Published in the Workplace Connections’ Working Paper, by M.O.S.A.I.C.
(Multi-Lingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities)

CapturePlay has been working with MOSAIC for the past 6 months, generously offering mentoring and internships to newcomer job-seekers in the IT field. All of the interns have thoroughly enjoyed their time at CapturePlay and, with the endorsement of the company, most of them have managed to find full-time employment.

We met with Lucian Savluc to ask about the company’s experience with diversity and newcomer talent.

MOSAIC: What has inspired you to offer to the newcomers this internship program?

Lucian: Ken Gordon (from Skills Connect) invited me at the Vancouver Public Library last year to speak at an event for IT skilled immigrants. The scope was to deliver a technical presentation. Seeing the audience — and remembering my first days here in Canada 9 years ago — I decided to tell them a story instead: how I got the job in my profession here.
The hardest part for newcomers is to get the chance to prove their skills. And I realized that CapturePlay can help while also getting help from newcomers — a win-win situation. We discussed this idea with the board and we agreed the internship program was worth a try.

MOSAIC: What do you see as being the value-added element of diversity in your workplace?

Lucian: Diversity has both challenges and benefits. Challenges are mostly for the newcomers; they have to learn and adapt to a work environment where the rules, communication and customs may be quite different compared with the country they came from. And probably this is the most important part of the internship: they learn how it is to work in a North American high tech company.
We treat our permanent employees and our interns the same. And we demand exactly the same involvement and dedication to them as we ask for our full timers. We are offering exactly what no school here can offer — firsthand experience and training.
We also learn a lot from our interns. We are developing a worldwide platform and we have to learn about the cultural aspects of each area where we promote our product.

MOSAIC: How would you describe a typical day of work for interns?

Lucian: We use an agile approach and the latest project management tools and practices; everything is structured quite well. At the same time, each of us is having a lot of liberty in implementing the tasks and goals. We encourage innovation and initiative and we embrace the "work hard play hard philosophy". We are doing our job very well but we also try to build a fun and pleasant work environment.
A work day is starting in the morning around 10 AM. After we check our correspondence, we have a short scrum meeting where each team member is presenting the tasks finished the day before, the tasks planned for the current day, problems encountered and what we learned. We turn back to our computers and we update our tasks lists in BaseCamp accordingly. After that, we proceed to execute these tasks.
The program is quite flexible, and for the interns is only 6 hours per day. They have a lunch break they can take whenever they want (we are reimbursing the lunch and transportation). If they have a personal problem or not feeling good, they can work from home.
We assume from the beginning that they will do their best for the job and, with a very few exceptions, we were right. At the end of the day, each of us checks the tasks and plans for the next day. We have also weekly team meetings, and monthly company meetings. The interns are part of all these, no difference. And because we wish to build a strong company culture, time to time we have team lunches and company parties of course.

MOSAIC: What feedback have you received from newcomers who completed their internships?

Lucian: Highly positive. I included here a quote from a former intern which reveals some insights:

"I started to work as an intern at Capture Play. Of course, I was afraid, if they would not understand me, or I would not understand them? Can I do my job well? My fears were proven wrong. I was involved in all team’s life. My duties were interesting. Whenever I asked I always received irrefragable answers. If I need help, they always helped me. I have felt myself not as a stranger, but as a competent team member. I took part in biweekly meetings, prepared and presented my reports. I participated in the ad campaigns and playathons, did weekly statistics, and tracked bugs. I enjoyed the tasty BBQ wings at the Summer Party, and petted Saber, the most handsome dog in Vancouver. Thank you guys! You are paying forward!"
Monika S. (After the internship position, she obtained an Application Support Analyst position with ZE PowerGroup).

MOSAIC: What would you say to employers who are still reluctant to employing or offering internships to newcomers?

Lucian: It’s worth it. They only have to prepare it well in advance, to establish the processes, training kits and a team leader. In our case, the most capable from them was picked to assist the team.
There are so many high skilled newcomers here in Canada… why don’t give them a chance to prove it. With minimum resources but with a lot of determination, there is no company that cannot implement such a program.
We are totally open to share our experience with any organization interested in this.

MOSAIC: Any piece of advice for job-seekers?

