Blue and the 220 orphans

When I joined IBM the center in Eastern Europe was in a set up phase: new building, new people, great plans. One of the first things we tried to make happen however was to find a social project that would be the most suitable for us and make a bigger difference. So we asked employees to let us know if they know any organization, community or project who would need our help. About 2 days after we have been told about a village named Valea Plopului. It seems it was the same place I was running into when searching in google for "social project", but under a different name.

It is a magnificent place where a priest takes care and supports about 220 orphans. A big initiative, many hopes, lots of help needed and many many kids. A few of us drove there to see how it is, what they need, where do the kids live and meet Father Tanase. And then it all started.
You can read all about it and see some pics on the web page I created for them www.valeaplopului.com

There are contacts, maps in case you would like to visit the kids and play with them and even bank accounts if you would like to help them out with a small donation. There are also many foreigners coming by so don't be afraid to pay them a visit even if you don't speak the language, they are used to and like it.

Now that I am back in Romania will also restart visiting them and hopefully will have my first trip in November. In case you would like to participate let me know :-) Just comment here or on the FORUM or even on the Facebook page I created for them. See you around!

My Smarter Planet

This year IBM launched what I personally consider the best campaign we ever made. Maybe because it's not just a campaign but a call to change the way we live, work, build, think, travel and more. We called it the Smarter Planet and you can read all about it here. You can learn about how we can make our cities smarter, how IBM helps local agencies to create a better infrastructure, or how we help patients by tracking their responses to new medication through smart pills that alert doctors via sms. And even more you can share your thoughts on better education, food, banking, energy, retail and discover the new intelligence and how analytics can change the way we understand information.



As I told you it's just HUGE! And because it's soooo huge IBM asked for all its business partners, local governments, companies and employees to participate in it, share ideas, tell people about it, make friends and family aware and finally take action! We have many tumbles, tweets, blogs and many resources dedicated to explaining what INTERCONNECTED, INSTRUMENTED and INTELLIGENT mean (the 3 aspects of smarter planet), so I'll let you discover them :-)

Meanwhile that's my Romanian tumblr: PlanetaDesteapta (RO for Smarter Planet), a place where I share my tips on things that are really smart and could help us have a better life.

The day my IQ got blue

One of the greatest things about IBM are actually 3 :-) We encourage collaboration and networking, we promote and use social software and we allow people to do that at work also as it's a MUST for being productive, building our skills and reaching out to people as fast as we can ;-) And yes, we tell the same to our clients and help them with creating and providing them platforms like Lotus Connections.

Now while many companies still wonder if they should allow employees to use Facebook at work or if Twitter helps or not, IBM not only allows employees to experiment around social software but also encourages employees and teaches them how to make the best of it.

If you start being active in the virtual environment you will notice there are many IBMers doing the same as you: some promoting a product, a service, some evangelizing about virtual worlds, some building communities or collecting funds for women in need, some keeping us updated with cool news, some telling us about their blooming ideas and so on. There is no other feeling like contributing to something asbig as changing the way you work and your world!
And through this cool network, you'll often see a #blueiq. It's not because we are in a strange cult :-) but because we are part of a community aiming to help everyone connect, understand social software,use it and share our new skills with our teams. There is no better way of "teaching" social software as using it and showing people what it can do. We support HR, Communications, Sales, Marketing , Delivery teams, new hires or Managers with making themselves heard,building their own team of experts....and more.

And we are proud of it :-) I remember the day I met @elsua, @ragtag, @andypiper, @kafkaspice, @rawn, @laurisa and more in Berlin. Was one of my best IBM experiences so far. Meeting the knights who were fighting for the same goal: making the blue giant more social ;-)

I am sure you want to belong to a community just like mine :-) If there is one in your company then join it! If not, starting building it! And if you are in IBM, say HI!

@silviaemilia

SAPIR is blue

So no, I didn't mean sapphire :-) but SAPIR one of the coolest applications invented lately. Thought I should add it to the blog as IBM Research contributed to developing it also.

Now imagine you are on that show...The Amazing Race, and you are given a picture of an artifact and are asked to locate it in the unknown city. Of course teams will start asking people around (who may not speak your language) get detoured and start yelling at each other because they forgot to rotate the picture before trying to find the object :-) What if they would scan the picture and have a cool search engine on their phone recognizing it and telling them exactly where that is? And that the engine could do that without ever seeing the picture....I know I would love to use it as a tourist :-)

Building your career remotely

Gosh I am productive today :-) Somehow there are lots of things that don't fit on the happymaking blog but are a great match for this one.

