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!

Consultants to Start Your Outsourcing Project off Right

 
By Sibers Outsourcing consultant
Vlad Labetsky

With more than 13 years in business, Sibers has so much to offer you and your specific project. From the moment our prospective customers first contact us, they are surrounded with help and expertise from our team of outsourcing consultants. Even though there are many different instruments to advise and inspire our customers, our team of outsourcing consultants may face some difficulty in finding the one that is best – this is because the variety of instruments available is just too extensive.

In an effort to overcome this difficulty, our outsourcing consultants recently organized an internal seminar to review the instruments and tools they have available. They also classified the cases for when choose the most effective tools for both the company and the customer.

The first set of tools used by our consultants is intended to understand the customer’s needs correctly. These tools include a type of wizard that is equipped with questions on all aspects of the project, starting with the business’s purpose for the developed application, what the customer’s design preferences are, and how the app should be unique.

The initial sketching (or wireframing) that is done by the consultant for the future application together with the input of the customer can also make the whole workflow much clearer for both parties.

When the background for the idea is well communicated, it then becomes possible for our consultants to advise on a technical solution for the project and to assure the customer of our capability to execute all aspects of the work. At this stage the technical expertise of our consultants as well as the thorough support of the team leaders take on the leading role. A comprehensive analysis of the requirements and the project’s prospects results in finding just the right technical solution for a project. The consultant’s tools for this step include a stack of questionnaires for each type of development technology, along with the extensive Sibers’ portfolio that contains more than 900 completed projects.

When aims (customer needs) and means (technical solutions) are clear, it is much easier to define the form. Once defined, the consultant can make suggestions on the work arrangement. For example, should this outsourcing cooperation be organized as a Custom Remote Team, a fixed contract per project, or should it be based on interactive development? The pros and cons of each type of Customer-Provider cooperation for the IT project needs to be carefully explained and the right method should be suggested.

The final step before actual development is the legal side. Sibers’ consultants will guide customers through all the aspects of making a formal contract for outsourcing their design as well as outlining how the development process works. At this stage, the legal documents and all 13 years of our outsourcing experience work together to completely protect the interests of both sides.

We do hope this seminar and developed internal source classifying the variety of tools available will help our prospective customers get the information they are interested in from Sibers’ outsourcing consultants rapidly. This will help us to achieve our number one goal, which is to complete projects for our customers successfully.

Client’s Story: Launching a Project with Outsourcing

This article is an authentic story of our amazing customer Madhu Amara, who shares his successful outsourcing experience in developing his site www.unshaft.com.
We are grateful to Madhu for the pleasant words and believe that his inspiring first-hand information will help those who are still in doubt about outsourcing.

It all started with a water pump in the middle of a village in India. This water pump with its chipped blue paint and rusted exterior was the bane of my existence. It was my responsibility in our miniature townhouse situated among roaming cows and pigs to make sure our water reservoir was sufficient for our daily activities. My two roommates had other responsibilities to facilitate our living conditions. All I had to do was flip a switch to fill a water tank that was located 10 feet below our townhouse. Once that was full, I had to flip a second switch to move the water from the bottom reservoir through a long cylindrical filter, and then ultimately to an overhead concrete tank located on the roof of the house. Seems simple enough, right? Hardly.

We were not required to pay a water bill at this point, so we didn’t have the greatest expectations for the quality of the water being pumped into the house. Our thoughts were correct. The filtration unit was not particularly effective; the water would change from light brown to a semi-clear substance. The water that entered the house was the most corrosive agent I have ever seen in my life. It rusted everything it came in contact with. Cutlery, bathroom faucets, and of course the actual water pump itself. That stuff should be used for chemical warfare. The only thing that survived the wrath of the village water was my titanium folding bicycle that I used to transport myself between the hospital and my house. The whole contraption of pumping water was not a closed system as it should have been. The corrosive nature of the water caused the cheap metal to let air in, causing multiple air leaks. We pleaded with our landlady to fix the issue; the only responsibility she felt she was obliged to do was collect rent from us every month and nothing else. My friends loved to use the term “shafted” to describe this particular situation, among other things that would constantly not work for me. We didn’t know the language and there is no such thing as a Yellow Book in India. Only after walking down the dusty road next to our house, I was able to find a “plumber” who proceeded to install an air valve that was faulty among other things. The net result was that water had to be poured into this open valve whenever there was an air leak, which was every day. I was forced to spend wasted time every day after school, placing water from a bucket and a mug into the valve like a village idiot to provide water pressure to run the motor. During my moments of water pouring reflection, I thought to myself there had to be a better way to find a solution for my problem. Eureka, the idea for Unshaft was born.

