We talk with Frédéric Mazzella about what is BlaBlaCar and what startups are they looking for to invest.

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We talk @ Leade.rs about startups in the startups in emerging markets, hardware components, future and drones with Paul Papadimitriou - Founder, Innovation Scout, Futurist @ Intelligencr

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The first time I gave a talk titled “Enterprise flight into DevOps space”, was in late 2014 at DevConFu conference. After that, I delivered the presentation several times during 2015 at various conferences in Europe. For some time, I considered it a “closed topic” and did not really want to expand on it, until I was asked to deliver it again in 2016, and then again in 2017.  Enterprise is a word that is highly abused. Most people associate it with slow inefficient processes. Nobody wants to be there! At the same time, when I ask the audience: “How many of you work in enterprise?” — over 95% raise their hands. Somehow, human nature makes us prefer simple models of the world, even though, we, of course, totally understand that the world is way more complicated. Still, we are easily trapped into selecting good vs evil, being a start-up vs being an enterprise, developing microservices vs struggling with a monolith. Are most of us really on the evil/wrong side? Probably, not.

In 2012, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, familiarized all of us, and the Microsoft fans of the things developed in the past 30 years in particular, with the company’s mission: „a computer on every desk and in every home”. Of course, the path to this declared mission began with the launch of the revolutionary and controversial Windows 8 platform, which was designed to be present on all devices, from desktop to laptop, to mobile phones, tablets and XBOX consoles. Microsoft had to wait another two years until Bill Gates decided to fill in the „Founder and Technology Advisor” position, to fire the former CEO, replacing them with Satya Nadella, the former manager of the Cloud platform and technology division. Due to this welcomed change, Microsoft brings the new company vision to the entire worlds: „Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more!”, Satya Nadella CEO Microsoft.

Often times, design is seen as an accessory to the development process; a complex and difficult process that can easily stray away from the big picture. The design component is a major factor in keeping the whole product development process aligned with the overall objectives of the project. This is a chance that must be seized. When a design strategy is formulated with the general objective in mind, it will be very different compared to when it is conceptualized merely to feed the development process.

The last few years have seen a great change in people’s mentality about software and the way they use it. This change has been brought upon us by the omnipresence of smartphones, the advent of cloud-based computing and, lately, by the Internet of things (IoT). Combine this with the ever-increasing competition of software companies on a relatively slow-growing market, and you get to the point where we are now. Nowadays, people expect to have ever-improving software on their devices, with the newest features in the shortest time possible. There is an upside to all of this: People are willing to cut you some slack when it comes to small glitches and problems in your software, knowing that you will fix them in the next release. So, now comes the point I want to discuss. How do you live up to the expectations? In our opinion, the answer is implementing Continuous Delivery for your projects.

All new features determine us to add a couple of new cases to one or multiple data providers. What happens when you have two, three or more features that need the adding of various details to data providers? Eventually the data providers from the tests will get bigger and harder to follow. Let’s say we have an online store application that can be used for purchasing items with one type of account (regularAccount) and this store is available for 3 domains. This online store offers only English localization.

It is known that software developers enjoy certain benefits that are not present in companies in other industries. Comfortable working spaces, tea, coffee and sports subscription discounts are among the most popular. Still, often, these are not enough. Even if good working conditions and benefits do matter, IT employers need to provide software developers with something more in order for them to be really motivated.

We all know that the way in which software products are delivered has changed a lot in the last few years. There is an increasing need to deliver things faster and to ensure that what we deliver is high-quality. If some years ago, development teams had enough time to design an architecture, to plan what they developed very well, in the last few years, the same teams do not enjoy the same amount of time. For this reason, the work methodologies laid great focus on the time required to deliver a product. We live in a globalized world, a state of affairs which can be seen in the way teams are built. Some time ago, development teams shared the same location. This is no longer valid. The majority of the development teams are distributed on different time zones and across various cultural contexts. In spite of all this, the high-standards of software product quality is as high as it will ever be.

We already know that millions of people from around the world use mobile phones and tablets, and the number of users is on the rise. This also determines the exponential growth of the global mobile applications market.Companies which develop mobile applications must ensure that they deliver high-quality products and that they stand out from the crowd in order to receive good feedback from customers. This has become a challenge, considering the diversity of mobile devices and operating systems. To ensure large and efficient coverage, these applications must undergo automated testing. This is the reason why generic solutions must be found, namely solutions that cover the testing of the applications to the greatest possible extent.

For the 6th year in a row, Startup Weekend Cluj has become a place where young people meet to exchange ideas, learn about entrepreneurship and build their own business. A weekend filled with energy, discussions & feedback sessions with mentors has ended with the final presentations and winners of the 2017 edition. Out of the 97 participants, 33 have pitched their ideas and, after the voting, 15 ideas were selected to get to the next stage.

At some point, one may be interested in finding out how well-developed the automated test cases which validate the Web Services functionality actually are. In other words, it would be good to know how much the test cases hit the code. One way to test the Web Services functionality is by using SOAP UI. This article describes how we can use the Squish Coco application to determine how much the SOAP UI test cases impact the C# code.

Today, time to market is crucial and errors and bugs are not easily tolerated. Therefore, it is important to deliver high-quality products. As quality assurance is often not the prime focus, because of various constraints such as time, cost, resources, QA is only partially covered. The result is reflected in a negative user experience. Manual testing has reliability issuess, as it is tedious and slow. As an example, by the time a bug is discovered, important details to reproduce it may have already been forgotten. Moreover, manual test results should be well documented by the tester in order to serve as reference to others. For these reasons, testing is a matter of discipline where automation can really help.

I was at a coaching session with a senior manager of a services company. We were discussing the challenges that she was facing with some specific team leaders. At one point, when discussing solutions and action steps, she asked me “Should I just be myself or try this instead?” She was thinking of having a different approach which would not have been her natural response. The question struck me because, on the one hand, I believe in authentic leadership. I believe that leaders should naturally be interested in performance through people. They should naturally be assertive and offer constructive feedback and appreciation, and naturally communicate the purpose or the mission. Leaders should be natural and authentic at all times because their role is not linked to a schedule (ex: from 9 am to 5 pm). It is a 24/7 role where people are watching your behaviors and words, and are translating them into things to consider (follow) or to criticize.

Writing code is a synonym for building, for creating. Code contains the bricks the future is made of. You let your mind develop incredible tools. This entails a level of creativity which is not found in another field, or at least not in a similar format. Creativity is the ability to turn imagined ideas into practice. Creativity consists of the ability to perceive the world in different ways, of being able to identify hidden patterns, of making connections among apparently unrelated phenomena, and, last but not least, of solving problems by generating and implementing solutions.