Yesterday was a rare union of all Toro, our chairman and Europe manager Sour gathered in Taipei office, plus the European team who are having training sections in Taiwan, so we took some group photos and had dinner together. As Toro works on projects across the globe, it becomes harder and harder to see everyone at the same time.

For this special occasion, Laurent picked a Spanish restaurant to surprise the Barcelona team who have been in Taiwan for a month. I hope the Taiwanese food in Barcelona will be good enough to surprise us if we visit there!

Group picture in the office, number of boy/girl > 10/1!

Some pics at dinner:

The typical Spanish dish:

The restaurant owner seems to be a fan of music, cause there was small stage in the basement, and the owner played music after all the dishes are served. The restaurant was decorated with many guitars as in the picture. We played a bit of guitar while eating, but everyone was to busy eating, drinking, talking and listening at the same time so unfortunately no pictures.

I don’t know about the food, because I’ve never tried the real Spanish dish, I guess it was alright? However the after-dinner concert was a great surprise:)

You can see more pictures in Toro’s Flickr stream

Hi to everyone! First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Julio López, I am a Computer Engineer, 30, and less than a month ago I decided to join the exciting project Toro and Mobile World Capital have put in motion in Barcelona.

After more than three years working within a University context, I started to feel I needed a change, a new professional and personal experience that could bring me something new and different, and I believe there is no need to say my expectations are being more than met. I would be lying if I said I was looking for an opportunity to come to the other side of the world and immerse myself in a completely different culture, or that I didn’t care about being that far from my family and friends for a few months, but sometimes there are boats you’re not waiting for and just feel that, despite everything, you absolutely can’t miss it. So I took the boat.

It’s been two weeks since we arrived to Taiwan, two really intense weeks both inside Toro and outside where we’ve had to adapt (sometimes at top speed) to a lot of particular situations covering altogether 24 hours a day. From the day to day in Toro, trying to get as much as we can about a technology that is practically new to all of us (which is the real reason for us to be here), to really banal things such as taking out the trash, or trying to drink water with the food (not to mention the fact of ordering food…), including the serch of comfort in houses that have been built with a concept of confort that is slightly different to the one we have. Experiences more or less important, some of them really interesting, some others a bit difficult, which we are still adapting to, and that have made me get in these days all kind of feelings but one: boredom.

Toro and all the people forming it welcomed us in a way that couldn’t have been better. Their availability and patience is being huge both inside and outside the working environment, with no doubt making the good experiences (which are being a lot) even better, softening the impact of those not that good, and of course making our adaptation to both Toro and Taipei much easier. Local people is always very kind and polite, and my intention of increasing the three chinese words and the couple of chinese characters that (not without problems) I’ve learned so far can’t do anything but grow. And the city, full of contrasts, surprises and peculiarities, seems to offer much more than I thought at first sight. There hasn’t been a day in which I haven’t seen something that left me open-mouthed, and I feel I haven’t seen anything yet.

It’s been fourteen days, the first fourteen days, and I only can define them as really positive despite they used to be the most difficult ones. There are a lot more days ahead, a time during which I hope I’ll keep getting surprised, learning, immersing myself in the Taiwanese culture, and above all, enjoying Taipei and Toro.

Cheers!

Taipei is a city of contrasts. In the image, a vegetable garden next to Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world

Hello everyone,

Here’s the first look of Toro’s Barcelona team who are currently having training courses in Taipei. They were asked to introduce themselves during the Friday meeting of last week, which is a Toro tradition, but other people working in Toro also introduced themselves on that day so that we get to know each other more efficiently. And how time flies, it’s Friday again!

Today is the day, the Barcelona team arrived in Taipei office after a long travel. Our corridor was like a hotel lobby this morning, luggages of all sizes lined up next to each other.

