Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

Note: this is not going to be an advertisment or anything else, this is purely a comment. It represents my own thoughts, as stated in Article 19 in Universal Declaration of Human rights.

Location: POLITEHNICA University - Bucharest > AN010
Time: 13:00 - ~16:00 GMT+2
Main Topic: Tornado Sistems

The offensive of the virtual world, your place and your profession’s place in this world… everything comming from professionals:
* TORNADO - Success in IT - Adrian Mantoiu - Marketing and Cmmunication Manager
* Communication Technologies - Catalina Lehanceanu
* The digital man - mobile, omnipresent, performant - Denis Brandmayer
– source: LSAC

I was informed about this meeting by a colleague of mine and I’ve told myself “Let’s see how the Romanian IT Industry shows itself in 2005. I could even check how a presentation is carried out by Romanians. Let’s see how they handle it, I’ve seen how foreigners do it… let’s make a comparison.” I hava attended a TECHTEAM presentation last year and all I can say is: I was left speachless by the delivery of the presentation. I could see the professionalism of the Belgian delivering the presentation. The content was also interesting. I was introduced to a true application of outsourcing.

Now, to answer some of my first questions.
Q: How did they do the presentation compared to what I’ve seen before?
A: They passed. I enjoyed it, even if it had a touch of “balcanism” (structure, delivery - especially wording).

Q: Did they manage to keep the attention of the listeners active?
A: Well… not quite. Some of the students left after some time. Most likely, they had classes. Even so, not all that left had classes. I bet that if the presentation was oriented more towards what they have to offer us, the presence would have been at least kept constant. Computer Science students are very pragmatic and using allusions (”abureli”) doesn’t make it. If we were given more info on what we should expect from the presentation, it would have been much better.

Now.. about the content:
Idea No. 1: They spoke my words when they were asked details - I really liked that :), especially the network related details. A good proof that there are some real professionals there.

TORNADO - Success in IT
This was an interesting introduction in what Tornado Sistems offers as IT solutions on the Romanian market. (it’s “Sistems” not with “y”, because the Chamber of Commerce didn’t allow using “y” when the company was registered - interesting, isn’t it? no comment). It is a BIG Romanian company - many numberes followed. As far as I know, it’s been on the covers of IT Magazines in Romania for a long time. Concepts, ideas, organisation… all to prove that Tornado Sistems is a real Solutions Provider on the Romanian Market.

I still have in my mind the question I’ve asked: “How much does an employee shown in the organisational flow-chart earn, approximately?” My curiosity wasn’t fulfilled. This seems to be a very well guarded answer. Self-evaluation is very hard to do nowadays, especially in an always changing environment. Figures count. I still have to find the right answer to the question: “What’s my value on the human resources market, in €/$?”

Communication Technologies
Ok, this was what I’ve enjoyed most. Not only the presentation was carried out by a really fine lady, Catalina, but also the really fine lady proved to be a very well informed lady. And, as you all know, when it comes to communication (speaking in this particular case), women do best. All I can say is: Congratulations!

The topics included:

• The future is IP - Triple Play - a solution to deliver Voice (Telephony), Video (TV) and Data (Internet) over IP - advantages over traditional means
• a VPN hardware solution implementing IPsec and it’s usage

The questions section here was interesting. Everyone was thinking of usages for both solutions, making assumptions and trying to figure in deep the inner workings of these technologies. Interest was definitely high on these topics.

The digital man
This last section was passed through in a bit of a hurry most likely because, after receving the top of the cake with the networking presentation, nobody was expecting anything else (and the time allocated for the presentation seemed to have passed) - now that I’m thinking, the really technical questions of the previous section might have borred some of them… but not me.

We’ve been introduced to the latest offerings when it comes to digital gadgets from Canon, BenQ and Philips. The HP Promoter Training I had made his appearance. I kept comparing in my head HP and Canon and I couldn’t help myself asking some question about Canon, having HP as a refference. I am affraid I was assumed to be a HP advocate because of the number of questions I’ve asked which involved HP. Well, the Canon affiliation of the speaker was obvious given the answers and I could sense a little anger. Looking over the situation with a critical eye, I can say the marketing strategies everyone teaches work pretty well

Overall, it was a nice informative presentation about some IT solutions implemented by Tornado. Indeed, the networking soltions are not yet very addopted, but they are quickly gaining the targeted market share. Tornado seems like a nice and adventurous company when it comes to IT solutions. The huge portofolio & contacts (also important) can easily solve any IT problems you (most likely your company) might encounter.

I have arranged my stuff around here a bit and found my notes on the meeting with Cristian Tudor Popescu we had back in November 2004. I was also reminded of this meeting by a comment in my my above weblog entry (thanks simona).

I am going to put down some of the facts I’ve noted, more or less connected one with eachother, as I have written them at the meeting. I admit I don’t remember much of the talks and I will, most likely, not make extra comments on the notes I have.

CTP graduated Computer Science and Automatic Control Faculty - POLITEHNICA University Bucharest in 1981 and he was sent by the communists in the famous “Mischie’s Empire” (as he called it), in Tg. Jiu.

