Today, after 6 years, I returned the keys to the space where we spent so many great times.
There have been dreams, hard work, fun moments, and above all, so many good memories.
It’s a bit of a bittersweet moment for me. On one hand, it’s the end of a chapter, but on the other, we hadn’t been using the workshop for some time, and it was too much expense to keep it up.
That’s why I wanted to prepare a little collection of memories as a tribute to what this time has been.
The Workshop Over the Years
The Early Days
In early 2018, I became fully immersed in 3D printing. So much so that Dani and I decided to make 3D-printed wedding favors.
What started as a hobby soon turned into a business, and our home quickly ran out of space.
So, one month before our wedding, we decided to rent a space and start a company. 🙈
The place was in rough shape when we arrived. The walls and ceiling were incredibly dirty, and the lighting was awful.
Luckily, I still had some things from when we set up the ¿Qué Pasa Có! studio, so we weren’t starting from scratch.
But it was still quite makeshift, and we barely had enough storage space for everything.
Here’s a video showing how the workshop looked back then:
Returning from our honeymoon, you can see us all excited, sharing our plans for the future:
Some Work and Fresh Paint
In December 2018, we enlisted an army of friends to help shape up the workshop.
We painted the walls, set up shelves, and arranged the wiring properly. It was hard work, but the workshop already looked completely different:
Here’s Dani and Edu working hard on the paint job:
And here’s how the workshop looked when finished. Super cool!
And this was the shelf that doubled as a display and backdrop for our live streams on Aparaticos:
A goose snuck in occasionally, and would steal materials from time to time. Eventually, we let him stay because, at the end of the day, he wasn’t a bad guy.
Even our mailbox had some 3D-printed details:
And Then Came COVID
In 2020, COVID hit, and like everyone else, we entered a period of crisis. Suddenly, all events for which we made 3D-printed favors came to a halt.
We made an emergency plan. We tried to improve our videos to relaunch the business while I set up a small office to work from. Alongside the 3D printing business, Dani and I still had our day jobs during this time.
We moved the work area to the back and set up the studio in the middle. Honestly, we should have done this from the start – it made everything so much more convenient.
Shortly after, another key feature of our workshop arrived: the tool bench.
This addition gave the space – and our videos – a more professional look.
Here’s how it looked once finished:
And now that we were spending so many hours downstairs, we also set up a cozy little rest area:
Which I got a lot of use out of:
El coworking
Durante este tiempo mi equipo en el trabajo empezó a crecer. Como todavía había restricciones para ir a la oficina debido al COVID, usábamos el taller como lugar de trabajo.
Así que preparamos dos puestos de trabajo más.
Justo cuando se solucionó el tema del COVID y el taller se me iba a quedar sin uso, me surgió la oportunidad de ofrecer puestos de trabajo para trabajadores remotos.
Hicimos unos pequeños ajustes, aligerando la decoración para hacerla más acogedora.
Incluso construimos dos salas de videollamadas en la sala exterior:
Una de estas salas también servía como estudio de voz.
Eso sí, se nos fastidió un poco la zona de descanso, porque tuvimos que sacar allí unas estanterías.
En esta época usaba el taller ocasionalmente, por ejemplo para grabar un vídeo del trabajo con Daniel:
El último cambio que realizamos fue pintar una pared, a solicitud de un miembro del coworking para tener un fondo diferente para grabar vídeos.
El final
Y así llegamos al final.
A finales de 2023 me tomé un descanso de trabajar y nuestro último inquilino del coworking dejó el espacio.
Al no tener uso para el taller, poco a poco lo hemos ido desmontando. Y ha sido este año cuando hemos tomado la decisión final de abandonarlo.
Esto es lo que nos ha quedado para recoger esta última semana:
Y esto fue ayer, con todo fuera:
Y foto final:
Como todo lo que acaba, da mucha pena. Pero ahora podemos centrarnos en otras cosas. 💪🏼
Ahora vamos a repasar algunas de las cosas que hicimos en el taller, y alguno de nuestros mejores momentos.