All 10 people arrived safe and sound, welcomed in the early morning by CTO Gregory, the R&D leader José, who will conduct training courses for the team, and our lovely secretary Kelly. They will be staying in 4 different flats in Taipei city and enjoy the life of being in the center of the energetic Taipei!

They were led to their flats (decided by throwing coins) after a quick meetup in the office. Have a good day/night rest, people, tomorrow is another journey.

Hi! Let me introduce myself… I am Miquel, working at the Barcelona Mobile World Capital.

We are a foundation stablished recently, created as a spin-of from the Mobile World Congress, but with the aim of boosting the mobile industry during the whole year.

The first company to officially join full-time our Hub is Toro. Created by a French living in Asia for tover 7 years, he wanted to recruit 10 engineers to open an office in Europe for his growing clients portfolio. This just happened a few weeks ago… and now Toro is commited to open an office with us. Toro works within the secure element of NFC, making mobile payments and other great apps possible. Some of these features are already in the market, some others are coming in the next months, so these fresh recruited engineers will be programming applications that will allow as to forget about old cards, such as the bank ones, transport tickets, coupons, etc.

First we found funny the name, since Toro means Bull in Spanish! When we found out that it also means Tuna in Japanese (the founders met there, and they’re passionate about sushi)… anyway, who cares! Also, looking closer, even the logo makes better sense…

I’ve met most of the guys. It’s holiday time in Spain, and several of joined with very few reaction time (something like accepting the job and travelling in less than 2 weeks!), but I really believe it is indeed an amazing group.

Some of them seem a bit afraid and might lack of international experience… like Noel explained in the last post. But if they lack something, it is covered with plenty of enthusiasm and optimism! I tried to explain them that I moved to Germany when I was 22, and spent 3 years there; afterwards also lived in Madrid for a couple of years… once you open the travelling box it’s impossible to close it again. Now I consider myself a traveller, and if I was younger (or didn’t have the cool job I do in the MWC, hehe) I would be totaly be joining them!

So I’ll be really happy to be following this blog, encouraging them to see what do they do, how do they live, eat, and the music they hear, but I also hope they’re going to post information on what they learn. After all, we’re talking a top-company in the world as for mobile payments!

Have a nice travel, enjoy… and bring us awesome mobile solutions!

MWCapital: Communication, Strategy and Hub support the Toro team!

My name is Noel De Martín Fernández, I am 22 years old, and I’m going to Taiwan for several months. If someone told me this one month ago, simply I wouldn’t have believed it. However, here I am, 3 days before leaving, and I still haven’t started packing!

Before going on, let me talk a bit about me. I have always lived in Mataró (close from Barcelona), and I’ve never been away from home more than one week, except for holidays. The only time I’ve left my country was to be 3 weeks in London. As for my work experience, I graduated in informatics in the UAB one year ago, and since then I’ve been exploring the enterpreneurship world with some colleagues. For personal reasons and working perspective, I had thought to keep on studying and widen my knowledge in the university. But as normally things aren’t just black or white, I recently found a chance that totally broke my plans. TORO was offering me the chance to travel for maybe 5 months to Taiwan, with the big extra of coming back afterwards to Barcelona and work here.

from Mataró (Spain) to Taipei (Taiwan) ther are 10,329 kilometers

Reading this might cause different reactions: “That’s a great chance, he did well in accepting it“, “Taiwan is toooo far, and he totally lacks experience, I wouldn’t do it“, “He’d better thik about it, depending on the conditions“, etc. The first think that came to my head was a big joy and I was anxious about doing it, but soon I started to be doubtful. It was a decision that would affect me a lot in the future, It could either end very well, or terribly wrong. It was a quick decision I had to take relatively fast. And finally I chose not to miss this chance, and give the best of myself.

After thinking a lot about that my conclusion is that it is necessary to seize the opportunity, to put all doubts aside and know how to take the best of any situation. I hope to keep on explaining my experience in Taiwan together with my colleagues, with all the surprises that we will find and the adventures we will live. The final idea I want to transmit is that, do not regret the things you have done, but those you didn’t.

