GTUG in Bishkek: Made by Sibers Employees

By Sibers PHP Team Leader at Bishkek branch
Konstantin Zolotarev

Accompanied by Sibers Android Developer
Kuban Dzhakipov

On September 14th Konstantin Zolotarev and Kuban Dzhakipov received a notice that their initiative for the creation of the local Google Technology User Group (GTUG) in Bishkek was approved by Google.

By this time, the men had already held two local meetings on Google technologies and even started the development of their own open-source project.

We wanted to better understand what GTUG is, why we need it, and why our colleagues from the Sibers Bishkek branch are ready to fully devote their time to this project. Konstantin Zolotarev, Sibers PHP Team Leader and founder of Bishkek GTUG, took the time to answer a few of our questions.

— What is GTUG? How did you learn about it?

Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs) are communities for people using, and those interested in Google’s technology.

Actually, I learned about this program from the Internet. Google tweeted about an event held in the company office together with a GTUG. After some searching I discovered that there was such a program. So, the next step was to complete an application for the local GTUG establishment.

— Why did you decide to proceed with applying?

Before starting my work with the GTUG program, I was the coordinator of a similar Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) program. The program was called OSUM, and pursued similar goals, but was aimed at students. I was supposed to supervise the program at Bishkek universities.

Unfortunately, this program is closing, but it helped me to learn the general working principle of such programs. Therefore, as soon as I heard about GTUG, I started working with no questions. Kuban almost immediately joined me (together, we are the founders of this group), and our work started to shift into high gear.

— What personal goals did you pursue?

My main motivation with starting a local GTUG is to continue my self-development and to gain access to new technologies. Besides that, I often use Google technologies in my work, and I use it to share my knowledge with my team. It is much easier to do live communications in our group, rather than simply reading forums. I am thankful for the Google support that made this possible. Also, I like how the title of ’Bishkek GTUG founder’ sounds :)

— What steps have you taken to found the Bishkek GTUG?

To register your GTUG, you have to meet certain conditions. At the very least, you need to create the group’s site, forum, twitter, etc. You also need to conduct organizational work: arrange meetings, search for sponsors and advertise your events. I want to give a special thanks to everyone who helped us. We are very lucky to have our sponsor—Sibers supported us even in the beginning, when nobody knew who we were.

— Who are the members of your group? How did you find them?

Our group unites people who are interested in new technologies. Some of them do not deal with the actual development, but they do follow the progress of the technology.

There are people who have joined just because of the Google brand. Initially our colleagues and friends comprised the members of the group. Then, when we started to grow and information began to disseminate, people started to join us spontaneously.

— Tell us about your meetings?

So far, we have only had two meetings. Both were in the form of conferences. The first was regarding the Google Web Toolkit, and the second was about Android.

Despite the experience of organizing such events, we were faced with some organizational obstacles. The most difficult thing was to find a location for the meetings. The first meeting took place in a café, while we were granted a conference room at The National IT Centre for the second meeting.

At our first meeting, there were only about 15 people in attendance. However, our second meeting hosted more than 80 people!

Our team prepared all of the speeches and made various presentations.

Our second meeting also hosted Sibers’ top management who made a speech.

There are five event formats within GTUG but both of our meetings were in a Tech Talk format. We have a lot of room to grow and a lot of things to do—we have great plans and much work ahead!

— You have already started your open–source projects. What are they?

Recently, our group has decided to start three open source projects. We have selected several directions to pursue simultaneously so that everyone has found something of interest.

One project is well underway. It is a game for browsers and Android devices made with PlayN and jBox2D.

— What are your plans?

We have great plans to create a good and active community. We also hope to present our projects at the next Google Developers Days.

Recently, Google agreed with the organizers of StartupWeekends that their events would be held with the participation of local GTUGs.

We do hope that Bishkek GTUG will be a successful group with interesting projects and with a great professional community!

The Sibers-Maya Birthday

This year is our 13th on the IT market, and we discovered that Maya considered this number a lucky one in contrast to the rest of the cultures, which call it “the devil dozen”. We have positive thinking and choose a Mayan meaning of number 13.

Our birthday party passed in a Mayan style too. We’ve made a trailer for our collegues to be prepared. And of course, we share it with you, enjoy!

Hurrah! Happy Birthday, Sibers!

Total Lunar Eclipse, the Longest in 11 Years, Siberia

Siberia was the region where we could fully enjoy the total lunar eclipse through all its duration of 1hr40min in its total phase and of about 6 hours altogether, which makes it real long.