The Coworking Space
During this time, my team at work began to grow. Since COVID restrictions were still in place for going into the office, we used the workshop as a workspace.
So, we set up two more workstations.
Just when COVID restrictions eased and the workshop was going to be left unused, I had the chance to offer workspaces to remote workers.
We made some minor adjustments, simplifying the decor to make it cozier.
We even built two video call rooms in the outer room:
One of these rooms also served as a voice recording studio.
Of course, this did mean sacrificing part of our lounge area since we had to place some shelves there.
During this period, I used the workshop occasionally, for example, to record a work video with Daniel:
The last change we made was painting a wall at the request of a coworking member who wanted a different background for recording videos.
The End
And so we reach the end.
At the end of 2023, I took a break from work, and our last coworking tenant left the space.
With no further use for the workshop, we gradually dismantled it, and this year, we finally decided to let it go.
This is what was left for us to clear out this past week:
And here’s the scene yesterday, with everything cleared out:
And a final photo:
As with anything that ends, it’s sad. But now, we can focus on other things. 💪🏼
Now, let’s go over some of the things we did in the workshop and some of our best moments.
Aparaticos
When we first set up the workshop, we were very active on our YouTube channel, Aparaticos:
One of the best videos we made was “Aprende un Ratico 13: ¿A qué huelen los pedos?” (roughly, “Learn a Bit: What Do Farts Smell Like?”).
Here we are filming the video with Abel’s help:
But what really took off on the channel were the live streams Dani and I hosted, where we discussed news and did giveaways for the audience.
Our first live stream in the workshop was very minimal, and we used our neighbor’s wifi XD.
At one point, I really went overboard. We invited a band, Karma 13, to do an interview and perform live – a continuation of what we’d done previously on the ¿Qué Pasa Có! channel.
Besides the thousands of technical issues, I hadn’t anticipated how loud the drums would be :S. That day, we earned the enmity of many neighbors:
Anyway, we parked the musical idea and focused on the tech side.
Gradually, we made the studio look even better:
And on many days, we even had a live audience:
Here’s what our view from behind the cameras looked like during the live streams:
Some standout episodes were:
Live Stream 50: 9 Years of ¿Qué Pasa Có!” – In this episode, we reviewed our audiovisual journey up to that point.
Live Stream 51: The Ifs – Here, we interviewed the members of an exciting project seeking funding.
Live Stream 52: Photogrammetry and Acetone Baths Experiments – This one is a good example of what a typical live stream of ours was like.
Maincra Live Stream #4 – Towards the end of Aparaticos, we began feeling worn out. On top of our day jobs, we had to manage the 3D printing business, and on top of that, prepare the weekly live streams. So we started experimenting a bit and did live streams of us playing games:
Workshop Changes – When COVID restrictions were lifted in 2020, we announced the restructuring of our channels in this video:
.3D Things
When I said that the details for our wedding were 3D printed, I meant it!
For instance, here’s the “cake”:
And the seating chart:
Here are our six printers that made the magic happen:
During the years we were active, we created event mementos, toys, industrial parts… you name it!
Here are some trophies:
And here are some keychains we made to raise funds for the Movember initiative:
We even streamed a few live events:
And recorded some videos:
I still have a few unpublished videos, hehe.
Here’s Dani recording a video:
This is what the set looked like on camera:
And this is how we positioned the camera. Notice the pink marks on the table to know exactly where to place the tripod.
Once we changed the set design, here’s how it looked.
You can see this setup in our last live stream, where we did maintenance on four of our printers:
Gamers Solidarios
In mid-2018, we were lucky to meet the team from Chapas Solidarias, with whom we later formed Gamers Solidarios.
This group used Pokémon Go events to sell badges and raise funds for NGOs. We initially collaborated with them by 3D-printing figurines and keychains.
Later on, we hosted them in the workshop, which became their operations center for preparing each event.
