DataArt hosts its fourth Corporate Conference.

This was to be DataArt's first conference held on its own premises, as the company has finally found a place of its own to settle down in Saint Petersburg: a bright, spacious office with several conference rooms and even its own café. At last DataArt can hold important events in the comfort of its own home, with all-important tea and coffee always near to hand.

This was the fourth corporate conference, and DataArt remains unique among IT firms by being the only one to hold such events on a regular basis. As ever, Eugene Goland and Alexei Miller, two of the directors from New York headquarters, came over to meet the new faces, update everybody on what's going on with projects, and describe the view from across the pond. In business terms, of course.

For starters Mikhail Zavileyskiy, head of operations in St. Petersburg, revealed the company's Business and Strategic plans and presented the company Values and Mission. He encouraged everyone to play an active role in developing the company's Mission idea.

Alexey Filimonov, CTO, explained project process optimization, and talked about work that was underway and yet to come on the expansion of the company's knowledge base. DataArt is soon to begin an onward learning process with seminars and lectures by internal company experts, university lecturers and other guest specialists. Alexey concluded his presentation with an outline of DataArt's recently launched Open Vacancy Contest.

Alexei Miller's fascinating presentation on company sales statistics and account leading activities came straight from GoldMine Contact Database, and clearly demonstrated the tool's aptitude for systemizing sales workflows.

Eugene Goland announced the birth of his long-awaited brainchild, the OOBP (Offshore Outsourcing Best Practices) Community for small and medium-sized businesses, and the pre-launch of the community site, www.oobp.org, which is sure to prove a very useful communication tool for community members.

For the second course, project managers dished up a mouthwatering selection of reports on this quarter's projects, spiced with information on other interesting developments. Alexey Filimonov had declared before the conference that a vote would be held to choose the best speaker out of the project managers and developers. Igor Bodarevsky, project manager, was placed first, with Artem Zakharov and Artyom Astafurov second and third respectively.

At the end of the conference, just as DataArt was about to get back down to its usual business, a surprise tea-and-coffee-tasting event gave way to dessert- webmaster Olga Goncharenko treated everyone to cake in celebration of her birthday. The tea and cake (or coffee and cake, for those who have less blood in their caffeine) went down well with all.

But it's never over until the last dance. Eugene Goland took the floor, officially endorsing the pre-launch of the pre-announced (at the conference, remember?) OOBP site, version 0.9. The functionality and content of the site was presented, and Community Founder Eugene Goland thanked the OOBP team and praised its work.

And those rainclouds? We chased them all away with a wild evening at the Red Fox- our usual haunt for beer Thursdays, only this time we were having a beer Friday. It was a special event indeed, since the New York office is rarely able to join the fun. But on this occasion, we were even celebrating one of their birthdays- Alexei Miller was among the thirteen (I kid you not, thirteen!) people whose birthdays we were celebrating- Yuri kabrits, Alexei Miller, Andrey Konovalov, Pavel Sokolov (also winner of Translator of the Week competition), Raul Averianov, Artem Zakharov, Andrey Magazinov, Anna Schultz, Philipp Korniets, Pavel Kozak, Gregory Burmistrov, Sergey Sosnovsky and Olga Goncharenko. Newlywed Artyom Astafurov was also heartily congratulated.

One might have thought that celebrating thirteen birthdays on Friday the thirteenth was tempting fate, but at the stroke of midnight none of us turned into gargoyles and there was no sinister laughter from under the floorboards, just the cheers and general clamour of a big bunch of friends having a great time and a well-deserved night out. DataArt looks forward to a long and prosperous future, laughing in the face of ill omens all the way. As for the gargoyle bit- well, we all look the same as we did before... don't we?

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