Well, it was an odd encounter with Altavista, one of the very first Search Engines, in my first job as a consultant at Digital Equipment Corporation. WEB 2.0 was born and it was the 1990s, the beginning of the dot-com boom. This wasn’t my main focus as I was supposed to be writing a white paper on Windows NT clustering on DEC Alpha Servers, back end storage, and NAS whilst supporting sales technically as a consultant. But guess where I spent most of my time… hanging out in what was called the “Web Factory” where all sorts of demos and tests were being done with this new and amazing web that allowed you to connect with other computers over modems and find information “online”… The rest is history as they say!
But I had a calling after spending time in the HP competency center in Valbonne, South of France (close to Nice and Cannes). After some time there and visits to Madrid, I decided to take up a project working for what had become HP after their acquisition of Compaq/Digital in their Madrid office. I knew after one year that Spain was the place for me and I said I would stay on and see what happens going freelance in a country where I couldn’t even speak the language. But with some money I had saved, I paid for a course at Madrid’s top university, Complutense, and studied the Spanish language with some of the best professors, which, combined with immersing myself with the local Madrileños, helped me to learn enough Spanish to start my own web agency there.
I co-founded this digital startup in Madrid, Spain, and pioneered Search as information in Spanish on SEO was scarce back in 2002. I also managed the day-to-day development, SEO, hosting, and consulting for Blue Fusion Solutions SL, a Creative Multimedia and Web Technology company created to cater to English and Spanish-speaking markets. Our clients included Ogilvy, HP, Microsoft, Pepe Jeans, The British Council, and many more across the UK, US, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France. It was a lot of fun. Madrid is like Disneyland for adults who love food, wine, sun, fun, late nights, and fantastic people I now call family! Including my wife Dr. Michele Goldin Ph.D. who I met there, what would I have done without you and creating our amazing family!
Moving to the US, I decided to get back into the corporate world after a brief patch of freelancing enabled me to learn a lot about the US market. But with a growing family, I looked for something a little more stable. Then WSJ.com and I were introduced and the rest is history!
In 2020 I was invited to co-author a #1 Amazon.com Best-selling book called “Mastering in-house SEO” which I am still very proud of today thanks to Simon Schnieders Founder and CEO of BlueArray.