Once in a while,
things line up...
and dreams, can turn into plans,
which,
with enough work,
they can come true.
What am I talking about?
In high school, I dreamed of being an electrical engineer. In 1978, I was accepted to UCSD, where I started my dream. Then the reality of my life awakened me. Fresh from high school, which was easy for me. I encountered a totally different culture from my days in National City. School was not easy any longer. In fact, it was the most difficult thing I had ever done. I didn't have the discipline to study nor the support of anybody to help me. I was the first of my family to go to college. My parents never finished high school in Mexico. I lasted less than a year at UCSD. I was getting C's and D's, being overwhelmed by the curriculum needed for an electrical engineer major.
I went to work for my father's printing company. It was just starting up in the garage. From that point, to where I am now is a longer story. I've moved past that career, but my brothers who followed me are still there running Dad's company, 4L Printing in San Diego.
I leveraged my experience, from printing, to managing, to technology, which puts me in my current role. I work for a Japanese printer, but it's not your typical print shop. In Japan, this printer started over 100 years ago. Back then, the printing was done by letterpress. My father started with his first letterpress in Tijuana, Mexico. In 1978, the Japanese company switched from letterpress to offset. That's the same year Dad was printing with his first offset press in the garage.
Yamagata now has large printing facilities in various countries in Asia. Yamagata America, in San Diego, was established in 1989. I've been working there since 2007. We don't have any printing equipment, but still manage millions of dollars in printing every year.
I run a project from San Diego. While the customer and my production staff is in Tokyo. We are converting documents from their legacy formats into XML. We are using the DITA standard. We are partnering with a Content Management System from Boston, XyEnterprise, to expand their customer base in Japan.
XML, eXtensible Markup Language, is an open standard. A way to structure data to share between Information Systems. Read about it in Wikipedia.
I'm the lead technical person and the project manager. It's like my dream of being an engineer is coming true.
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