On some comments on the educational system in Romania, he remembered the days when he was teaching young students Mathematics. Each one of us knows the expression: “Let f(x) be …”. One of the students then asked him: “Why does f(x) have to be?”. Pretty silly question at first sight, but this really made CTP think about it. Why would a function have to be? The response to this question was given by what CTP named “functional dependencies” - connections between things in nature and mathematical objects. If functions were taught right in the first place, with this functional dependencies taken into account, confusion could have been easily avoided. Students in other countries (USA for example) learn Mathematics by manipulating objects.

CTP remembered his Mathematics teacher in University, Octavian Stanasila, my teacher also, who once said:

Think Mathematics as a science of the nature.

On discussing about career, CTP noted:

You can’t be an editor for a newspaper at 18, but you can be an editor at 23

An engineer can be a good politician.

(ro) Scoala Nationala de Studii Politice si Administrative (SNSPA) = “vrăjeala”
(en) National School of Political Studies and Public Administration = bulls*** (I admit, this might not be the best en translation)

CTP worked for 8 years before becoming a newspaper editor.

The best teacher for 14 year old kids are the 18 year old teachers.

This comment revealed the acceptance of the fact that many teachers, nowadays, are not well connected with the youth philosophy and, therefore, a big gap in mentality between generation appears.

At this point in the conversation, one of the students said what I had called the quote of the day:

I can’t call reform the fact that I learn the same courses as my father had, but in PowerPoint.

As you probably noticed, at first sight, there’s a big difference between Automatic Control and Journalism. Asked about this, CTP said that what helped him in Journalism from what he learned were the laws of thinking.

He also noted that, during various appearances on TV talkshows, he was confronted with people which were not able to address issues properly. Many of the interlocutors used petitio principae in their speaches. Petitio principae means anticipating the principle - prooving what needs to be proven using what you need to proove.

I’m not really sure about the meaning of my following note. I believe it has something to do with somebody who might have argued the fact that we are taught too much electronics, something which should be taught (actually, it already is) in the Electronics Faculty. CTP noted that any electronic circuit can be simulated pneumatically or hydraulically. That can make a person who knows electronics a pretty good engineer.

Comming back on the discussion on the teaching system in Romania, CTP said:

It is essential that the teacher should not sugest the student he (the teacher) knows.

This is one thing I personally remember Octavian Stanasila doing. He seemed to be always discovering Mathematics with us.

CTP noted that there are 2 types of intelligence:

• analytical intelligence - problem solvers (where a well formulated problem is given - life does not offer this type of problems)
• synthetical intelligence - where people create problems

Given this context, CTP said research means elaborating the problem right.

Talking about hobbies, CTP declared himself a passioned for Science Fiction. He wanted to add that the correct meaning for SF would be speculative fiction (= a fantastic hypothesis supported with mathematical rigour)

In the end of the meeting, he quoted one famous writer (no name given):

Anything you will do, you will regret.

I have “played” this weekend simulating an electronic circuit. We have individual homework for Linear Integrated Circuits and my work involves studying the transient regime for a circuit. As far as I’ve noticed (with the help of a colleague student of mine), the circuit is an AND gate (or something like that) - we haven’t learned this yet.

I for one am not very passioned for theory, but I am well aware that practice can be fun, even when you don’t do something you really enjoy. Not being well aquainted with this domain made me experience a lot: tweaking parameters up and down, making graphs, exploring tools. It didn’t produce an addiction though, just many screenshots :).

I used the screenshots to check with the teacher if I was on the right track. After 10 pages of screenshots, conclusion: I am not on the right track, but I have mastered the method .

Tiny adjustments (changes in some parameter ranges) and everything should be OK now.

It was really fun. For the first time in my life I liked playing with electric circuits. Well, yeah, I didn’t really know what I should have obtained but, as the time passed, I was feeling more confident since things I’ve remembered started to connect with eachother. Learn by doing can be really efective sometimes.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the electronic courses are going to be so much fun for the rest of the semester. But.. there’s still hope…

Today’s bonus compared to yesterday: ice. Extra care was needed.

Skipping the temperature effect, this is theoretically the first day of spring. It certainly doesn’t look like spring outside.

Between 1st and 8th of March the girls are celebrated.
Today boys offered martisoare to the girls.
Caring for what’s beautiful around us is important these days.

We also had our first Object Oriented Programming Lab (Java). It was really fun greping through the docs, without knowing much about the language. C++ helps.

It snowed a lot the day before. The atmosphere seen from the inside of a warm room was amaizing. I remembered I have no digital camera to immortalize what I’ve seen.

Other than this.. it was cold… it was freezing… I over estimated the slowness of everything in the morining (I also had some things planned for before school, but they went amaizingly fast). I arrived at school half an hour earlier (I usually do 12 mins minimum).
Conclusion after 6h of courses: hmm.. it didn’t change much. Outside it’s freezing though… it’s the only big difference. Oh.. and we have some more Electronics to study… but also some programming… but it’s still freezing…

I also had to do some shopping (mostly for 1st of March)… and it was freezing… had some taxes to pay… and it was freezing…

Oh.. almost forgot.. it was freezing…