Besides DSLRs, Canon builds and sells commercial and production printers - for high-quality and high-speed printing of books, leaflets, magazines, newspapers, invoices, blueprints, banners, postcards and other old-school-paper-products your grandma bragged about.

We're building the PRISMA Cloud software suite for these industrial printers. As a workflow architect, I am involved in babysitting the project after its inception: stalking our customer's customer, fetching some business intelligence from our competition over beers, defining requirements and refining specifications together with the product owner and the project manager. Sometimes, if they pay enough, we invite sales & marketing to the conversation.

Have you ever wondered how your mobile, your electricity provider and your bank print millions of invoices or bank statements overnight? They're outsourcing the service - Document Outsourcing, to be more precise.

We were doing strategic business analysis on market dynamics, competitors, new geographies and potential M&A targets in Multichannel Customer Communications, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Reports were targeted at worldwide Canon sales executives, business developers and operational managers.

Warning! Analyst keywords Business Process Outsourcing, Managed Print Services, information management, document management, business intelligence, competition strategy, country scan, services positioning, financial analysis, market sizing, market trends, market share, delivery capabilities, mergers and acquisitions, blockchain, NLP, GDPR

Telecom is mostly about acronyms such as OSS, BSS, NGIN, RTC, SMS - just pick 3 or 4 random letters and you get a telecom product name.

We were coordinating the technical presales activities: hardware dimensioning, technical compliance, software customizations, third-party licenses, warranty, professional services, commissioning, on-site support, project governance, maintenance, trainings and other B2B offerings.

This was like between the devil and the deep blue sea: we had the product managers on one side, and sales teams on the other side in the same boxing ring.

Anyhow - short story long - this bid management / technical offer lead thingie involved a lot of debating over local market trends, political context, current on-site deployment, customer cash (or the lack of it), winning potential, competitive differentiators and analyzing the RFI or RFQ to identify the features requested by the customer. Kinda maybe sometimes boring. But quite insightful, tho'.

After lots of lectures that would easily compete with the Senate, we had to make sure that all technical documentation is ready: executive summary, pricing summary, SOW, BOQ, product roadmaps and point to point technical compliancy of the RFI/RFQ.

Before submission we were building the Initial Project Income Strategy with insurances, incoterms, political and financial risks, taxes to be paid, advising on negotiation strategy, project costs and balancing project profitability among business units.

You know Google's advertising platform? The one where third parties exchange ads. This was like that - a sort of indoor cross promotion advertising network. Only in the real world. But managed digitally.

As co-founder and business analyst I had quite some headaches with product development.

We discovered agile software development the hard way with our logistics and sales teams bombing us daily with requests for the sales force automation tool, the CRM, accouting modules and other additions to the custom ERP Software features.

Geeky corner: Fedora Linux, MySQL, PHP, Model-view-controller - MVC, Symfony Framework, Propel ORM, YAML, Netbeans, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, CSS, HTML

Customer support is always fun. Especially at 5AM. These complex contraptions were the ones that - in the good ol' days - brought you SMS / MMS messaging and WAP internet on your [then] dumbphone ([now] smartphone).

Geek intermission: High Availability Red Hat Linux, channel bonding, TCP/IP traces, RADIUS Authentication, LDAP, Fastcache database, SNMP, PostgreSQL, WAP, MMS, data charging, billing, Proxy Framework, Push Access Protocol, Push Proxy Gateway, Intelligent Network, Call Detail Record (CDR), XML, shell scripting, Wireshark/Ethereal protocol analyzer, IPTables, HP DL360 and DL380 Servers

Co-founding an IT startup in Eastern Europe years ago was a financial and an emotional roller-coaster at the same time.

We developed, tested and sold CRM solutions while doing customer support, network administration, dusting, mopping and paying the bills.

Our customers - mostly local tourism and real-estate agencies were stunned to learn what's a web CRM and cloud backup solution. This, of course, didn't last. It was just a few years before Steve's iPhone. Damn.

Developed intranet pages and Content Management Systems for an internal team.

Did some quite a bunch of software in C/Java for web, mobile, MMS and WAP applications. See projects below.

I was developing web applications before it was cool. These include presentation websites, CRM, online shops, blogs, mobile, but also custom software.

Here's a few humble examples:

• calculating a quality of life index of a building based on positioning, pollution, noise levels and proximity to parks, schools, hospitals etc - and by using publicly available Government datasets
• big data processing using Python, Google Custom Search Engine, Elastic Search, Solr, Ambar and custom filters
• Testing, debugging and implementing optimisations for mobile devices (iPad/Safari) in a JavaScript virtual-world game
• Portal for delivering logo and ring tones to mobile terminals through Wap protocol

Techy stuff: Google Cloud Engine, Open Street Maps API, OSM Buildings API, Mapbox, GeoJSON, Wordpress, Woocommerce, Opencart, Joomla, FreeBSD, Oracle, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Heroku, Github, Basecamp, Slack

Because slow social media adoption rate amongst event organizers in Timișoara, there was a need for an events aggregator from street posters, official websites, news sites & portals and, bien sûr, Facebook (pages, profiles & groups).

On the techy part of the project there were a few automated crawlers: web parser, Facebook Graph API interface, event validator, placeholder generator, duplicate filtering and prioritization, category filtering, recommendations / featured events, REST API ...

... and then Cambridge Analytica appeared out of the blue and Zuck restricted access to the Facebook Graph API.

This was a one-man hobby project implemented using Ubuntu Linux, MySQL, Python, Django, PyCharm, BeautifulSoup, Tastypie, REST API, Google Custom API, JavaScript, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, Bitbucket

Python Bot that mimics a real person's behaviour in social media: it likes photos based on hashtags, locations and people that interacted with simmilar content. Because this "service" was a bit "inconsistent" with Facebook's terms and conditions, I had to kill it down after a few years of operation.

