New Year Party at Sibers aka Academy Awards

At the end of every year we review the achievements and put new goals, as well as joyfully celebrate the end of yet another year. This New Year party was not an exception, but it was exceptionally ceremonial.

In Sibers context, the awards were given to programmers, of course, which by itself is not quite a regular event. In order to receive the awards in an appropriate manner, the participants, nominees and the audience were to dress according to black tie standards. Everybody received an official invitation with this notice, to visit the ceremony of White Metal Rabbit Awards presentation.

Sibers New Year Awards logo

In advance, there was a big and tricky survey organized among the Sibersers, which helped to define the nominees in quite unexpected categories. The intrigue was that the categories themselves and the names of nominees were kept secret till the moment of their calling. And the company experts, who were asked to call the categories and the names on the stage, also made a contribution to the intrigue. Our elegant master and mistress of the ceremony helped them a bit by preparing funny speeches for them, which added joy and surprise.

Artem Grinevich, Sibers Sales Manager on the scene

Except for giving the awards, which was funny enough, we had live music played by our talented musicians (Artem Grinevich, Eugene Odnoval and Alexander Gorbunov), some vocal compositions performed by our beautiful Customer Care managers, and the culmination of the party was ABBA’s Happy New Year song rewritten for Sibers realia. Another bright culmination point was singing a cult Russian song about hares, which was done collectively under the inspiration of the moment.

Charming Customer Care managers

The hall, where the celebration took place, was decorated with pictures of Sibersers hugging Hollywood stars; Yuriy Bannov made cocktails masterfully, and there was one notably anti-glamour personage, though dressed in her best dress-code habits, Granny Serafima. Sibersers enjoyed themselves, had their photos taken with the Sibers logo in the background, danced a lot and happily saw off the difficult, but still dynamic and positive year of the Tiger and welcomed the year of the Rabbit (or Cat, if you like). Chinese calendar is very popular here, you see.

Evil Spirits Promenade in Sibers

October 31 is celebrated as Halloween not only in America and European countries, but also in Russia. In fact, it is not a long-established tradition here yet, and wild parties are mainly organized by young and freaky generation. However, Sibers being full of energetic and creative young talents, Halloween could not but pass unnoticed.

The turn to winter since ancient times has been considered time of mystery, when magic spirits (often evil ones) come to our world and visit people. Souls of the dead are also said to return to their sweet homes and demand for some food of sacrifice.

On this day Sibers office was visited by quite a number of evil and sometimes even sweet characters including but not limited to SuperHR-Woman, Dead Bride, Freacky Fairy, Alice-in-Sibersland, Fried-Eggs-Spirit, Horny PM, Caudiferous Team Leader, Bandaged Mummy-in-a-Stylish-Hat, Paws-and-Ears, Witch (in the search for Wikked Altar), Evil Worm and many other nice persons.

Sibers, of course, like all the other companies in the world had to work on that day, but during the lunchtime we managed to organize some contests aimed at jollying the evil spirits. The most evil-like room, for example, was chosen for its decorations. The offices were hung round with balloons with faces of dead poets, decorated with the Wikked Altar, a skeleton nailed in the middle of a half-drawn pentagram, and there was even a very gloomy iKingdom. By the way, this day was the 1 anniversary of this particular iTeam (making iPhone applications) in Sibers. It was on Halloween exactly 1 year before when they joined us. Of course, this iKingdom whipped up a furor.

All the contests were accompanied with bodeful laughter and wild applause. The characters in best costumes got their awards of sacrifice as well.

To sum it up, the celebration turned to be quite nice and civil and ended long before the midnight. Just to give evil spirits enough time to escape before another day.

Sibers Kyrgyz office: 1 Anniversary

While Russian power grows with Siberia, as our famous scientist Michael Lomonosov said, Sibers’ power grows with our Bishkek office, which was opened a year ago. It was quite a fruitful year, and Sibers’ top management represented by Yuriy Bannov and Alex Shpak visited this mountainous land to celebrate the event.

Sibers delegation arrived in Bishkek soon after the Kyrgyz revolution and was satisfied to notice that the riots did not affect our office business processes. The results of them were reviewed in a warm and comfortable, hospitable atmosphere. Bishkek guys were curious to learn first-hand Sibers’ favorite practices and traditions as well as the reasons for opening such a distant from Akademgorodok office and our expectations. Meeting included visiting some cafes and restaurants, and as a result the office museum got its first exhibit, a chair. (Sibers offices have a collection of artifacts that are very dear to our hearts due to different circumstances.)

Yuriy Bannov, Sibers CEO and Eugeniya Zelenovskaya, Head of Sibers Kyrgyz branch

Of course, going to a mountainous land cannot go without a trip to the mountains. Bishkek is a very picturesque place famous for its nature treasures. The destination chosen was a ski base Oruu-Sie, located 37km away from the city at the level of 2100m above the sea level. The city, especially with its night illumination, looks just awesome from there!

