On 2. and 3. November we hosted our brand new team member from the Netherlands. Iliana Kappert, our new business developer, was speaking about the cultural aspects of cooperation with Dutch customers. It was a very inspiring meeting for both Iliana and the team, and we exchanged lots of experiences and stories from the projects we do at EARP for our customers in Poland and abroad. Everyone now is excited to start working in the Dutch projects!
Recently we had a visit from a local TV station as mentioned in our previous blog. All of a sudden we became so well known that the radio station, Radio Wroclaw called our boss. In August it was arranged that the radio crew came to our office and talked with Piotr Stawinski (the captain of our ship), Rafal, Joanna (the brave guardians of the interns) and to the students. They spoke about our company, the work, and daily activities of EARP and Empirica. Our trainees have regular tasks and are treated like every other employee. Of course, our brave guardians watch over their duties and explain any difficulties. EARP took in five students for the internship and offer an interesting alternatives of tasks and duties that they would not have the opportunity to participate in if they were in a large corporation. Small companies can offer jobs in projects with more responsibilities where you are not just a pawn in a narrow range of operations, but an important part of all processes. We want to find talented students, develop their skills and teach something new that will benefit both parties
More details on interview:
http://www.prw.pl/articles/view/44896/Pracodawcy-walcza-o-wroclawskich-studentow-informatyki
A few days ago we had a visit from Regional Television Wroclaw (19th Aug 2015), and while our employees were arriving to work for the day the TV crew were waiting in our boardroom. In the beginning people felt a little bit shy, but luckily for us the journalists were helpful and kind. They started to make a movie with our students. We do have the best developers at our company, however the main reason the TV crew were at our company was because we are an organised practice for students from the Wroclaw University of Technology under the Internship Programme ‘ITPopcorn.’ Other companies that participate in this programme from the IT industry include companies that are associates of ITCorner. Students who were interviewed were asked about their future – where they see themselves after they complete their studies; in big corporations or small companies? They were also asked what their general and overall thoughts of the internship was. I can proudly say that students only spoke positively about their projects and tasks at our workplace, and now everyone wants to continue their careers in our company.
You can check out the website of TV Wroclaw here:
http://regionalna.tvp.pl/21447806/31082015
From 13th – 15th May 2015, a team of our developers took part in the conference GEECON which this year, was held in Krakow. Among all different topics, the biggest impression for our team was Big Data, the scaling of application and new trends in Java developers. GEECON was a great place to meet many different developers from all over Poland. All the participants at the conference have a common denominator, they want to know about the latest trends in software development. It is an excellent stepping stone from our daily tasks, to learning about the latest technology from the most well known global developers and their projects. After three days at the conference we came to realise that from all the interesting ideas we heard about to improve our daily problems from the technological side, we could also implement new ideas regarding work culture. However, it was not all work. On the cold May evenings we were able to drink some extremely tasty beer in the market square of Krakow.
On 23. and 24. September we took part in Metering Days 2014 conference in Fulda, where we learned about new trends in Smart Metering and Smart Grids. 
Oh not again… I’ve been analysing my code for more than an hour now, and still don’t see the reason why my piece of code fails. Help! Could anyone help me? Come over to my desk please everyone… Oh, oh, wait… got it, sorry guys, my fault, I’ve got a typo here! Sounds familiar? How often do you ask a colleage to take a look at your code when you are hopeless trying to find the reason of the bug in the software? It costs your co-workers loss of concentration, it will take some time till they get again to the problem they were working on at the moment you asked them for help! Have you tried out the rubber duck debugging technique? So, first grab your duck and explain her what the code should do and why it doesn’t. Show the duck the code that is doing what you say it should do… Oh, alrigth duck, I’ve found it, this line is wrong! Thanks and see you later 🙂 This technique was mentioned for the first time in the book The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. We made a very good experience using that technique. The duck is the first mate to ask for help!