I am sure many of you work for a big company and not at their regional headquarters. Now what can you possibly do to end up working where you wish?

1. Ask to relocate - but WHOM? and why would they pick you? After all there are good and skilled people in all departments. So you'll need to identify some special skills you have and try to sell them.
2. Contact people, build your network both in your business unit, in your area of expertise, country but also outside.
3. Get a mentor! or mentors. I say that having a good mentor makes more than 100 well written books about resumes, career and work. Your mentor can be from inside or outside the company, work in the same area or another one and most important don't see your collaboration as a everlasting relationship. And don't get me wrong, this is the ideal case but imagine that you can have a mentor to guide you through a project, one to help you when you need to make THE CHOICE, one to help you build a certain skill. A mentor is not like your life partner, so don't be shy and if you feel like having more ask them ;-) Luckily I have the perfect one but I won't share him :-)
4. Talk to your manager about your career or at least keep him informed about your plans.Who knows, they may really know about openings.
5. Build your brand! the "I" brand is the most important brand in the world and when you work remotely, your reputation is your one and only asset. You may not even have the chance to have a face to face interview and you do want to make it through the screening. It's always good when people know your name before you apply for their opening :-) But how can they hear about you?
6. First the projects: there is always something to do and not enough people to actually do it. So be a volunteer, give ideas, execute, involve others, do your best and add the results and references to your resume ;-)

7. Second the social software: blog, comment on blogs, twitter, have good profiles on facebook, linked.in, your company's intranet, participate at wikis, post in forums, create communities, join communities, etc. After all, if you are here and they are there you need an environment to "meet" your future manager. This will also help develop a very natural conversation during your first interview. "Your blog is hilarious", "great pictures", "love your opinions" are just some phrases you may hear ;-)
8. Ask people to recommend you. If you did a good job they will be more than happy to give something back as sending an email is the easiest thing to do.
9. So you did the work, made yourself heard, got out there, have 10 people referencing for you and will have the interview. Was that it? NO
10. Internal interviews are INTERVIEWS. Of course there may be exceptions but not all of us drank "lucky milk" when we were little. Don't take the call if you are not ready. Don't enter that door if you know you have no idea about that job. Although it's an internal position that doesn't mean that your future manager can afford to have a very poor performance from you. Learn about the position, about what's required from you, discuss with the person who was in that position before you, talk to other people who worked with your future manager and find out what is requested from the reportees, learn about the business in case it will be a new one, etc. Don't be passive and don't behave like you already have the job.

Guess that was it...and make a nice resume, after all even if you work for the same company that doesn't mean your future manager can know everything about you. And even so you would like to have it said your way ;-) Have a nice weekend!

IBM Deutschland

I only left IBM Germany about 40 days ago and somehow I really miss it. After spending the last 18 months there I somehow feel strongly connected to those places and the country. There are about 40 IBM locations in Germany and about 20k IBMers so pretty huge. I was located in Hanover which one of the oldest locations in Germany. Imagine they were having a factory here and some of the first computers in Europe left this building. Now I won't talk about the food, the people and my life there but about a day that really left a living memory in my heart.
It happened during my last day when I discovered that the piece of stone outside the building was part of the Berlin Wall. Felt like a loop in time. Pretty impressive :-) It seems that IBM bought and placed pieces of the Berlin Wall in front of all the location it owns in Germany as an essential mark in their history: the moment of freedom. Guess you didn't know that ;-) ?
Bis bald!

Cool IBMers :-)

There are sooo many cool IBMers out there that you really can't imagine. So many of them play in a band, won Nobel prizes, have unbelievable hobbies or are social media savvy :-) Of course I don't know all of them but I like to think that I know a few. In case you want to check some of their blogs and connect with them, here they are:

