Agent 007 As An 'invisible Hand' Of Technical Progress

Someday several centuries ago human species had to live in conditions that we couldn?t even think acceptable. Just consider of life without hot water, electricity, your laptop, the net, Myspace or without lavatory pan. Can you imagine that? Can you? That?s not a reality of a vagrant. You have just dreamt about yourself in a kings? palace of King Arthur.

Is it too much time to pass for you? No probs.

Let?s go just a centennial before modern days. Now it?s the beginning of the 20th century. Just review the upper list and think over how many items are still not discovered.

Since the middle of the 19th century the technical progress has moved forward with huge steps. We live in a time of inventions. Every single day of your life scientists discover something that is urged to make your life more comfortable.

But do you know how the invention appears? Well, nobody knows that for sure. Some believe that is God?s business. He loves us so much that He gives the ideas how to improve our life quality. Others believe that a property of highly developed living matter. They say that we have improved ourselves for the level when we have to find out new circumstances that provide us with inventions. Anyway all of them agree that first of all the idea appears. And the development of this idea is a discovery.

For now you should ask me in which connection I have started this article with James Bond?

Well, the idea is that very often the clue of a new invention appears in one?s heart and is being developed in the other?s one.

Just remember Jules Gabriel Verne and his bunch of fantastic ideas described in his books. Most of that ideas are real now. One day Czech writer Karel Capek has invented the word ?robot? for the first time and now we have dosens of robots of different types. And at last (wow, I?ve managed!) let us think of James Bond who has used numerous devices that were absolutely unreal for the time the novel had been written. Now everyone could buy a spy earpiece device or find a pen that could sign a contract and be used like a gun after that.

Naturally the main two engines of the technical progress are business and government military sector. And in fact that two forces are working together to find out the things you have used to. E.g. Internet has been discovered by militaries for their own needs. And after some time it has fallen into business hands that allowed it to improve to its modern level.

So when you see a new spy device in Bond?s hands it is always a good idea to think a little where it could be used in civil life. Maybe you will be able to invent something that could be useful for many and bring you unbelievable profit.

'I have a dream...' that all of the readers shall dream of strange application of movie devices...

Ready. Steady. Go! Oxagile is going to the USA.

Our CEO Dmitry was going to the States anyway, to meet his friends. So we sat and thought: “Hey, 50% of our clients are from the US already. Why don’t we give Dmitry a hard time: 5 meetings a day to introduce our web application expertise and discuss software development partnership?”

And so we started picking and contacting. Our customers, and their friends; our friends and their customers, old buddies, and virtual strangers. (I really love my team, I should say.)

You never know where you will find your new customer. We are a software outsourcing provider for a number of spheres, but beside our regular audience we got positive reply from companies who we never thought would pay attention to application development at all.

With so much passion we actually underestimated our efforts. We got replies from one third of the US states, and to make Dmitry meet all those nice people during one week we had to clone him! Well, Dmitry had another opinion on that, and since we had most responses from Washington D.C, New York City, and Boston, we have come up with this schedule:

Novermber 2 – 6: Washington D.C, New York City (NY), Wilton (CT), Boston (MA)

Novermber 9 – 13: Dallas (TX), Houston (TX), Austin (TX)

November 16 – 20: San Francisco (CA), Los Angeles (CA)

The other day Dmitry calls me into hi office:

(Dmitry): Darya, how are my meetings doing?

(Darya): Fine, we already have two dedicated offshore project team requests, for Java and for .NET. We are yet to work on PHP and Flash side too. However, most potential customers you are going to meet just stated the date and time. They are too busy to confirm the agenda.

(Dmitry): That’s great. Those people know what they want. The goal of the talks is to discuss their current software situation and future project plans, and see how we can help. They may not start with a offshore development center, but at least they will know what benefits such an option may lead to. Now, make sure that the clients from other states get equal attention as those I am going to meet personally.

(Darya): Sure! Most our clients have seen us only via Skype or ooVoo, and are still buying. However in preparation to this business trip we got negative responses as well. There are so many reasons why people do not believe in offshore outsourcing. Some have had negative experience: they got the project out of control, failed in communications, or were even ripped off. And others just don’t care about a possibility to trust software application development to someone else and concentrate on core strategy.

(Dmitry): But you know what to do. It is the personal approach that breaks the Mighty Wall of Mistrust, not the processes, certified resources or standards. Besides, customers speak louder than words.

If companies like JumpTV, ooVoo, Computoria, and others have appreciated software partnership with us, it is much easier to explain the benefits of outsourcing to new customers.

(Darya): Absolutely, and you know what? Location played into our hands. Julia was talking to a company from New York, and the CEO asked, where we are located. She says, Minsk, Belarus, Eastern Europe. And he says: wow, our CTO is from Belarus, sure let’s meet Dmitry!

(Dmitry): Nice, but you also have to concentrate on those potential clients who are not ready to outsource their software projects for some reasons. Those sales will be most valuable for you.

(Darya): Yes, Sir!

Now we are starting Adwords campaign too, to make sure Dmitry IS busy in the States. We are all excited here. Our customers are used to our remote work and great results. However, a personal meeting is a much better start for productive development partnership.

To be continued… (Where I will share our trip results with you!)

About me

I'm Vicky.

I work as a manager at Burberry online shop.

I'm not very good at computers but my friends from Oxagile website development team helped me to create this blog.

I'm going to write some news here soon.

Welcome to PNN!

This is your blog, and this text is in what is called an article box.  In fact everything on this page are in boxes like this one.  And, everything  can be moved, edited or deleted.

To move a box:
Put the cursor in the blue menu bar at the top of the box, click and  hold the mouse button, and drag it.  Let go of the mouse button to drop it where ever you want.

To edit something:
Click the 'edit' link in the blue menu bar.  Edit the content, click 'save' and you're done.

To delete a box:
 Click on 'delete' or the big red 'X' icon.

To change how the page looks:
If you look on the left you'll see a vertical tool bar.  Click on 'Page Design' to change the style or layout.

Change your personal preferences:
Click on the 'Profile' button.