Lucian: Don’t be afraid to give first (this works on both sides, for job-seekers and for employers).
Show you are good. Be open to learn. Take chances. But be careful when you select your internships/volunteer work. You have to choose the one that is really meaningful to your planned career. Once you are there, put your whole effort and dedication. It will pay off.

Download the original paper.

Coming from somebody that is involved a lot in social media, I recognize it is strange to say it, but still… we should not be drowned by it.

Fastening from media in general – that is an interesting idea indeed. We all should exercise it for time to time. What you have to do is to avoid opening at any cost the browser, the newspaper, the radio or the TV. Nor read any commercial or written word pushed to your eyes. Only your own thoughts. And surprise! You will realize after a few days how far you are disconnected from your own being.

And did I mention? – stop for a while to look into your smartphones and tablets, stop listening to the gagas and just look on the window. You may discover the real world around you.

Back to this blog… Well, for now, I’m still going to keep it. I started it because of eLiberatica. After a while, I thought that helping with my part to the so called "social media awareness" can change the way we think and behave, in the good way. After more time, I learned that is actually only a tool in which individuals and organizations try to influence the others. Can be for good or bad.. So be carefully how and what are you listening to.
The way to change things for good must not rely solely on a tool. It is more about us – to stay in touch with our own being and with the others, at e personal and intimate level. And this is where computers and Internet cannot do much help. There are more important things in life. Which is short indeed.

Now, here are some things I consider deserves to be shared with you; things that I found interesting along this year:

• Movies: Melancholia (2011) – which I found more profound than Three of Life (2011); Hereafter (2010) – you have to see it. And some more – in no particular order: The Robber (2010), Margin Call (2011), Farewell (2009), Day of the Wacko (2002), The Man from Earth (2007), Cashback (2006), The Virgin Suicides (1999), The Fighter (2010), Black Swan (2010), Anonyma (2008), The Tunnel (2001), The American (2010), The Joneses (2009), The Soloist (2009). There would be more, but since this is not a cinema blog, I stop here ;)
• Fiction Books: Noaptea de Sanziene (The Forbidden Forest), by Mircea Eliade – a timeless and magic story, I strongly recommend it (I cannot believe is having no review on Wikipedia…).
• Audiobooks: Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad – by The Teaching Company, extremely interesting.
• Non-fiction Books: SuperFreakonomics and Outliers (not new, but good).
• Music: I felt in love with Cesaria Evora, Amalia Rodrigues, Dulce Pontes, and fado in general.

For the ones asking about eLiberatica. No plans for 2012, sorry. I will consider 2013, if, hopefully, I can find the time, the mood, and in general, if the general economic downturn will cease…

Professionally speaking? I’m continuing to push CapturePlay – the company I’m working for. From my personal point of view, one of the most important achievements this year is the internship program, which I setup it there with the help of a few Canadian immigration organizations. It makes you feel good when you can help others to succeed, and they help you back to build your product.
Generally speaking, since one year ago CapturePlay’s Alexa ranking was somewhere around 24,000,000 and now is around 340,000 that is confirming we did a lot towards achieving success.

In general, this year was tough… My father passed away… I finally started to publish his work.
So yes, it was tough again, but also enlightening. It refocused my mind to the most essential meanings of life; people we love, family and time; doing best you can to be human, to be good.

For the friends who are interested, there are some pictures from 2011.

OK, I think that is all for now, and for this year.

Looking forward for 2012.

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get."

I wish you all a Happy New Year, peace, love, prosperity and happiness!

But my confidence dropped to the lowest level a few days ago, when I tried to reach one of my former colleagues – somebody that worked in the same company with me.

This is the option you typically have:

But this is what I got:

So what is inline help saying?

Knowing that you cannot control who is rejecting an invite, and what motive he/she would indicate when rejecting it, indeed you can probably be banned after you get the warnings. (Needles to say, each time I invited somebody that I don’t know personally, I wrote a polite note. It’s in my job description to know how to build online community.)

So I wrote to their customer service to understand how I can get back the full functionality.

Now comes the interesting part and here is exactly what they responded to me:

“everyone is allowed a certain number of Invitations to be sent without requiring an email address to members identified as a “Friend”. After that allotment is depleted you will be required to enter an email address. ”

They also pointed me to their User Agreement (Section 4, sub D), this part:

“LinkedIn may limit the number of connections you may have to other Users and may, in certain circumstances, prohibit you from contacting other Users through use of the Services or otherwise limit your use of the Services”

I’m not a legal expert, and it looks to my understanding that they are legally covered by it.

