I am not a big fan of using the Christmas period to reflect on the past year. I use that time to disconnect. January is when I usually do my retrospective.
The transition from 2025 to 2026 has been especially intense for me. This post is my attempt to connect the dots between personal changes and professional decisions. Because of that, it has a more personal tone than most of what I have written lately.
Closing a Chapter, Returning Home Temporarily
I usually spend Christmas in the Canary Islands and take a few days off. It is my time to disconnect and enjoy. Reflection and retrospective normally come later, during the first days back at work, after finishing the yearly and quarterly reports.
This Christmas was different. During the last quarter of 2025, I had to focus on family matters. I am at a point in my life where my parents need some attention and support. My personal situation, together with remote work, gives me the flexibility to be there when needed. That flexibility has become essential over the past months.
Once the family situation stabilised, I could finally focus on a decision I had already made in 2025: moving back to La Palma, in the Canary Islands.
I will live there for a couple of years to take care of the old family house. The house needs attention, effort, and money to get back to the state it was in when I was young. This will be challenging. I know nothing about construction or maintenance, and I am probably the worst handyman you know.
Still, I have been very happy there. I want to turn that house into a real home again. Let’s see how that goes.
At the same time, I had felt for a while the need to move again. I needed a change. My chapter in Málaga was coming to an end.
I leave behind great memories and friends for life. Living literally by the beach was a dream come true. I also witnessed how Málaga grew during the last ten years, becoming an emerging software hub. Today, it is much more than a tourist destination. It has become a very good place to live and work if you are into technology.
Connectivity to La Palma has improved in recent years. There are now two daily flights to Tenerife South, which makes it easier to reach many European cities. Since becoming an independent consultant, I travel less often, and my trips are usually planned in advance, compared to the past, where my trips where frequent and sometimes hard to anticipate.
Still, living on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic is less convenient than living in the Málaga area. Travel will be more of a challenge.
The first days of the year have been about closing the house in Málaga and shipping my things to La Palma. I am writing these lines from Huelva, where I will take the ship to the Canaries with my small van. Once I arrive, with almost no rest, I will head to the Software Heritage Symposium in Paris and to FOSDEM in Brussels.
Moving back home does not feel like the end of my journey. It feels more like half-time in a football match. There is still a second half to play.
Building a Consulting Practice, One Step at a Time
When I decided to become an independent consultant, I already had some customers. I contacted a few former colleagues and company owners I knew in Spain. That gave me enough work to pay the bills while, in parallel, working on designing, launching, and validating DPA, together with Bitergia.
This setup has worked well over the past two years.
What makes me proud is that I have built relationships that last. From the beginning, I chose long engagements instead of short ones, even if they were less profitable, because I wanted to get involved and connect with people, not just deliver tasks.
Among all the activities, helping developers and managers grow has been one of the most satisfying parts. I have coached them in their open source and remote work, and this has also helped me refine my own practice. I have had the luxury of being paid to do part of my work in the open, and I still enjoy that a lot.
At the same time, I am still far from reaching a sweet spot as a freelance, independent consultant. I feel I am still in the early stages of this role, with a lot to learn and with muddy ground under my feet. To move forward, I need to stay open to change, ready to pivot, and willing to leave my comfort zone when needed. And I am.
Redefining My Focus for 2026–2027
The last three months have been intense. Family matters and the move to La Palma took most of my energy and attention. Coincidentally, during this period, a couple of customer engagements have ended.
Delivery Performance Analytics (DPA) is a very satisfying work stream. Business Intelligence applied to software production is something I have been interested in for years. I learned a lot while designing the service and validating it with customers. Now I hope it will bring new projects for Bitergia and myself during 2026. Being in a sales phase, DPA has required less effort from me during 2025Q1 and I expect it to be the case during 2026Q1.
In summary, I have an opportunity window to redefine what I want to focus on in 2026–2027, including my service offering.
Reconsidering my service offering
After more than two years as an independent consultant, I have some solid ground to build on, but also many things to reconsider. The next two years feel like a good time frame to review what I offer and how I work.