Move to December of 2010 and I was jaded. I had wasted 6 months and $3,000 dollars on a middle tier Indian programming team. I initially thought I was getting a cut rate bargain, but after the months rolled by, I realized I was getting a programming team that just wasn’t cutting it. I had wasted so much time, doing rotations in the hospital all day, trying to read in the evening, staying up until 3:00 AM testing shoddy code/making sure we were on task, and heading to the hospital the next morning bleary eyed. Rinse and repeat for half a year. It was especially exhausting because I promised myself by taking on this extra night shift, I would attend all my required classes, which I did successfully. Home for Christmas break, I slumped back in my chair watching snowflakes cascade softly down through the window. I had already fired the team, although I paid them the lump sum that we had agreed up at the beginning of the project. What to do now? I put up an auction on eLance to see if any high tier programming teams could help me finish my site. I was hopeful at least some of the code could be salvaged. I interviewed about a dozen teams and they all reviewed my code. The funniest/saddest message was from a team based in Ukraine. Their message was something along the lines of, “On a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the best rating, I give your code a 5. And that’s just out of sympathy. Wonderful, so I’ll have to start from scratch. So I decided if I was going to launch this startup correctly, I am going to go for an elite quality team to support me.

After browsing all the profiles, a team from Russia caught my eye. Their handles were HireRussians/Sibers, a word play on their location from Siberia. My exposure to Russia was limited. I only knew about Kasparov and Kaspersky; the former a famous chess master and the latter an award winning anti-virus program. I figured with Sibers high rating and Russia’s ability to churn out men of great chess ability/anti-virus programming, this was probably my best bet. On top of that, they stated upfront that I own all intellectual property rights. I took the plunge and accepted them as my provider. The first message I received from them was on my birthday, December 21st. It was a highly organized e-mail asking the right critical questions about the site and it included a wonderful birthday message to boot. I was excited; this had the potential to be great relationship. Their estimate came to me on Christmas Day, again detailing exactly line by line what each milestone consisted of and a reasonable timeframe to it. After securing a generous loan from a third party, I was ecstatic heading into the new year.

Fast forward to September 2011, it is close to show time. After our 9 month relationship, the baby is close being born. It’s exciting and scary at the same time; will the site be a success or will it be a flop? Only time will tell. What I can say for certain at this point is that there are some core values that stood out during the work we have done so far, especially in comparison to the previous programming team I worked with. They are as follows: integrity, critical thinking skills, and meticulousness organization.
Integrity refers to not only giving a realistic estimation to the client at the beginning of the project. It also refers to providing a solution to a particular problem a client has or even better providing a unsolicited improvement on a particular aspect of the site to enhance the project as a whole. It also means that the particular work will done perfectly the first time around, so it does not have to be worked on again in the future. Critical thinking refers to being able to think 2 or 3 steps ahead of what is being worked on currently, to avoid future problems. Organization refers to having everything lined up perfectly on both the frontend and backend, so everybody knows what their job entails and that all the pieces of the puzzle fit correctly to create an elegant end product.

It’s been a great ride so far; I hope the journey takes me to bigger and better places while providing people a way to improve their lives.

Madhu Amara, September 2011

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.

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?

BBC in Our Silicon Whatsoever

BBC has recently visited Akademgorodok filming a short story about high tech industry here. Among other interesting sights, you can see a tall building where our office is located (together with Intel).

For some reason they call Akademgorodok a Silicon Forest instead of Silicon Taiga, which may ruin our efforts of promoting this name in the Internet. :)

Watch the BBC story

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.

MOCKBA to Vladivostok

If you always wanted to visit Russia and make it aaaall the way from Moscow to Vladivostok by train, now you can just stay at home.

