# Ricardo (@rmendes.net)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/rmendes.net
Headline: I'm a middleware engineer/devops, Dad, writer, and digital autonomy advocate based in Brussels. 

## About

​

I'm a middleware engineer/devops, Dad, writer, and digital autonomy advocate based in Brussels. I geek out on politics, technology, information systems, democracy, justice, coercive groups, and discernment.

Bidouille @skyfleet.blue
Anime @chardonsbleus.org ⚖️
🚧 DevOps
Matrix: rick:rmendes.net 🗨️

📌👀 🐧
🔗 https://rmendes.net

## Experience

- **DevOps Middleware at ABVV-FGTB** (2023 – present)
  At ABVV-FGTB, a union dedicated to advocating for workers' rights and engaging in collective bargaining, I have focused on enhancing our IT infrastructure and application delivery. Over the past year, my primary role has involved mastering various cutting-edge technologies, including Openshift, Kubernetes and integrate them into our production. A significant part of my responsibilities has been the strategic migration of Java applications from legacy environments—such as IBM Datapowers and PureApp systems, as well as Windows servers—to modern, containerized applications deployed on our VMware/HyperV Linux infrastructure and Openshift Kubernetes clusters. This transition is pivotal in optimizing our operational efficiencies and ensuring robust, scalable application performance.

## Skills

- Openshift

## Projects

- **Buzzworkers** — https://buzzworkers.com
  BuzzWorkers is a long running personal project dedicated to curating, preserving, and publishing independent electronic music and DJ mixes spanning Techno, Electro, Trip Hop, Acid, and related experimental genres from the 1990s to today. Over more than twenty years, I designed, operated, migrated, and maintained the full technical stack behind the platform, evolving alongside the web itself. This included working with multiple generations of hosting, audio tooling, content management systems, databases, automation scripts, streaming and download infrastructures, and more recently federated platforms such as the fediverse and Funkwhale. Beyond music production and curation, the project taught me long term system design, data preservation, platform migration, interoperability, and the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized architectures, while managing large media collections and making them reliably accessible on the web for community and educational use.

## Publications

- Resources  — chardonsbleus.leaflet.pub (https://chardonsbleus.leaflet.pub/3lvw3eqjgf22u)

## Volunteering

- Founder / Director at Association Chardons Bleus
- Founder/Director  at OKCinfo

## Languages

- Portuguese (professional_working)
- Français (native)
- Spanish (elementary)
- English (professional_working)

## Other profiles

- github: https://github.com/rmdes
- bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/rmendes.net