We ended up collaborating with over 50 cities across Europe, where the group had representatives.
Eventually, we set up a stand with tables and posters to showcase the merchandise.
Here’s my personal badge collection :).
And here are some of the keychains we made:
I designed some of the figurines myself. I think my favorite was this Mudkip:
Capitangolo
After COVID, with Aparaticos winding down, I focused on my own YouTube channel.
I felt more comfortable and free there, as I didn’t feel as much pressure to make everything perfect.
I started streaming with this setup:
Sometimes I got a bit carried away, like when I discovered Snapchat filters and began streaming as the “Potato King”:
During this time, Dani launched his own Twitch channel, and we streamed together:
We played Phasmophobia a lot, but I was super scared the whole time:
I even set up an overhead camera for making LEGO build videos:
And soon the colored lights arrived, giving the set a really cool atmosphere:
Which I also used to take some cool photos:
One of the streams I remember most fondly was a 12-hour charity marathon where we raised funds for the Spanish Association Against Cancer:
It was the first time I streamed for so long, and by the end, I was exhausted but deeply satisfied, having achieved a personal milestone and supported a good cause.
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Patxi Garcia, director of the AECC in Zaragoza. It was an interview where I learned a ton:
I soon got a standing desk and moved my setup to have the tool area as the backdrop. This way, with the same cameras, I could do personal streams and record videos with the decorated background.
It looked fantastic on camera:
One of the last things I did in the workshop was the Subnautica series:
Weekly Geek Random News & Memes With Golo
Toward the end of 2020, I started to miss Aparaticos streams. I didn’t want to repeat the same format, as it took too much effort, so I thought of something simpler:
- Just me
- With friends
- Talking nonsense
- And looking at memes
I floated a trial balloon on Twitter:
A lot of people loved the idea.
Including Mikel Navarro, who found my logo so unbearable that he made me a proper one:
And so, Weekly Geek Random News & Memes With Golo was born.
One of the things I remember most fondly is how I would send silly photos of myself to Mikel:
And he would turn them into fantastic thumbnails:
Some special moments included when I shaved my beard for a Movember fundraiser. (Press play to hear me scream)
Or when I set up Golo Corp to ask my followers for funding XD. (Another awesome logo by Mikel).
This initiative didn’t raise much money, but we had a blast. We really built a community, and the memes kept rolling in. (Mostly thanks to Jynus)
During this time, I built my own gaming PC, and one episode featured an excellent assistant:
On The Nubs
Another project born in the workshop was OnTheNubs. Eckelon and I came up with the idea, and months later, David de Torres gave us the motivation to get started.
The early days were tough, with plenty of technical problems. Like the day our video didn’t record, and we had to fix it South Park style:
Although it always had a remote focus—since it launched in a post-COVID world—we started with the workshop as our base.
In these streams, we discussed programming and cloud technology, but sometimes we held contests:
A highlight was the day we all came together and did a stream live from the workshop:
What’s Next?
As you can see, it’s been six years filled with emotions and memories. So what’s coming next?
Well, we’re going to keep pushing forward :).
After all, OnTheNubs ended up moving its operations center to the Sysdig offices:
Where we had more collaborators.
And several interviews:
I even set up a mini-studio in my living room:
For a while, I hosted OnTheNubs streams from my living room:
I even started streaming Capitangolo content from there. Do you remember the time I started carving ham live, and everyone yelled at me because I’d started it wrong?
Shortly after that, we converted the guest room into an office:
With a fresh coat of paint:
And after bringing up the workshop drawers, we ended up with a fantastic streaming space where I still host live streams.
Recently, I started working at Safetybits, and I brought some of the equipment from the workshop there.
So we might even start streaming from there soon:
Lastly, I’ve revived this blog, where I’ve been writing consistently for several weeks now.
The world has changed since COVID, and I no longer need a studio to carry out my projects. This is just the beginning!
Thank you so much for all your support over the years, and see you soon!