R/GA Thoughts on the Future of Technology

Published on September 4, 2015October 10, 2020

One of the most Top 10 innovative companies in the world, according to Fast Company, R/GA is known for the agency that reinvented itself over and over again when the business context required it. Technology has always played a major role in this transformation. Here’s how some of the brightest minds in R/GA are thinking today of the future of technology.

Bob Greenberg picks his favorite technologies

“The physical space and how it connects with the digital landscape is the next new big thing,” according to Bob Greenberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO of R/GA. Greenberg discusses how he has been able to recognize cycles of technological change and adjust his business to stay ahead of the curve. And a nice bonus about how R/GA’s new headquarters, in the Hudson Yard development in New York, will be a “physical version of our capabilities,” employing cutting technology to blur the boundaries between remote and in-person working. Read the full article on Campaign US

Los Angeles Dodgers

The LA Dodgers Accelerator, a program in partnership with R/GA and TechStars, has recently kicked off its first class today with 10 sports-related tech startups. Unlike other typical Silicon Valley accelerators, the 10 companies which vary widely in stage, funds raised, and revenue, instead of shaping themselves up to close a seed round, will be leveraging the network of the Dodgers and R/GA to run pilots, forge partnerships and ramp up sales. Read the full article on TechCrunch

Bringing Data Into the Fitness Club

Jonathan Greene, VP, managing director, mobile platforms, R/GA, speaks with Carlos Becil, CMO, Equinox, about the company’s new “Connected Cycling” program in this new FutureVision interview. Watch the full interview on Future Vision (free subscription required)

Connected spaces

R/GA’s Future Vision magazine article on how rather than trying to compete with e-commerce on convenience, brick-and-mortar stores are revamping their physical spaces to better showcase their strengths. Read the full article on Future Vision (free subscription required)

What the top innovators say about the future of video

R/GA’s Taras Wayner and Chris Northam participated in an Adweek and DCN dinner to talk about disruption in the advertising industry. Servings of Periscope and Meerkat were on the menu. Read the full story on AdWeek

SiteCore DEVs Wanted at R/GA

Published on March 25, 2015October 10, 2020

Facts & Dots

R/GA Bucharest is looking for 5 great senior developers with extensive “hands on” experience with SiteCore platform. We will be working full time for at least 6 months on the global rolling out of VOLVO’s 70 websites. Depending on how we get along together and how you like the project, we can discuss a full-time position with R/GA Bucharest.

Global rolling out of VOLVO’s 70 websites

New VOLVO project @ R/GA Stockholm

The projects you’ll be will be working together with our colleagues in R/GA Stockholm range from simple to extremely complex and they all connect with the global rolling out of 70 sites of the most admired Swedish card brand, VOLVO.

And this is what representatives of VOLVO believe about R/GA Stockholm’s work so far

Awesome team & chill atmosphere

Throughout the project, you’ll be working along with a great bunch of guys and ladies at R/GA Bucharest and R/GA Stockholm. To get an idea about who we are and what we do, read my post Life at R/GA.

We are extremely passionate about what we do and we do it really well. Last year the projects we’ve worked on brought R/GA 39 international awards—Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Clio, IAB Mixx Global, MMA Smarties, Lovies, London International Awards, AdWeek, Brand Republic etc.

Senior Developer & Architect, Sitecore

3+ years of strong development experience in Sitecore; hands on design of portal CMS pages using Sitecore best practices (data templates, layouts, sub-layouts and user controls);
Development of user controls; integrating Sitecore with backend systems; Content Management best practices in creating and maintaining content tree; rendering of the content to different Web Pages and mobile devices;
4+ Years of C# software development experience including C#, ASP.NET, LINQ, AJAX, Web Service development;
Proficient on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery;
Familiarity with JavaScript frameworks and experience with usage and implementation;
Provide training and guidance on development techniques and best practices using Sitecore;
Ability to create interfaces that are fast, consistent across browsers, and demonstrate an intimate knowledge of browser quirks and best practices;
Proficient with object oriented design & programming, common design patterns, Component development, reuse of code;
Hands-on software troubleshooting experience.

Apply for the job

If all the above sound good to you and you professional experience comes close or exceeds our requirements, we would love to meet you. You can drop me a line or send your CV at [email protected]. I’ll come back to you with within 24 hours and give you all the details you need. And if you would like to see how life at R/GA is, just have a look here:

Life at R/GA Bucharest

Published on March 24, 2015October 10, 2020

Facts & Dots

R/GA Bucharest – a great bunch of gals and guys passionate about digital, loving to work and have fun together. Today we are 12 people: six front-end developers, one back-end developer, three QA engineers, a Human Resources Manager and a General Manager.

Some of us have been with R/GA Bucharest since 2010; some left us, but they do not have time to miss us, as we still go out together; some moved to R/GA London, but we keep in touch as we work on the same projects.

Colleagues we want on board

We plan to grow the smart way, namely step by step and making sure we bring on board people who share our values—passion, fairness, competitivity and pragmatism.