• Andy Piper - my recent sibling, also has the lovely habit of podcasting your tags so watch out
• Karl Roche - the disruptive communicator
• Adam Christensen- besides leading our social media initiatives he also loves hotdogs...a lot :-)
• Jasmin Tragas - aka Wonderwebby. Besides social media she is a great supporter of CSR activities. Make sure you connect with her especially if you are in Australia.
• Jean-Francois Arseneault writes about his life in technical sales. He's in Canada
• Luis Suarez- this guy is like super famous :-) so in case you already know about his plans to kill the email, you can learn about how he leads the BlueIQ Ambassadors and plans to change the future of collaboration ;-)
• Rebeca Reyes- one of our coolest intranet editors, among others ;-)
• Jack Mason - the guy behind some nice social media strategic initiatives like the cool smarter planet tumblr
  
• Sandy Carter - saved the VP for the last :-) Sandy is the perfect example that social media is not just a hobby for young employees but the future of work, communication and business itself. One of the first vice presidents who embraced it, support it and actively promote it ;-)

Ok there would be some 30 more I would like to mention here but somehow I think it would make your homework of checking their blogs last too long. And one last guy, cause I really love this :-) - here is the house that tweets , of course made by an IBMer @andysc. Enjoy!

Ponder This

There is so much I am planning to write on this blog but somehow I need to work on the structure.

Meanwhile I have chosen the PonderThis challenge because there are some Romanians involved :-) So here we go: each month our great mathematicians from Research post a problem which can be solved by anyone in this world (yeyyyy) You only have to go here and submit your solution :-)
I shared this link a couple of months ago with some friends in Bucharest and they liked it so much that plan to become the next puzzlemasters ;-)

My congratulations to Razvan Gheorghita, Andrei Laza and the other Romanians on the list! How about you? Be the next math super star ;-)

The first IBMer

How many of you still remember the first IBMer you have seen? Or the first person you met when you joined your current employer? Do you? I know I do. As a matter of fact here she is: Alina Popescu. The first IBMer I've ever seen and one of the prettiest, smartest, kindest and helpful ones. She is everything I thought IBM will be: an adventure, a place where if you are perseverent and ambitious enough you can really make a difference, a risk worth taking. And I don't mean risk in a bad way, but you must admit it takes lot of courage to join a huge company and to challenge yourself to make it to the top.

But back to Alina, we had a perfect first interview, she asking me her HR questions (my weaknesses, my strengths, why IBM, etc) and me answering like a brave student that I was. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, so many answers I couldn't find with google, but somehow time was up. And then I left and almost cried on my way to the subway station as I was wearing such evil shoes. Another interview followed (with my first IBM Manager) and in time many others and I always see her face during the interviews, telling me about career, about a fast growing company, about chances and about the IBMer.

Today we are friends and collaborate on various projects and hope I'll also manage to see her again someday. She is still the same IBMer I met, the same passionate, intelligent and cooperating person. I wish you would all be that fortunate when having your first interview or register the same positive result when sending your recruiter in action. And yes, in case you don't remember your recruiter you should ask your employer to pay HR a visit ;-) Welcome to IBM!


PS: @Alina, you didn't see this coming, did u? At least I didn't add a biiiig picture of you:-)

Konnichiwa

Another blog in my life :-) So after sending out a poll yesterday asking friends if I should start another blog where I could write about my life at IBM, the people, the passion, the wonderful journey and its challenges, we finally have our output today. It's not in Romanian as I just couldn't be that egoistic and keep it in a language that is understood only by few of us. And I must confess, I've been writing and speaking in German and English for the past 7 years, so it somehow felt more natural, not to mention that the best way to talk IBM is English :-) The last argument would be that I do have many friends abroad and after getting this job my audience started to spawn across a few more countries.

So what would I post here? As you may know I do talk a lot on twitter (@silviaemilia), post many stuff on Facebook and the happymaking blog, and some other places. But will try to aggregate my ideas and feed this place with valuable information for IT savvy people, graduates trying to step in the spotlight, marcom professionals looking for inspiration, creative people, fans of virtual worlds, ex and present IBMers and of course IBM fans ;-)

To keep it short. If you're after a job @IBM Romania go here ibm.com/start/ro . Also if you have questions regarding your application don't bring them here, just send HR an email at recruitment.gd@ro.ibm They will be more than thrilled to hear from you :-) Then, we won't focus on making people happy here...cause we have the happymaking blog for that :-) Also I hoping to connect to some more Romanian bloggers and organize some cool events around Bucharest...and we'll see :-) one step at a time.

To close up this introduction here is the first blue image, yeah the happymaker went blue ;-)
PS: and in case you missed the disclaimer, these opinions belong to me only, and not to IBM.