One idea I keep coming back to is narrowing my focus. I want to invest more time and energy in fewer activities, even if that means saying no more often. Specialization seems to be the way forward for me, which is quite different from my past, where I did many different things for many different organizations, playing very different roles. This wide view has helped me. But maybe it is time to change this approach.
I am also reviewing the “architecture” of my services as a freelance, independent consultant. This includes the type of engagements I accept, how I structure my work, and some of the conditions under which I collaborate with customers. During the next few weeks, I plan to draft and test a refreshed version of my offering.
Collaboration, Open Source, and Consulting
There is another idea that has been growing in the background while I rethink my services: how to work with other freelancers. As I adjust my focus and offering, collaboration with peers becomes more important for both learning and impact.
Is it possible to collaborate with peers in a way that clearly follows open source principles? Why would they want to team up with other consultants when they already collaborate in public projects, often in environments where some of their potential customers are also present? How can independent consultants use open source ways in professional services?
What I want to explore now is how to open more collaboration channels with other freelance and independent consultants to provide services. The question is not only with whom to collaborate, but also how to do it in a way that feels natural and aligned with open source values.
These are questions I am thinking about, and discussing them with other consultants these days. If you are interested in the topic and will be at SwH Symposium or FOSDEM, let’s talk.
How will AI impact my work?
Beyond collaboration, new tech like AI is changing things.
The emergence of AI is having a significant impact on several of my work streams. One of the most obvious areas, for instance, is content generation, where tools can now create text, summaries, and even reports in a few seconds.
This raises some uncomfortable and important questions for me. For example: what is the value of blogging if readers do not clearly link a text with the person who wrote it? How should I adapt my reports for customers now that “knowing where to look” for information is less relevant than before? What is the value I can provide in this new environment? How should I adapt?
These questions are not only theoretical. They affect how I design my services, how I communicate, and how I position my work as an independent consultant. Understanding how AI changes the value of content is now part of the reflection about my next 18–24 months.
Some activities I will continue in 2026
Not everything will be new in 2026. Besides DPA, I will keep my involvement with Software Heritage as Ambassador, with more focus on SWHID, the intrinsic software identifier, over time.
You plan to attend to different events in 2026. I write about this below. I will publish a couple more articles about the Business Intelligence study we applied to AGL, and some updates about my involvement in the SPDX Cryptography Group, where we are creating the SPDX Cryptographic Algorithm List. This engagement with SPDX is part of my involvement in the Software Transparency Foundation which will continue this 2026 with plenty of news. Stay tuned.
I would also like to increase my support for KDE, which has always been a source of joy for me. The main limit, as usual, is time. Maybe I should explore ways to connect my professional work with KDE again, instead of keeping that relationship only at a volunteer level. If you have ideas or suggestions, I am open to hearing them.
Finally, I want to put more energy into the Meetup group I manage in my home island: San Miguel de La Palma Tech. Now that I am settling there, it feels like a good moment to help the local tech community grow and connect in a continuous way.
Events and Community Activities
I have some events already planned for 2026. First, the Software Heritage Symposium followed by FOSDEM, taking me from Paris to Brussels in a few days. Then, Embedded World 2026 in Nuremberg, in March. I also plan to attend to Open Source Summit EU 2026, which this year takes place in Prague, a city I lived in and one of my favorite places.
I also want to add a few more to my calendar. One or two events on the Spanish mainland. A couple in the Canary Islands. And one or two more international ones, tied to professional work.
These trips will help me stay connected with communities and projects I care about, with former customer and with potential new ones. They also give me a chance to test my new base on La Palma and its travel links.
Wrapping Up 2025 and Stepping into 2026
In summary, I see 2025 as the end of my shift from employee to freelance consultant. 2026 should be a new step. I will increase focus to be more clear about what I do. This will show in my new offering. I will keep what has worked well.
Exciting times lie ahead!
I’d love to hear your ideas on collaborating as independents—feel free to comment below.
This post has been polished using AI. Illustrations were created using Grok and Gemini
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