On the other hand, I think that each of the LinkedIn user must know about this rule which is not clear and actually is hiding this “certain number of Invitations” that nobody knows about it. I would expect to know from the beginning that I’m allowed to send a particular number of invites, and after that, regardless what I do, I have to input an email address there.

My final note: All of us should be aware of the implication of trusting this kind of online social services and be more circumspect when we start to put effort in building an online network.

What to do now? Probably focus my attention to the ones that are still keeping their openness and promises. Google+ perhaps? At least there you can download all your data from your account when you want..

Still, I’m waiting for the open and distributed social network model. There are a few outside, and probably the most important and promising one is Appleseed.

I’ll start to build there! And bye-bye to the ones which are having hidden rules and tries to control you.

—-

PS – Shortly after I mentioned to their support the problem above, I received from LinkedIn an invitation to join for free (for a month) the Pro account… So I deduct from here that all these things happened because they changed rules and they wish to increase the revenue by pushing the LinkedIn power users to pay a Pro account.

And I feel they try to take advantage of me.. Be aware, you can be the next.

Driving to my office in the morning, I started to think what kind of software/technology we need to really improve our lives.

I was thinking on the other side that, because our ego, thousands of good ideas are perishing. Here is how it goes usually: an individual is having an idea that may be brilliant. He is thinking: “Hmm.. this is a great idea! I would like to make money with that, I think it can produce wealth.. I’m not going to tell anybody about it! I’ll try to put it in practice.”

And of course, only a very few succeed. But on the other hand, he is not making his idea public: “Why should other guys take MY idea and become rich instead of ME?”

So we all lose.

For the future, I will try to publish online any idea that crosses my mind and I think is useful. Probably lots exists already and I don’t know about it. But maybe some are not yet there.. Since it is less probably I’ll start up something now – here we go, one more idea ;)

+Zone Legal Online Gaming (yes, is very niche). An online service where you can subscribe and will offer you up to date legal information about all countries and states in the world that are allowing online gaming. We encountered this problem in our company I’m working right now at CapturePlay. Since we are not a big company, we cannot afford an entire team of layers and researchers to pay and to keep us updated with all the regions in the world where we have to interdict or allow people to play our games.

Ideally, this will be a web service to hook into our app and dynamically allow or ban the IPs coming for those regions.

BTW, if you know about a service like this, please let me know, we need it.

OK, that is for today. If I’ll have more time to list, more ideas will be published.

Cheers!

PS – One of my favorite books – Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, is ending like this – To the Wish Machine: “Look into my heart. I know that everything you need is in there. It has to be. I never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! You take from me what it is I want… it just can’t be that I would want something bad! Damn it all, I can’t think of anything, except those words of his… ’HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!’ ”

Deep inside, we are better than we think.

Picture by maximusrex23.

He left this world suddenly on April 8th 2011 at the age of 74. In his lifetime – since his twenties, he painted over one thousand of paintings. The most intense period was in the latest years of his life.

Being my Father, I may be subjective in judging his work. However, in speaking with his colleagues and friends, as well as art critics who attended the funerals, I realized I have a responsibility to publicize his work.

Perhaps his life story, which is an interesting one, has a bearing on this; however, more about this at a later time eventually.

About ten years ago, I had set up a website for his work (http://www.savluc.com/boris).

I didn’t touch it since then, and now is outdated. Therefore we plan to re-build and re-launch it.

In the meantime, we will publish almost daily one of his paintings under different social media outlets. There are hundreds; this will take a few years. We also hope the private owners or organizations that own his paintings, will contribute to it and send us images to be published.

We plan to publish much of his artwork under a Creative Common license, and allow use of his artwork freely, in so far as his paintings would be credited.

We believe this is his final will – to share his art with you, to make this world more colorful and to add to its beauty.

You can follow his published work at:

Twitter: @BorisSavluc

Facebook: Boris Savluc In Memoriam

Flickr: photos/borissavluc

We will continue to keep you updated about this project.

Last but not least:

If you feel a bit of pleasure while looking at his paintings, please let others know about it.

Boris Savluc is not Dead; he is Alive through his Art.

