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.

Microsoft Developer Certification

Congrats to Dima Reshetov with his successful passing of TS: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation Exam! Dima scored 911 of 1000, while passing score is 700!

PHP 5 Zend Certification Completed

Vasiliy Sergeev, our PHP Team Leader has received a Zend Certification in PHP5. A group of our PHP developers has been preparing for the Certification since May and now more certificates will follow. So be prepared to get better PHP! :)

AIESEC Trainee Joined Us

Please welcome Alexander Schellenberg – an AIESEC trainee from Germany, who has just joined us and will guide us through German outsourcing markets.

Alex has already done a great job in helping us to buy a Kettler (German brand!) table tennis table and we look forward to trying some German brands of beer :)

Total Solar Eclipse 2008 in Novosibirsk

On August, 1st we were lucky to see the total solar eclipse. We were even more lucky to observe it on the tallest building in Akademgorodok, the building where our offices of Sibers are located.

Total solar eclipse 1 Aug 2008

The phenomenon was really spectacular as we could see various accompanying effects on the sun like Bailey’s beads (bead-like bursts of light that appear about 15 seconds before and after totality during a solar eclipse) and a striking “diamond ring” a few seconds before and after totality, especially when the first beam of sunlight appeared again after about 2 minutes of twilight. The sun’s corona, the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere, became visible with unaided eyes, as well as some protuberances beyond the edge of the moon. We could also watch 2 of the brightest planets, Venus and Mercury.

After the eclipse finished, we celebrated this occasion with one of our clients (hi Alex!), who had come to visit us and the eclipse as well.

Oh It’s 10 Years!

- Pioneers, be online!
With such mottos and drumming, with red ties and marching, Sibers celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

We thank everyone who worked with us during these years. We thank everyone who just contacted us, who paid us money and who visited us in Novosibirsk. We thank everyone who left positive and negative feedbacks on Elance. We thank everyone who has become good friends with Sibers. We thank everyone who worked in Key-Soft and in Sibers, and special thanks to those who still work.

It’s been 10 years of great fun. We love you. And we move on!

A special paper issue of Sibers newsletter

Sibers pioneers singing the anthem

Rally Tyva-2008

A group of Sibersers returned from a 7-day motor rally to Republic of Tyva, which is located at the Mongolia border. We experienced deserts and taiga, temperature drops to -2C/28F, mountain passes of 2200 meters above sea levels and virgin lakes almost in Mongolia. The 4500 km/2800 mile-journey revealed the land of shamans and yurts and made us challenge ourselves.

GPS track of the rally

Two of our cars in Gobi desert

It’s the end of the world

Yurts by mountains

Our crew

Sibers Trainees Graduate

Today we celebrated graduation of our first trainees. During last month they worked on real-life (internal though) software projects under constant supervision of their tutors, our senior developers. The group consisted of 4 students of Novosibirsk University. They improved their skills in PHP, C++ Unix, C# and Flash programming. Two of them received job offers from Sibers. This was a very good experience for trainees and us and we’re recruiting a new group of trainees for our summer software development camp.

Charity Night

Sibers charity activities got recognized by the Novosibirsk Charity Fund and city administration. For the constant help and attention of everyone in Sibers for a girl with cerebral spastic infantile paralysis, we were awarded a diploma and a charity medal.

In a photo, our customer care Regina talks about everyone’s involvement in the charity activities and the girl’s success in her recovery.

Bike To Work

This week, 12-16 of May is the Bike To Work Week in many U.S. cities. Although we are not in the U.S., bikes are very popular in Sibers and we fully support this initiative! Living and working in Academic Campus, it is a real pleasure to travel by bike to work and home, to the beach and inside the surrounding forests. Sibers encourages its employees to ride their bikes and built a special secure bicycle parking near the office. After-work bike trips became a good tradition among Sibersers, and if you’re new to it, we’ll show you around.

You can learn more about the BikeToWorkWeek at its official site: www.biketoworkweek.org