning by making mistakes to ensure that we get to precede any real hard consequence out of it.

It is, indeed, natural, to see the case studies been made in a "factory", in the same way that we can expect an orange tree to give oranges every day.

[nicoux-blog2]

5th week.

Back then we felt too,

time comes and goes but the work persists,

Here we go again.

[nicoux-blog2]

Critiky crits

So yeah: This is future Nico to my younger self.

I know you've been struggling. Right now you might be in some kind of denial , dreaming on time machines and solution pills that might fix the world, and by extension help you get your ass ready for some crits sessions.

And yeah, you were mostly wrong. The ogres that you dreamt weren't your colleagues at work nor the smell of failure, yours. To be honest, thinking about you (my past self, not the other you, the reader), it's so weird to relate to those magnified passions of yours. So first of all: Don't attach yourself too much with your ideas. Those exist in the air, and just as the leaves fall in autumn, crits will help you selecting the tasty fruit from those that are tasteless.

Second: It's good to think about your teammates. Why are there, here in that exact moment? How do they feel? How can we make them happy with simple gestures? As always, we're all humans, little fragile cannon meat and star dust. Being mindful of others is a gift.

Third: Combining the last 2 points may give us true insight on how people experience your speech. C'mon, you know you've got some beautiful words up in your sleeve. Use them to communicate and relate with the others around!

Now my attention is driving and i've been way spending too much time writing this rather than something for my future. Let's hope i don't receive any of these messages now lmao.

[nicoux-blog2]

The sun is right over my head

So week three? Hard to narrow down a stream of experiences to days, to be honest.

Thankfully for me this week wasn't as long as it first looked like, since my emotional bag was just getting heavier and heavier. It's not like it isn't less heavy right now but it was so sudden the apparition of a helping hand that i wasn't expecting that just gave me a real strong boost for me to keep going.

Rather than giving details i'll let you see me around, as playful and joyful as ever, just because the sun might indeed be shining brighter.

Until next week.

XOXOXOXOXO

[nicoux-blog2]

Seeing under the skin

This summer i had the chance to discuss with a friend the meaning of "knowing" someone. We both had in common a group of friends that even tho they were really into "openmind-ness" at the same time they preached that their "true" identity is only for theirs.

It's easy to fall into sophisms when, with the best of the intentions, you try to reach the deepest ground of understanding. This is a special case where i like to think about the veil of maya as a representation of our perception and place in the world.

While reading https://ia.net/topics/learning-to-see It was inevitable for me to highlight some memories that started to fall in order with the text, as if the author would have been secretly listening to some whispering in a summer evening.

At this point it just pours out of my words my excitement, not only because feeling myself identified but also because feeling grateful on how enlightened is this article writen.

I hope that effectively it will motivate people to be more playful towards knowledge and be more tolerant with those thoughts, the so-called out of the box.

[nicoux-blog2]

once, there was a week 2

Yeah, this week i've been feeling more tired. Not gonna lie: it's been full of surprises and emotions that went by as some unstoppable train, as if the brakes had given up and had decided to go damn straight, deep into the blue.

[nicoux-blog2]

First week ashes

I’ve been leaning my whole adolescence towards poetry. I have discovered a pleasure of finding meanings even though half of the time it’s just me giving names to the clouds.

Somehow it all relates to the UX, something that i would have certainly not suspected not even a few years ago, and that i would be accompanied with such a lovely crew. It is hard to realize something that the time will make more obvious: the amazing accident that brought all of us here forming ourselves in a discipline that in a subtle way is making us better humans.

Now i’m just tired to keep coming with obvious statements so i’d like to leave this post there: with the so-called coincidence that has been ironhack and will continue to exist within all of us.

[nicoux-blog2]

First step on the ux journey

Dear diary,

today i established contact with my new group of colleagues with whom I’ll be sailing around the UX coast for the next 9 weeks. As of now, the ambience does look promising. We’re just a bunch of people, as diverse we can be, whom experiences and ambitions may well sink the boat. But fear not, oh diary, because to guide us we’ve been provided with the all-mighty glory and compassion of a tutor, Nevan, and his accomplices, Lina and Dani.

For sure there have been a decent amount of breaks in the ship but the expertise brought by the captain/tutor has been on point to keep us focused on following the UX DESIGN THINKING PROCESS constellation. 

If my thoughts can provide me any clarity and providence, by the end of this week we should have enough skills and knowledge to make use of the most basic toolkit to keep this trip going smoothly. 

As always, my spirit will keep drifting towards you and i’ll get to write some more whenever the schedule can bless me with some mercy.

XOXO

[nicoux-blog2]

About hackers, humans and ux

It’s been around 8 years since i’ve read Ghost in the Shell, the Japanese manga pioneer in this kind of cyberpunk dystopia where not even the sun can fit in. For my little brain -i was actually 18? what the fu- this series gave me the first sensibility on how to approach the technology, i guess in the same vein as The Matrix did with generations before me. 

Life was imbued in technology, emotions and memories where mixed together with 1′s and 0′s and humans were no longer different than the machine.

Now today i can wake up in the most nonchalant style to throw myself at the coffee machine and check my internet persona as if it was a part of me. The idea of a whole hasn’t even changed, but maybe it just matters less and less.

One of my favorite quotes of all times is Galeano’s << We are what we do, to change what we are >>.

The world is changing way faster than our perception is capable to assimilate and so to think how our agency is becoming something else, something we don’t have a name for yet, humans will be lost in between the waves: the UX’er will perhaps become the guide, the one to design a sky with a sun on it.