We put toghether this "magic" self-drawing pen during the HackTM hackaton. It is build using a few contraptions, and driven by a Raspberry Pi + two stepper motors.

In a kingdom far far away, long before Snapchat and Instagram stories, there were a few startups that prototyped digital storytelling. SlickFlick was one of them.

As a software developer I was coding, testing, integrating and maintaining the frontend JavaScript web viewer and the backend REST API necessary to support the iPhone application.

Techie details: Ubuntu/Debian Linux, PostgreSQL, Python, Django, MVC, Aptana (Eclipse), PyCharm, PyDev, Tastypie, REST, OAUTH2, Amazon EC2 and S3, Heroku, SendGrid, APNS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, Facebook Graph API, Jira, Github, Twitter API

Analog times require digital solutions: Atuu Imobiliar was a software-as-a-service (Saas) designed for real-estate companies to manage their offers, customers and business leads.

As Co-Founder and Account Manager I was responsible for business development, Business-to-business (B2B) sales, customer mediation and product development. As the product Atuu Imobiliar was new on the market, I have participated at its launching and beta testing with our customers.

Travel agencies didn't know it yet, but they needed a multichannel customer communication management tool to help them with advertising their products and discover new business leads.

Atuu Conect was such a solution which also included powerful targeted marketing campaign manager (traditional mail, Fax, SMS and E-mail).

Toolset used: Debian & Fedora Linux, MySQL, PHP, C, Visual C++, HTML, SMS, FAX, shell scripting, VoIP, LAN, IP routing

Remember WAP and MMS? This project, years ago, was about implementing MMS on top of the WAP standard. Tested on Nokia 7650 and Ericsson T68i. Hipster times.

Technologies: Red Hat Linux, Kannel Wap Gateway, C, WAP, MMS, SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)

Yep, I cheated on the years' count - have you noticed?

years ago there were no smartphones, therefore you had to order food by phone. However, web-based food ordering was slowly becoming a reality.

Started as a high-school project and developed together with a colleague, this e-shop had become the first virtual restaurant from Romania. Yep, you could order your custom hamburger by throwing in two slices of cheese and extra mayo. Yum!

Project was well known at the time and rewarded with several awards in regional and national software contests.

After on-site customer integration (front-office and back-office) we implemented an advertising campaign together with a local restaurant.

Online learning is the future?

Statistics: Making Sense of Data (University of Toronto)

Machine Learning (Stanford University)

Introduction to Finance (University of Michigan) ,

Advanced Business Strategy (University of Virginia)

Strategic planning and management system.

Cultural training based on Hofstede's Model of National Cultural Differences: power distance, individualism / collectivism, masculinity / femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation.

Communicating to influence training is focused on a pro-active attitude, language, body language, personality, emotional intelligence, communication behaviours (dominate, adapt, avoid, compromise and collaborate), e-mail communication rules, assertiveness, responsibility, feedback, feed-forward, conflict and time management.

Proposal fundamentals is a comprehensive course that includes tips and tricks for writing winning first-class proposals . Subjects covered include: storyboarding, pricing, content optimization, content design, managing the bid and the proposal team.

Sales Excellence: Account Management (Enterprise Selling Process) & Opportunity Management (Target Account Selling)
The Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation platform

Key Concepts: business profile, offer qualification, compelling event, decision criteria, solution fit, relationship strategies (leverage, motivate and neutralize), business value, inside support, executive credibility, cultural compatibility, political alignment, short term and long term revenue, profitability, risk, strategic value, competitive strategy, attack strategies (frontal, flanking and fragment), positioning strategies (defend and develop), power and influence, buying roles, adaptability to change, personal credibility.

Master in Business Administration-Executive

Final thesis: e-Business Models in Romania (PDF / PPT); Mentor: Anghel TAROATA

Key concepts: marketing, human resources, information and operations management, strategic management, reengineering business processes, knowledge management and negotiation, quality management, corporate finance, career management, sales strategies, team and project management

Basic trainings for Fixed and Mobile Networks and detailed technical/sales trainings for Alcatel-Lucent's applications portfolio

While not quite focusing on my Bachelor of Computer Science, I kept myself busy with apparently unrelated interests and activities:

Rotary New Generation Exchange (The Netherlands) - Internship for Housenet (real estate software), Planoform (real estate development), GKO (hardware and printers maintenance) and K+V (business development)

1st prize for the best technical construction in the German robotics contest Design Challenge 2004 - Wilhelmshaven, Germany

Modelling the movement of a biped robot that imitates the walking of human body, using the working principle of the leg mechanism - developed proof of concept: mechanical, electronics (stepper motors & microcontroller) and software.

Final thesis: Quality of Service in Voice over IP Networks (PDF / Powerpoint) is an experimental study of testing overall call quality (H.323 and SIP) with Hammer Call Analyzer over different network types - with the hipsterish mentor (Mircea VLADUTIU)

EMPRETEC is an integrated capacity-building programme in the area of SMEs and entrepreneurial skills promotion. It is dedicated to helping promising entrepreneurs put their ideas into action and fledgling businesses to grow

Key concepts: opportunity, goal, efficiency, information seeking, competition, business plan, operational planning, monitoring, risk, personal power, influence, self-confidence, quality, SWOT, presentation skills, body language, brain storming, time management

While geeking through High School with the best mentor (Dorin MANZ), I payed attention to:

CISCO Systems CCNA Certificate

Won prizes at national software programming and software creativity contests

ACM Programming Contest

Created the first virtual restaurant from Romania with a colleague which meanwhile morphed to a friend

Technologies: FoxPro, BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, HTML, WML, CGI, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Delphi