With this new Google’s virtual journey you turn Leo Tolstoy on and start gazing out of your window for ten days or as long as your battery lasts. When Tolstoy is too much, you can listen to rumble of wheels again and click to the new town.

Don’t miss those great 30+ minute videos of endless steppes, hills, plains, forests and rivers that make up Russia.

When you click as far as to Novosibirsk, please don’t press on the small TV set. Otherwise, you’ll see a Russian blond-haired Playboy-featured radio-DJ walking on abandoned Novosibirsk streets around horses and locals.

Watch on.

Insight

In December, Luca, one of our clients, visited us. He described his experience and thoughts about the only right approach in outsourcing – communication. Read it!

After a few months working with Sibers I decided it was time to go and meet them.
I decided to do it in December so, in case I survived, I could show off with my friends who listen to this kind of stuff in Italian TV “tomorrow a wave of polar cold weather will hit the our country. In some regions the thermometer will reach -5 C”.
Here I am, alive. I survived the -30 C, by sheer luck, and I am glad to tell the tale:

Darya, her husband and Victor came to the airport to collect me at 5 am (bless them) and took me to the apartment they had rented for me.
As my feet were bleeding due to the “buy new shoes before leaving so they’ll make you bleed” syndrome, they helped me to find a shop were I could buy some nice and warm Siberian ones.

Everyday I woke up late (jet leg), dressed up for the short but potentially deadly walk to the office, entered the building, got into to the office, heard a few “priviet”, shook a few hands, took off my seven sweaters and started working.
Coming from Italy the atmosphere seemed rather distant at first.
But wasting my years on the road instead of building a career, I have at least learnt to judge people by what stays behind the most visible approach.
These guys are very warm, kind and welcoming.
I am sure Darya works for Sibers but also for KGB.
She always checked on me, sending me sms and asking me what I was doing (imagine my feeling of violated privacy when I got the “what are you doing?” sms while I was in the toilet).
I am also quite sure that she could see in my window from her apartment, probably with the help of some infrared telescope.
In the apartment the TV sometimes turned on by itself (this is not a joke, it’s true) and it was probably hiding a camera inside.
So I simply unplugged it.
Officially she was taking care of me, but in reality she made sure I wasn’t going around to steal military secrets in Akademgorodok.
You may think I am paranoid, but all my doubts vanished when one night, going back home half drunk from the Irish pub at 2 am, I saw Darya and Irina sitting by the window of a restaurant scanning passers by. They pretended not to see me so they could follow me, so I went in and stayed with them a bit. I could see in their eyes they were ashamed I caught them. Irina then planted a bug on my jacket, which I destroyed at home.

Ok, all above is a joke (the TV thing is still true): Darya simply took care of me and that was very nice of her.

It was very good to meet Andrey and Irina and to talk face to face about my dream project (the one which will make me rich and bla bla bla…). I really wanted to meet the ones who are making my idea a reality, because only with a closer relationship we could give it the extra touch it needed.
It was a very good idea to come and I am sure our communication will improve by 100% now that we met.

I also went to the headquarters on a sunny day at -30 C when my leather jacket got so hard that it broke simply by placing my hat in a pocket. THAT’s polar weather for you bunch of Italian TV journalist losers!
I was happy to meet the 140 people working there, with the Designer Room, Php Room, Asp room, iPhone room and so on.
They can do everything, no match for a freelancer.

In the evening I met the founders at dinner and I was happy to see we are like minded in many aspects.
If I had chosen a Chinese or Indian company instead, there would have been a kind of cultural wall between us, but with them it’s like talking to anyone in Europe.
All you do in an outsourcing project is TALKING, so you better make sure that thing works, right?

What I bring home from this month in Siberia? Here’s a list:
- new Siberian shoes
- a broken leather jacket
- a knowledge that my project is being developed by professionals
- a feeling of gratitude for the help, especially for Darya who really worked hard to make this time successful.

It was surely worth investing the time to go there.
I don’t think other clients will need to stay a month as I did, but at least one week will be great (let me suggest spring).
Chat, forums and phones can do a lot…but people are still at the center, even in an IT project, and the extra value of meeting each other face to face cannot be digitalized. Yet.

Thank you all at Sibers!