It was exciting to feel the electricity in the air; people from all corners of the world, feeling and thinking the same thoughts. It seems that upon arriving in Canada all of us share similar experiences. We feel the same. It was quite emotional.

Everyone has their own story. I tried to tell my story and it seems that the audience appreciated it.

Aaron presented some opportunities at CapturePlay, and today we listed available positions, so if anyone is interested, more details are available on the CapturePlay website.

It was great to meet Bruce and Pierre from Paul Alexander, who provided thoughtful insight about applying for jobs in this post-recession market. Even for us, employers, it was valuable to attend their session.

It was unfortunate that the IBM representative could not attend, as I wanted to speak with him, particularly since IBM helped eLiberatica in the past, and that was important to us.

Last but not least, it reminded me what a wonderful meeting place the Vancouver Public Library is. Many thanks to Uta, the VPL representative and, of course, to Ken and his colleagues from Back in Motion.

Overall, the time we spent in preparation for this presentation was entirely worthwhile. At CapturePlay we are planning to work more closely with these types of organisations, which integrate newcomers into local culture. This does a lot of good for everybody, and knowing that you helped (at least morally) somebody who is new here (similarly at some point in time almost all of us, or our ancestors, were here) made a big difference at the end of the day.

—–

PS – Seems that I miss eLiberatica, Eh? ;)

One of my first coaches here in Vancouver – Ken Gordon (from Back in Motion) – who deserves all my gratitude for what he teached me – invited me to speak about my experience here: what takes for a professional to enter the Canadian job market.

I will honor his invitation, this Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 2:00 P.M. at Central Library in Vancouver.

Besides giving there a speech, I will bring with me our CTO, Aaron Caswel, and we will post some job offers we are looking to fill at CapturePlay.

Yes, this is the way, we like to help; more or less, we or our parents or grandparents – all lived the same experience like newcomers. And now, all of us, are Canadians. This is indeed a great country. And we have to give our share and help in the same spirit.

Click to download the flier.

The eLiberatica conferences: 2007, 2008, 2009.

We could not secure finances to organize a high class and high quality conferences like the ones we used to have. I had partnered with Agora for the first three conferences – they were generous with their finances; however, they were unable to sponsor the costs this year.

Some of you had asked me to organize a smaller scale one this time. I would like to thank everyone for their support and proposals; I am very enchanted and grateful for the interest out there. As I mentioned many times, eLiberatica is very costly and it is not enough to say “…come to our town, we have secured a space, we can party, let’s have eLiberatica here…”

If you wish to invite high-profile speakers from around the world, the cost of transportation, venue, etc have to be met. It costs tens of thousands of Euros to hold an eLiberatica conference.. Regardless of those who suggested that a FLOSS conference should be gratis, sponsors are still needed.

I also tried to enter into partnerships with a few other organizations, which meet our moral caliber and high standards; unfortunately, for whatever reasons (let’s blame the recession), they did not come through. I am quite disappointed; perhaps they will be able to assist at a later date.

Last but not least organizing the last three eLiberatica conferences took a huge toll on me, with lots of effort, in between working full-time. I took on this responsibility like a second full-time job, except that it was a volunteer commitment… It cost me time which I would have spent with my family and in general, enjoying life. I don’t know many people who would take on this type of responsibility; if I did I would donate the eLiberatica brand to them.

I still believe that the best value of this conference is the fact we stood independently; we never favored any one group. When I say that, I am referring to both Open Source and Free Software – which I see as a single movement (a response to this article). I am also saying this comparing it to the other side named “closed source” – which I clearly understand its role in the economy. We are living in a complex world which is not perfect and never will be, but we can work toward making it better.

So one way or other, I think all of us are at loss because there will be no eLiberatica this year . . . No new stories, no disputes, no debates. Silence. Ah, there are some who would enjoy it for sure.

This being said, I hope the FLOSS community in Romania will continue to organize events and I hope they can make a stand. Not much is to be expected from the government, though, but I expect some from the local business people who must understand – in Romania the single opportunity is to go with Open Source and Free Software. With regard to the government, I hope that EU would push FLOSS harder at the union level.

Some advice for the IT people in Romania, especially the youngest: If you want a good future, you wish for independence, wanting to grow – learn Linux first; learn the free and open languages and standards, not the closed ones. If you want a better life, it is in your power to influence it.