We do not create or build projects for the sake of the project, craft or specific technology, but for solving real business problems or making making users’ life easier. We have a multi-disciplinary approach for any project we take and we make the best use of our global network experiences and resources.

R/GA—for the connected age, so it’s only natural that we are always looking for like-minded people—whether they are front-end, back-end developers, QAs, but we do appreciate a lot those creative guys and gals, open-minded, with an eye for “the next big thing”, mastering those tools or technologies we don’t, not afraid of taking risks or doing the things that haven’t been tried before.

Innovative projects & new technologies

Besides having fun together, there’s a lot of work to be done and we do take it seriously, yet we know how important it is to maintain a good work-life balance, so we do pay attention to this. We try to keep meetings short and listen to good music…

Chances of working for brands such as Google, Microsoft, VOLVO, McDonald’s, Nike, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever do not come very often, but we are very lucky from this point of view. We get to do things others do not even dare to dream of. Unfortunately, we cannot publicly communicate about the projects we currently work on… you know how confidentiality works!

Everything we do is powered by technology, which, along with design, has been essential to our legacy as a creative leader for more than 30 years. We believe in a creative use of technology and following someone else’s footsteps may not necessarily be the best option, so we favor explorators… people who are comfortable trying and testing new technologies, connecting devices, staying close to creative tech minds.

Quality above all

R/GA Bucharest Quality is an important attribute of all R/GA delivered solutions – that’s is why our QAs play an important role at R/GA.

They share the company’s values too: they are curious, they dare to do things differently, they have a “Show, don’t tell” attitude while working towards making sure R/GA’s vision turns to reality – enriching people’s lives with everything that we do. They enjoy their work and strive to get better at it, every day.

From a technical perspective, R/GA’s QA engineers are involved in all the phases of the product design and build cycle and they need to be ready to dive into both automated (using Cucumber and Webdriver technologies) and manual testing for covering functional as well other non-functional quality criteria, like for example usability, performance or security.

Awesome team & chill atmosphere

If you wonder what we do for fun, you should know that every Friday we taste a new type of beer at our Beer Club gathering. From time to time one or two of us cook for the entire team, but cakes and sweats are a must almost every day. We often have breakfast altogether.

Our Bucharest office is located near Victoria Square, in DBH building (Buzesti 50-52), so Thalia restaurant is one of our favorite places to have our lunches … and with spring coming, we expect to go out after work more often to have a drink, laugh and have a great time.

39 international awards and counting…

Besides having fun together, there’s a lot of work to be done and we do take it seriously, yet we know how important it is to maintain a good work-life balance, so we do pay attention to this. We love agile, we try to keep meetings short and listen to good music.

We are extremely passionate about what we do and we do it really well. Only in 2014 the projects R/GA Bucharest worked on with colleagues in other offices brought R/GA 39 international awards.

Knowledge sharing

Knowledge-sharing is a must have, so we’re present at different local industry events or Headlines, our weekly R/GA tech meeting where latest technologies are put under microscope. That’s why you’ll see us at Bucharest Frontend meetup, Tabara de Testare, JSCamp, SmartWeb, HowToWeb/StartUp Spotlight, WIAD and many more.

We also read a lot, experience and write about technology and digital stuff for TheStage, TechBlog, CTRL-D.ro, and many other publications. You can have a look here:

If you want to find out more about R/GA, please visit R/GA.com, R/GA Tech blog, R/GA Accelerator

Joining R/GA Bucharest

Now that you have an idea of what’s like working with R/GA and you want to give it a try, you can send your CV at [email protected]. You’ll hear from me within next 24 hours.

P.S. This post has been written, edited and commented by the entire team at R/GA Bucharest. It took us some time to do it, but we hope it gives a good idea about who we are and what we do together.

R/GA Bucharest Welcomes Students For A Day of Programming & Robotics

Published on November 18, 2014October 10, 2020

Facts & Dots

Last week, R/GA Bucharest welcomed the Spectrum Constanta School to the office for a chance to meet a group of students who have expressed an interest and talent for informatics. This also served as a great opportunity for the Bucharest team to bond with students from this technology-focused school and connect with their university network, all while providing students with a fun and worthwhile experience.

10 students, including three winners from the Romanian Informatics Olympics, were selected from the school to travel the 250km across Romania to Bucharest, and discover first-hand what being a programmer at R/GA is all about.

Knowledge sharing and teaching

“Being able to support an initiative like this is amazing. Each one of us was given a chance at some point in our life, so it only makes sense for us to create new meaningful ones for this younger generation. When you have the opportunity to teach somebody, you challenge yourself, you learn twice over, and you get to live through an exciting, satisfying experience. As the American poet Mark Van Doren so eloquently put it, “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” It’s a temptation we should all fall for from time to time,”

said R/GA Bucharest’s Ana-Maria Bodgan (General Manager, R/GA Bucharest).

Open standards developers at R/GA Bucharest, Mihnea Belcin and Mircea Georgescu, were responsible for teaching the class how to assemble and connect the electronics, how to code two tank robots, all while explaining to them how the technology works. Each tank used a Raspberry Pi running a node.js server which allowed them to control the tank in real time using socket.io. They used the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi as outputs controlling a motor driver that powered the motors. In the end, they were able to use a web browser to control the tanks and battle against each other.

