cosmix.org
This site serves as a personal publishing vehicle and, as such, hosts a multitude of articles on a range of topics I’m interested in. No part of any article is sponsored. All opinions presented here are mine.
The site is largely bilingual, with articles written in English and Ελληνικά (Hellenic) — with the addition of some small parts in Français. It also used to host Spinalonga Records, a not-for-profit effort to promote Hellenic Rock bands.
For the few that wonder about this, the site or its owner have nothing to do with the keshi figures of the 80s of the same name or anyone else — company or individual — using the name.
Who is cosmix anyway?
I was born in Athens, Hellas (you probably know it as Greece), in 1980, where I also grew up and went to school. I have a lifelong passion for computer science, software engineering and the multitude of ways it positively impacts our lives.
I was lucky to have been exposed to computer programming at a very young age. I went “online”, in BBSes in 1992, and was introduced to the World Wide Web in mid 1994. cosmix was my handle back in those days and it stuck with me ever since. In 1998 I moved to the UK to study at Imperial College London, a small educational institution in London’s French Quarter. After graduating with an M.Eng in Information Systems Engineering, Imperial’s idea of a joint EE/CS degree with a ‘management’ twist, I stayed on, working on a Ph.D in Distributed Artificial Intelligence, and more specifically in self-organising (highly autonomous) artificial societies of software agents—that was good work that I never properly finished. I have a lifelong passion for technology, and more specifically for computers, arguably the most promising, polymorphic, evolving and open-ended device created by mankind. I’ve also had an obsession with music since my early childhood, for a while contemplating a career as a classical guitarist. I’ve been ‘blogging’ before it became a term. My first posts, in what you would now call a ‘CMS’ were published in late 1999. Since late 2001 I’ve been using more ‘mainstream’ blogging platforms, like Movable Type. This version of my blog, dates from 2003, when I moved to WordPress. Older articles are, sadly, either archived or lost.
Nowadays, I spend most of my free time with my young family, although I’ve been known to take many photos, reading, watching movies, listening to and — occasionally — playing music, travelling, and running medium to long distances (not necessarily in this order). Finally I have a keen interest in history, (the few meaningful) aspects of philosophy, typography and design.
My working time is currently spent advising a few, select founders, investors, engineering and product leaders, working in the ever-evolving technology space. If you’re interested in working with me, send me a message on LinkedIn,
Between September 2020 and November 2023, I was the Chief Technology Officer at Metrika Inc. At Metrika I worked on building a novel operational intelligence/risk management platform for blockchain networks.
For a year starting in June 2019 I was the Chief Technology Officer at Netdata. This is a company built around an open source real-time monitoring agent for *NIX systems (and an accompanying cloud monitoring SaaS solution.) — Netdata was a very interesting experience for me, chiefly because it was my first all-remote company.
Between August 2016 and May 2019 I led Engineering at Beat, a challenger in the ride-hailing industry (think Uber competitor) that’s mostly active in Latin America and is owned by FREE NOW, a joint venture between Daimler and BMW. At Beat I focused on a number of areas: from redrawing the platform architecture for scale and reliability, scaling the engineering organization from about 10 engineers to more than 140, establishing Machine Learning, Analytics, Test Automation and a slew of other groups — I learnt a lot about team organization, management, building for scale and analytics/machine learning in the process.
Before that, I spent a decade running my first company, Cosmical Technology in Athens. At Cosmical I provided consulting and software development services for a few years, until my colleagues and I started working full-time on AthensBook, ThessBook, two smart guides for Greece’s largest cities, and GEO|ADS, one of the early advertising platforms for mobile devices. Despite the difficulties we faced running a high-tech business like this in a country like Greece—and at the onset of probably the largest crisis this country ever faced—the ride was thrilling, demanding and fulfilling. They are products that rode on the smartphone and mobile computing revolution and a reminder that we live in an enthusing time that brings back memories of my childhood and those of another revolution, that of personal computing, about thirty or so years earlier.
I occasionally speak and write publicly about technology, entrepreneurship and policy (esp. privacy issues and the diffusion of technology in society).
Thanks for visiting cosmix.org!