I am confident that there will be better times, and we will once again have eLiberatica. The project is not dead at all but, like the Firebird, will come back to life.

A few days and the year is gone… farewell, 2010, welcome 2011!
I know, I wrote so rare this year. The time is flying faster and faster. There are many things that happened. In my life and in general.
It was a tough year, we lost people we love. But I don’t like to talk in public about family. Family is something special for me so I like to keep it private. I suppose I’m not the standard Facebook guy..

So let’s see, what about other things. For example my lessons to fly – covered in my last post. It was fun for a few months to do consultancy. I learned that is not exactly for me. I’m kind of a perfectionist, I like to focus on long term projects where you can build. Doing consultancy is not exactly building strong. Is more a kind of a mercenary thing. You do whatever they ask, you don’t care for long term. You don’t build, you deliver in time and budget ;) Now you should not understand I’m not doing consultancy anymore. I still have the consultancy business and when I have time and I like the project, I’m taking jobs. But definitely, I like long term involvement. Only in time you can really build true values.
To make it short, my last clients, at the end of August, offered me a position I couldn’t reject (hence my consultancy work proved to be successful ;). Many asked who are these people. I liked to keep it kind of a private for now. We are in stealth mode. The company is small but is having a lot of potential and I’m thrilled to help them. The position I took is Director, Web Marketing and Customer Experience (I didn’t update my LinkedIn profile yet). This means I touch almost all departments. Which is good. I can help them to build strong. And is long term. And we will have results. I learned a lot at BasicGov. Now I’m going forward, my experience more than doubled. I’ll come later with a separate article about what we try to do.

eLiberatica – probably the most important subject the readers of this blog are looking for. We will try to do it again. Is tough, the times are not favouring it; Romania is in an economical downturn. The entire world actually is like that. On the other side, the times are asking for more of these actions. Is a whole need toward openness. We are learning that technology changes politics and our own live. Look at Wikileaks scandal. An entire world divided. Look at Internet and what some are trying to do. Where are we going to be in 10 years from now?
I would say eLiberatica and events like it are necessary now more than ever. Facts? I’m doing my best to help Agora to gain the power to organize together again. I also have a few other proposals, with other open source organizations from Romania. We will see. Is not only about that, is about me too; can I sacrifice this time again – take it from sharing it with my family and donated it for this cause? Is it worth? I hope so. Sometimes I think Romanians are their own worst enemies. But perhaps this things are not definitely. There are still many good people there.

About me and Canada. More time is passing, more I love this country. It is amazing how people from so many parts can leave together in peace. Is the proof this is possible. I met here great people from all over the world. I also met or read about really bad things. Drugs, killings, and so on. There is no perfect place. The most important is to feel home and safe. My heart is still in Romania, but I start to feel home here. Strange.

Wish you all Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.

PS – I rarely write on this blog, but I twitt daily. If you wish to keep in touch, you find me there http://twitter.com/LucianSavluc

-

Below, some bits of 2010…

Each of us are dreaming to change our lives, to have more freedom, to travel, to learn new ways, meet new people, do  the work that we enjoy most, do something that adds value to our passing lives on this earth. Kids are probably the most important thing each of us achieve. Still, you wish more. Would be this the mid-life crisis..?

The fact is that when I was back, I decided is time to do a change and try something that would be more diverse, and ad more flexibility in my life.
This change would be first of all related to the job – the place where you spend at least 9 hours per day, not to count extra work and commuting (actually you spend at work more time than you spend with your family day by day).

And I decided is time to take my chance and try consultancy. Pick the projects I like and where I feel I can make a stand. Eventually work from distance and all those things you dream (pick a place where the water is warm and you don’t count the sunny days – and work from there for a few weeks/months ?).

To make the story short – here I am, since May, doing consultancy work for different organizations. Is different, I don’t know if is better or worse yet (there are pluses and minuses), but at least I’m trying.
Because I think each of us is having the duty to try and fulfill own dreams. Even if you passed 30s or 40s or 50s..

More learnings and findings about it will come in a longer article I hope.

Till then, I’ll post daily on twitter as usual (@LucianSavluc), put pictures on Flickr and keep my new presentation website – Centri.ca – updated.
I hope soon I’ll announce some good news about eLiberatica 2010 too.

Wish you a great summer!

PS – Some of you would still enjoy “Learning to Fly” …is never late.