Photo by passer_by

The eclipse is unique due to its completeness and duration as well as the type. In fact, lunar eclipses are quite an ordinary thing, you can even see the summary of them on the NASA site, but this one was the first this year and uncommon. The Moon passed through the center of the Earth shadow, which happens rarely (the next such an event will take place in 141 years) and the Moon totally disappeared in the shadow. The full beauty of the event in Russia could be seen only in southern regions, and Novosibirsk, which is in the south of Western Siberia, belongs to the area.

The sky in Novosibirsk was excellent — clear and starry. The event took place on 16 June, with its total phase at 2:22 a.m.–4:03 a.m. local time. This year being full of different natural events and disasters, we can witness everything going its usual way, luckily, without any catastrophes.

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.

Microsoft Certified Partner

Sibers has updated its status to a Microsoft certified partner, which is supported by a nice glass tablet from Microsoft saying “for your commitment to creating and delivering innovative customer solutions and services based on Microsoft technologies, we proudly recognize your dedication to excellence” and signed by Steven A.Ballmer and Allison L.Watson.

Such a pleasant present arrived on the day of Key-Soft birthday (editor note: long time ago Sibers was named Key-Soft) and marks the efforts of a whole Sibers team of .NET developers on creating a wide range of high-quality applications. We congratulate our .NET department and its team leaders Alexey Malinovsky and Roman Sitnikov with the achievement. The certificate resulted from our Microsoft team obtaining 23 certificates of 8 types on different technologies:

• PRO: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5;
• PRO: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Communication Foundation Application Development;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ADO.NET Application Development;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Forms Application Development;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 – Windows-based Client;
• TS: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation.

With the official message complete, let me disclose some confidential information. It turned out that the award package from Microsoft was a bit buggy :) Not that we expected it, but there was an awkward feeling in the air. There were two glass tablets in the package and one of them was through the looking glass, i.e. mirror-printed — yes, you should understand it literally. So, the congratulatory text looked like this:

tfosorciM

rentrap deifitreC

“evitavonni gnireviled dna gnitaerc ot tnemtimmoc ruoy roF
secivres dna snoitulos remotsuc
ezingocer ylduorp ew ,seigolonhcet tfosorciM no desab
.ecnellecxe ot noitacided ruoy”

Nevertheless, the fact of possessing such a rarity makes us happy. This tablet is unique among thousands analogous (we hope, Microsoft doesn’t produce this bug with every other tablet), and due to its uniqueness our company has its own spirit!

Hooray! HireRussians has been an Elance provider for over 9 years!

Find clients. Do your best. Get paid.

HireRussians registered on Elance.com in late Summer 2001. Our founder and CEO, Yuriy Bannov, was also our first sales person. Our first job came in September 2001, titled “Network Speed and Testing Application,” and was developed with Java. In that era of table-layout websites, the customized services of HireRussians were not very popular, and we employed just 7 enthusiasts, graduates from one of the top-rated Russian universities. Thus, we posed a classical startup team with strong academic backgrounds and intense aspirations. Back then, we had 3-4 projects in development simultaneously and were armed mostly with Java and PHP technologies. We may have been a fledgling team on Elance, but that team was comprised of industry veterans with vast knowledge and a drive to succeed.

HireRussians grew up at a very productive time in a rapidly developing, high-tech world. Our main competitors in those days came from India and domestic outsourcing providers. As years went by, the number of projects awarded to HireRussians through Elance steadily increased; challenges – and the technology used to approach them – become more sophisticated and enriched. Simultaneously, our team became more skilled and expansive. We employed agile-minded project managers and graceful customer care representatives in order to improve our customer relations.

Maintaining Relationships

The past 9 years have been marked by a flurry of inspiration. Today, HireRussians is a big company with a stable position in offshore outsourcing market. Our staff boasts more than 120 professionals, 50 projects permanently in simultaneous progress, and hundreds of grateful customers from all over the world. Our expertise extends to ASP.Net, iPhone and Android mobile technologies, and C++ for Unix, Mac and Windows.

HireRussians maintains its place in the upper echelons of the Elance rankings due to our tireless commitment to fostering long-term client relationships, delivering the highest quality work, and offering competitive bids. Our programmers are constantly expanding their repertoire of expertise, have received certifications from the world’s foremost software development agencies, and have been recognized by the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100. We believe that the main factor in our success is the strong foundation of trusting relationships we’ve developed with our clients. Our friendly service and industry-leading professionals are “melting the ice” in Siberia; the only question now is…when can we meet YOU?

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.

Surprise From Australia

Our client and representative at Australia Rob King sent us a huge bag full of polo shirts and other Australian goodies.