Salomón Muriel
Met 2024-07-12 17:00 at La Colina Hotel: Calle 150 #78-46, Suba, Bogotá, Colombia.Loves Colombia and Bogotá and really wants to make it a better place. Twins are 2½ years old. “Upbringing” is a strange English word. They live one block from both grandmothers.
Learned English playing the video game Halo, to speak with teammates.
Taking his family to Chicago for a few months, starting tomorrow, to get to know it.
Wants to help Latin American teens have that creative confidence, like U.S. teens, not afraid to build stuff, try stuff, building a whole set of skills that most adults don't even try. They have grit and drive. More investment in education.
Antanas Mockus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_Mockus - made a huge change in Bogotá culture. Hired 420 mimes to make fun of traffic violators. (Read the Wikipedia page under “Bogotá mayorship”. Fascinating.) Practically eliminated drunk driving, through culture change.
Currently Colombian culture rewards being street smart, breaking the rules, taking advantage of others, but this needs to change. Thinking about how to change his company's culture too. How to make Colombia a more attractive place to stay instead of the best leaving for the U.S.?
He programs in Python for data science stuff. He likes https://codecrafters.io/ for learning a language. He explained why the need for the different versions. Python 3.12 is way faster than Python 3.11. But he likes Python because it's fast to build in, even if it's not the fastest language. Like https://streamlit.io/ - not as fast as Rust but can make something in a few hours that would take a couple weeks in Rust.