When I talk to my kids I like to describe myself as a maker. The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of CNC tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and traditional arts and crafts. The subculture stresses new and unique applications of technologies, and encourages invention and prototyping. There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them creatively.
Professionally I work for Samsung/Smartthings as a full stack IoT engineer with passion for, both, hardware and software. I work daily in a wide variety of web applications, mobile apps, hardware prototyping and device integrations. I have spearheaded the development of some really awesome companies like SmartThings by integrating very popular devices like Nest, Spark Core, Myo, BMW, Sonos, Pebble, Jawbone, etc. to it platform and by making custom prototypes illustrating possible ways of innovation for them as well as for Thalmic Labs and Aurora Lighting.
On the software side, my background is in both client side (iOS/Android/Web) as well as in back-end development (both stacks Node.js/Angular.js/Mongo and LAMP) including developing for the cloud (Heroku/Nitous.io/Google Cloud Platform/Amazon AWS) and measurement tools (Google Analytics/New Relic/SumoLogic).
At the device level, I right custom software/firmware/libraries for each specific prototype as well as the communication layer between platforms (APIs).
On the hardware side, rapid prototyping with Motor Drivers, Sensors, Microcontrollers (Atmel AVR), ARM Processors (TI OMAP), I2C, SPI, USB, UART and Ethernet.
On my free time I like to prototype autonomous robots using computer vision and sensors for applications like mail delivery or other tasks on a urban like environment.
Press
http://blog.smartthings.com/news/roundups/meet-smartthings-developer-juan-pablo-risso/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/ibeacon-basics.html
http://blog.smartthings.com/video/smartthings-powered-robot-makes-the-perfect-cocktail/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/20/tech/mobile/google-glass-world/
http://www.today.com/tech/will-google-glass-destroy-your-love-life-6C10132134
http://www.roadtovr.com/google-io-2013-first-photos-of-google-maps-with-oculus-rift-and-leap-motion/