Having treated themselves to large amounts of pilav and barbeque, taken a lot of nice pictures and visited a sauna with beer, everybody was delighted to realize that Sibers traditions of celebration were imported to Bishkek quite safely and without malfunctions. Our executives were also glad to congratulate our Bishkek colleagues with good progress, which is supported by high grades on Elance, positive balance and numerous praises from our customers.

Sibers CEO Yuriy Bannov in Kyrgyz mountains

A good start is worth such efforts.

Sibers’ Birthday in the Real Forest

It was a real adventure to organize a corporate birthday party in the forest, but we proved our greenness, enjoyed ourselves and left the forest absolutely clean.

The adventure took place about 100km far away from our office in a wonderful pine forest on the sea shore (here we mean our Ob sea, but it is big enough to be proudly called a sea). Most party makers arrived there by cars, but there was also a group of cyclists, who successfully reached the destination, didn’t get lost on the way and got in time for the celebration.

The party was a conceptual one, resembling the adventures of Robin Hood, who liked to hide in the forest and surprise passers-by. Green accessories such as a big green Sibers flag, numerous small green flags and caps and special ribbons for different teams enlivened the event. The organizers of the event carefully thought over a lot of details. The program included pretty crazy contests, eating absolutely delicious pilaf, cooked by our systems administrator and his nice wife, drinking different beverages, smoking a hookah, dancing, singing and many more creative things. In fact, all these adventures took two days, including a crazy night in the forest. Some people managed to sleep a bit in their sleeping bags in tents, but some others were partying the whole night.

We managed to survive in a wild environment, and now we can call each other forest brothers, smile or crazily laugh remembering the event and prepare for the next incredible party in a year.

Key-Soft Old Birthday

When Sibers was small, it was called Key-Soft. Now, every October we gather all together: people who worked in Key-Soft and still work in Sibers, people who worked in Key-Soft, and people who are working in Sibers and never worked in Key-Soft. Namely: everyone.
Last Friday we did it again, and everyone said that was the warmest party ever.
We also introduced the Sibers Alumni program to keep in touch with those who changed their place of work but remain our good friends.

In the picture: Director of Development Alexey Shpack launches the Holy Cow in front of the cheering and a bit drunk co-workers holding an old banner of Key-Soft, which was hard to find this year. Click to view the full picture.

Sibers Takes on Wild West Adventures

Sibers’ 11th anniversary was held on July 4, which is quite a remarkable date for us with our clients being mainly from the USA; moreover, it happened to be Saturday; and what is even more important, it happened to be the first really hot summer day in Siberia!

We chose to have a thematic celebration devoted to the Wild West and all the American attributes resembling the idea of American and European fancy dress festivals devoted to different historical events. The festival included team building, which turns out a very funny thing for a big company like ours. In order to grab the main prize teams had to go through quite a number of challenges, both intellectual and requiring active participation. Every step in this quest brought the team additional units turned money during the auction, when the teams purchased certain items for making a raft. The raft had to be floatable in order to bring a team representative to the prize floating about 50m off the shore of our lovely artificial sea. Needless to say, the game appeared real funny and caused a lot of improvisation, creativity and team work, which is a feature of Sibers.

The party following the game continued the topic of American celebrations with whisky, tequila, boiled corn, grilled meat, etc. Music and merry contests enlivened the celebration, which continued for about 12 hours in a row.

Thanks to the wonderful weather and enthusiastic colleagues, we are now more than happy to resume our work for years and years to follow.

First submissions to Google Earth

Our first 3D buildings of Akademgorodok start to appear in Google Earth. Turn on the 3D Buildings layer and point to Novosibirsk Akademgorodok to see some of institutes (including ours), the House of Scientists and School 130, which many of Sibersers graduated from.

Much more to follow, including Novosibirsk State University, the Shopping Center, and all of the residential buildings.o

New Office in Downtown

We are pleased to announce opening of our first office in Novosibirsk city. Located in downtown, the new office is able to accommodate about 30 Sibersers who live in the city. Close connections to main bus, tram, trolley and subway lines make it possible to avoid traffic jams.

New Year 2008 Party

Yesterday we all celebrated New Year and although my head still feels sick, I must tell you about one of our best parties ever.
Since it’s too boring to just drink to the new year, our idea was to launch a spaceship to 2008 because in the space it was already 2008. Alexey Shpak, Director of Development, counted down to zero and we took off. Space rock-n-roll (kudos to Artem Grinevich and Evgeniy Odnoval), fireworks and final crashing of CRT monitors were the highlights of that night!

Happy Birthday, KG-United!

One year ago today, on October 29, Sibers founded its Bishkek sister – KG-United. Having started with just several PHP programmers in a small one-room office, which was formerly a library, now KG-United unites more than 30 PHP, .Net, Flash programmers, designers, project managers and salesmen in a large and modern office. We congratulate KG-United with a good start and wish them many clients, prompt payments and a lot of positive in their lives!