One of the questions that I hear very often has to do with Romanian intellectual property, especially in the Cluj IT ecosystem. Even though, in Cluj, several local start-ups have stood up from the crowd, we can say that we neither have a benchmark, nor a small unicorn, if you wish. There are many reasons why this initiative was not steered in the right direction. Even though there are events, like Startup Weekend or Techsylvania, which get involved in start-up support, unfortunately, many of these initiatives are short-lived. What might be the reasons for this state of affairs? It may be either because the initiated number of projects is inferior to the actual needs of the society, or because the financial resources and the other means of ensuring support are much too modest to be able to lead to the implementation of the respective project. We can also add the competition that comes from Western Europe, a fierce competition which is usually the winner at local competitions.

On the 12th and the 13th of November 2019, we invite you to attend the 7th edition of Cluj IT Days. Last year’s focus was on #BuildingTomorrow. This year’s theme will be #ProgrammingARt. Obviously, we focus on development as art. Moreover, we try to highlight the connections between art by and large, as field of creativity, and development. We have a couple of surprises which will make the conference even more interesting. IT Days 2019 will take place on the 4 stages at Casa de Cultură a Studenților (Students’ Cultural Hall) in Cluj-Napoca. We expect to have 800 - 1000 participants / day. We will touch upon topics such as: Products & Leadership, AI, Automotive, Industry 4.0, Testing, Serverless and Microservices, AR and VR, Security, Management, SAP, Agile, Research, Web, Start-ups, Software Architecture, Coding, DevOps and Hands on lab. All the details related to the presentations and the agenda will be made available in the forthcoming weeks and months.

This year we had the pleasure of attending MWC 2019, one of the biggest conferences in Europe, held annually in Barcelona. The main trend is 5G, the next step after 4G. All communication-based technologies (AR/VR, IoT, Automotive, Industry 4.0) benefit from 5G. HTC introduced its new VR device which has frontal cameras. Therefore, we could witness a mixed VR which, until now, would isolate users from the external environment via Augmented Reality. Ericsson had one of the biggest booths at MWC, but access was restricted because of the large number of attendees.

We began the second day with a rather long visit at the booths. The great number of technologies on display can convey a feeling of surcharge.  The fascination or curiosity showed by attendees is many times turned into financial gain.  This type of event is different than the classical IT conferences where technologies and ideas are presented only for the sake of users. Therefore, beyond the quaint technological mood, you start noticing that everyone is trying to sell you something. As journalist, you are many times overwhelmed by invitations.

The third day was short because I had to return to Cluj. Despite all this, we managed to learn some more interesting things. At the Mercedes booth, I noticed the new EQC brand. A new EQC 400 4Matic was displayed. It has two electrical motors and reaches an impressive performance: 408 HP, 765 NM maximum couple, 0-100km acceleration per 5.1sec, and autonomy of over 450 km.

4 years ago I was getting ready for a presentation about Cake PHP, one which I had to deliver to colleagues. I had prepared an entire documentation when I got into Laravel. It immediately gained my attention, so I began making my research intensely. After I got through a dense documentation set, I discovered that Google trends was already talking about Laravel. According to the trends, Laravel was the last, with Yii, Zend Framework, Codeigniter and Cake PHP, above it. The image below could be seen in my presentation 4 years ago.

On the 8th of July 2017, I attended UBB Graduation Days, a public event where local IT companies get the chance to award prizes for graduates' effort. I don’t know how many people are familiar with this event, but I can say that of all the events I attended over the last years, it had the largest dose of ingenuity and passion for technology. This event represents BBU Computer Science students’ work for their BA thesis. Besides enthusiasm and dedication, the demos reflect present-day technologies very well. Many of them featured at least a machine learning component, combining various learning algorithms in order to solve a specific problem.

Startups are changing the world we live in. This was clearly the message of last year’s tech media, both the Romanian and the international one. But do we know what these so-called startups we hear about every single day really are? Although there are lots of definitions for a startup, some of them very technical, others rather bohemian, there isn’t one that’s unanimously accepted. About 2 years ago, Alex Wilhelm made up a ”50, 100, 500” rule.

IT Days is one of the most complex IT events in our country, having become a tradition for Cluj-Napoca each November. I had the pleasure of attending the 2016 event which spanned over 2 days. The presentations were spread across three streams, for each day, covering various topics in IT: Software Development, Products & Leadership, Big Data & Machine Learning, Testing, Business & Management, Startups & Entrepreneurship, Software Architecture, Hands-on Lab and  Research . In the same context, in an open discussion panel whose invited guest were Maria Metz, Roxana Rugină, Voicu Oprean and Șerban Țîr, the development of IT in Romania was also tackled.

As we are getting ready for the next edition, we thought of introducing the team and of giving you some more reasons to attend the 4th edition of MobOS. MobOS stands for the Mobile Operating Systems Community and the associated annual event, aimed at sharing technical knowledge, at bringing an international perspective and at giving you the chance to network with minds alike. In less than 4 years, MobOS grew steadily, becoming, at the moment, the biggest conference on mobile technologies in Romania. Started in 2013, it now has a team of 4 individuals connected by the passion for technology and mobile. Let us get to know them and see what it’s in it for you - the passionate mobile developer curious for more and looking forward to meeting people like yourself.