The development of the IT sector creates more and more interesting, attractive jobs yearly for young people who have a passion for informatics. However, due to the increasing number of hirings over the past few years, companies have started to look for more complex profiles. At the same time, there are also candidates who understand that, in order to stand out, they need complementary professional training.

As in the previous 2 years, it’s time for a review of the past 12 months. In general, I feel that Cluj ecosystem is settling down; the “brownian movement” with support initiatives for startups seems clearer now and I believe we’re entering a phase of growth in which the “actors” are already known and they will keep on playing and improving their role. In the following lines, I tried a classification based on the size and overall purpose of these initiatives and, then, a reminder of several startups that got noticed in the last year.

In the last couple of years, project complexity has slowly (and recently not so slowly) risen to a level where the previous ways of dealing with it seem no longer effective. In this first part, I will share some of the reasons why I think complexity is here to stay and also why I think it will continue to raise the bar on what acceptable software means. Complexity is primarily linked to Moore＊s law and to the incredible growth of computing power available today.

The IT experts called 2014 „the Internet of Things year”, as it was one of the hottest topics of the year that just ended. The assigned title is not surprising at all if we consider that important websites such as dzone.com, jaxenter.com or oracle.com published several articles every week about the technologies that are part of the Internet of Things and the bloggers didn’t waste any chance to write about their latest IoT projects. Publishing houses were vigilant as well, dozens of titles being published in 2014, many more waiting to hit the printing press this year.

In theory, sending a message over a wire to another device is a simple task. But sending a message in a reliable and secure way can be a pretty hard job. In an IoT era, where every day the number of devices that are connected to the internet increases drastically, we need to find different communication mechanisms. Because we cannot control when a device is connected to the internet and ready to receive our package, we need to find different ways to communicate with it.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” - Steve Jobs

I believe quality software is about making the user's life as easy as possible. Not by just executing the required job and doing it flawlessly and efficient, but also by simplifying the task without losing functionality. A lot of our everyday tasks could be made easier if our software were able to make suggestions, try to guess and automate some of our tasks. This is one of the use cases for machine learning techniques. In addition to this, applications such as web search engines, image and sound recognition, spam detection and many more are all using machine learning to solve problems that would otherwise be almost unsolvable.

We have recently got through the second edition of Cluj IT Days, the annual event of Today Software Magazine. We believe we have succeeded in offering those over 200 participants present this year the opportunity to get a clearer overview on the IT in Cluj and on the latest trends in the local industry. A novelty of the event was the release of a book entitled How to build a product? , signed by nineteen authors, who have also participated as speakers to the event. This book will actually be available online on the site of the magazine and that of the event.

By the courtesy of Ovidiu (Matan, of course), I was invited to deliver a presentation on IT DAYS 2014. As I did not manage to go through everything during the time allotted to my presentation, the writing of this article gives me the opportunity to complete my presentation. This is what I wanted to say by all means! Entrepreneurship can no longer put technology aside nowadays, no matter the domain. We can imagine any business activity you like and, without much effort, we can attach a technological function to serve that activity. Moreover, technology has become in time a differentiating element, which can ensure the competitive advantage necessary to success.

In the apartment where I grew up, we had no pets, though my sister and I would ask our parents from time to time to keep a dog or a cat. This thing made me long even more for the summers spent at my grandma’s. And it was well known: when the summer holiday started, both my sister and I would get off our parents’ back and we would move to our grandparents’. Over there, our cousins would join us during day time and the fun was guaranteed.