Mihnea sharing R/GA success stories. Obviously, R/GA Bucharest team was part of it.

Mihnea championed the idea of this event for the last few months, and worked hard to make it happen. He not only shared R/GA’s story, but also taught the students exactly what a programmer job entails and what it takes to be successful, offering them valued insight into the industry that many students in their position may never get to experience.

“I started my career in web development thanks to my informatics teacher from high school. As an accomplished programmer, I wanted to give back to those that had laid this path in front of me. That’s really how this idea came to life – organizing a workshop to show children what life as a coder is really like. Spending a day with some of the smartest guys from Spectrum School was an amazing experience. I got the opportunity to speak to them about the benefits of being a coder, showcased some cool projects we have built, and talked about the technology behind it. I hope this was just the first of a series of workshops, by the end of which more children will choose computer science as a career path,”

said Mihnea.

Mircea also served as an incredibly inspiring teacher. He explained to the two teams of students how to build their machine prototypes, taking them through the details of the technology and design.

“This project involved using things like Raspberry Pi and Node.js to build tanks, which the kids could control and interact with via a browser. It was a great way for them to understand what kind of things they could build in a few years using their programming skills. Having the chance to show such smart kids how they can explore these possibilities has been a tremendous experience. It gets you out of your comfort zone and makes you rethink everything you know. It forces you to find simple explanations for complicated things. It’s the kind of experience I wish I had when I was kid! It was very challenging, fun and useful for all of us. I can’t wait to do it again,”

said Mircea.

Note: This article was originally published on R/GA’s Blog

R/GA Bucharest Partners with TechHub for the First Frontend Development Meetup

Published on August 21, 2014October 10, 2020

Facts & Dots

It all started in 2013 with 4 R/GA Bucharest guys – Adrian Olaru, Mihnea Belcin, Andrei Rosca and Gabi Totoliciu, who wanted to get in touch with frontend developers in Romania. That’s how the first Frontend Development Meetup in Bucharest was born. Today there are over 400 members, and the numbers keep growing. The mission, as defined by this group, is to get frontend developers under one community, so they can help each other to get better at writing code through knowledge sharing.

The First Frontend Development Meet Up

Frontend Development Meetup 3 — Getting ready for the first Frontend Development Meetup in Bucharest

As you may already know, good things come to those who wait and work hard, so after all kinds and ups and downs, the First Frontend Development Meetup took place on August 6th, at TechHub (probably the best cradle in Romania for technology geeks and startups).

The event opened with a surprising and well-received introduction by Shrek (Adi Olaru) and Hell Boy (Mihnea Belcin) about the mission of the Frontend Development Community, followed by two hours of speakers and presentations. Barry Wacksman & Chris Stutzman’s book “Connected by Design,” was also mentioned during the Q&A.

One Happy, Engaged Audience

Frontend Development Meetup 2 — Happy audience @ the first edition of Frontend Development Meetup

Around 100 people, mostly frontend developers, were present and it seemed the topics were so interesting that everyone remained throughout the whole event. The delicious snacks, free beer and Red Bull drinks given to all participants by some very good-looking girls played a part in loosening their tongues, yet if it wasn’t for Mihnea’s engaging math-driven CSS and the controversial SVG presentations, this event wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. There were at least 10 questions following each presentation, many engaging talks among the participants during the breaks, posts and pictures shared on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Relevant Content

Math-Driven CSS with Mihnea was an engaging presentation about the many ways of combining mathematics with CSS. He illustrated a number of problems developers currently have and how this can be solved with the help of mathematics. His final experiment which made use of “Leap” made the public ask for more. His presentation slides can be seen on Mihnea’s blog and an article about the same subject is already listed on R/GA’s Tech Blog

SVG with Armin was an introduction to vector graphics, and how to use them in the browser. Although his talk was introductory and he gave few practical examples, it sprung a fierce debate on performance, svg vs css and other practices.

What’s In It for R/GA Bucharest?

You may wonder why would our office would partner in such an event. Well, the answer is quite simple. Well, first of all here you’ll always meet the A-players. Those Romanian guys who do the frontend magic. Secondly, because it’s a great chance for all our frontend guys to gain more knowledge and stay updated with what Romanian tech guys are up to. Last, but not least important, it’s a chance for us to show the kind of work we do at R/GA Bucharest.

Life @ R/GA Bucharest

We have met great people here that share our passion for technology; people we would like to keep close to us, so we are definitely going to go back and talk about the cool stuff we do at R/GA. And if you would like to see how life at R/GA is, just have a look here:

Ana-Maria Bogdan

Questioning the Status Quo

R/GA

R/GA Thoughts on the Future of Technology

Bob Greenberg picks his favorite technologies

Los Angeles Dodgers

Bringing Data Into the Fitness Club

Connected spaces

What the top innovators say about the future of video

SiteCore DEVs Wanted at R/GA

Global rolling out of VOLVO’s 70 websites

Awesome team & chill atmosphere