¡Hooola!

Excuse me for starting with wrong Spanish, but we are thrilled to announce the coming of our new development team from Barcelona! The ten fresh young people will help on the European project delivery and product development, which would relieve the load of Taipei center enormously!

It’s again been a while since last post, during all this time Toro has been occupied with projects and answering requests from all over the world, and we are happy to announce this cooperation with Mobile World Capital to set up a new R&D and operation center in Barcelona, the city of sunshine, art and innovation!

The Barcelona team will be located in the Mobile World Hub. It is the center of Mobile World Capital, and a place for mobile related companies to connect with each other and make their ideas come true. Some big names in the sector are already set in Barcelona such as NXP, G&D, etc. Toro is the first company to join officially the MWHub program.

The local press covered Toro’s arrival to MWHub program (Catalan with English subtitle)

More details about MWHub program are on the MWHub website.

Behind the scene:

Group Picture

Laurent being Interviewed

Journalist and the team

Many thanks to TV3 Televisió de Catalunya, and thank all the MWCapital people for their kind help!

The Barcelona team will arrive Taipei next week for a short stay, and hopefully get to know this energetic island Toro has been established. They will be writing in this blog soon to share what they see and their experiences in Toro.  So stay tuned!

Laurent shares latest status on NFC market of 2012 and the coming change of industries.

One of our colleague sent me this link the other day and told me he wanted to buying this phone, after all the NFC phones in the office that had failed to tempt him.

Sony Ericsson Smart Tag

It’s a nice commercial I have to say, and good work for Sony Ericsson. I think it is a product that corresponds to a “real” need, the convenience, plus the need of playing cool (to poke the screen for a half minute or to tap on a tag?). You don’t have to find someone with another NFC phone to try the NFC experience, NFC in solo is just as magical as in dual. I understand that this kind of use case is probably too simple to look at for technical people, but sometimes that’s all it takes.

Being an ordinary, lazy end-user, if I have to spend more than 5 minutes to set up my credit card in the phone, or go to the bank to do something, just for paying with mobile phone, I would be happy to use a plastic card. The NFC technology can not be a selling point; it is the service or product of NFC that will win customers.

It is no longer a picture of future life. Taiwanese users can call taxi and collect loyalty points with Nokia’s new NFC phones since Mid-September!

It has been a (long) while since last article. Easycard continues to gain popularity after the card issuance volume surpassed number of habitants in February, now about 27 million of cards are in circulation. Although it is still not a surprising ratio compared to Octopus card in Hong Kong (7 million residents, 24 million cards issued!), Easy card and Taiwanese operators are already planning on the next step toward NFC.

Nonetheless, it can never be bad to start with something less complicated. Along with the NFC device launch, Nokia Taiwan cooperated with the biggest taxi company on the island, Taiwan Taxi, to launch NFC call taxi services and a series of promotional campaign, including NFC loyalty point collecting by tags deployed inside taxis circulating in Taipei.  (See news here)

Toro developed the mobile wallet app, but didn’t participate much in the marketing campaign. And here’s what came as a surprise when we took taxi one day:

The poster says you need to collect three colors to win the price and the three models supported, etc. But the only thing we were concerned about was where they put the tag!

Here it is, printed with some descriptions, sticking in the back of the poster. Oh, no, I will never tell you what color this tag is!

It feels quite unreal to see the poster in a random taxi you picked up on the street. NFC is right here! Although some might say, it’s still easier to find a taxi on the street than a call taxi tag, or the loyalty thing can’t really compete with other factors that affect one’s phone purchasing decision…etc.

However, it’s just a start, and the situation is that this is a handset maker launching their own NFC mobile wallet for phones which don’t support secure element. It will surely not be the only mobile wallet on the island. And NFC will always need to come out with services, so just take a seat, and get ready for the wallet war!