This year we've celebrated Halloween during the whole week - total horror and dreadful fear have filled the office. The very Halloween Day was on the most grotty day of the week, Monday, so we decided that Friday was just perfect for overcoming all the difficulties diving into the wicked fun.

Bloody mirrors, dead bodies, skulls, and poisons have inspired our team in the sake of one main goal - Halloween Games with the traditional Pumpkin competition. Year by year, this competition amazes by the showcased masterpieces. This time we've seen the zombie-kid, the "Friday release", the cat, and two top contestants among which it was hard to choose the winner - Hamburger Pumpkin with fries and Cola, and Scream Pumpkin (after the same-name movie) which was a fuming luminous masterpiece! So, the visual effects won, though the McDonalds Pumpkin is always in our hearts.

Apart from the contests which have become traditional for our team, this time we've tried the services of a make-up expert. Wow, from the very morning we were so scary and infusive! It was really hard to pick up the best make-up and costume.      

All in all, this Halloween was very exciting - the winners got the special prize (treats, of course!), and others had lots of fun taking part in the contests and making selfies in their mind-blowing images! 

Men don't actually have a holiday in our country - this is a bit sad, and it hurts them as well (we constantly hear their complaints, e.g. "You, women, celebrate your Day on the 8th of March, and why there is no Day for men?!")

For historical reasons, 23rd of February have always been considered as the Men's Day, but nowadays Ukraine's got the Defender's Day on the 14th of October. So, we decided to satisfy the expectations and give every man of our team...a car! No ifs, and's or buts - our company can afford giving a high-class car to its every male.

This is the way we greet our men with the upcoming holidays. Our chocolate car fleet has spread over the office to come across the new owners!

14th of October is an important day for our country, the Ukrainian Cossacks’ Day and a holiday marred by the ongoing situation in the East of Ukraine, Ukraine Defender’s Day.

This day is not really a holiday of all men. It became significant only nowadays when the modern history of Ukraine is being written. This is the day of those who defend the integrity of our country, those who help the army, who support people that became victims of the warfare, the day of volunteers and donors.
Our company constantly takes part in the charity events aimed at helping the emigres and  Kiev’s anti-terrorist operation soldiers. Our team collects money, sends the equipment and all the necessary stuff through the authorized delegates.

We encourage you not to be indifferent to what's happening around you and be kind to one another!  

We spent last weekend in the Carpathians. It’s been so weird — we went there before the first snow. But we discovered the other side of Carpathians — they are beautiful at any time of the year.

The brightest experience of the first day was bathing in open air hot tubs and swimming in a mountain river. That was kinda a unique spa procedure! After that we chased down this awesome experience with some frog legs — it turns out that in Zakarpats’ka oblast’ there is a village of Turyi Remety, where frog legs is a common dish introduced a long time ago by Bonapartist militaries who came here not long after the battle of Waterloo. In the end of that extremely impression-rich day, after lots of bathing, waterfalls and stuffing ourselves with delicious dishes of Carpathian cuisine, we took a tour to the ruins of abandoned Nevitsky castle and tried to find a Bloody Maiden, who resides there according to the legends. After coming back we even managed to have a little stroll in Uzhgorod, the town we know and love from our previous Carpathian voyages. On the second day, we tried to check out the local mineral water. But it’s totally disgusting — the more disgusting it is the more illnesses it cures. Then we visited a couple of forests, rafted down Lake Synevir, munched out in local Kolyba, and tried to play trembita, but only Kolya and Nina managed to make it sound. And then we went to the Brown Bear Rehabilitation Center and spent some time with those cuties! They’re so marvelous and funny! On the other hand, on Shypot waterfall we met no less wonderful local dweller: a huge, fat, but very cute pig, that goes to the waterfall every morning to eat the food tourists feed it, and then comes back home in the evening. It’s so fat its belly is dragging on the ground! By the way, its hair was the same color as Kolya’s — they buck for Richard Gere for greater show. And the next evening we even managed to celebrate Marina’s birthday with a massive unicorn-shaped cake. We wanted to visit a nearby wedding, but we were so exhausted by that time…

We will remember the third day by Kosin thermal springs, which were very hard to bid farewells to. They are a small but classy aqua park with thermal water and royal saunas. After that we enjoyed Hungarian cuisine and wine in Turkish cellars of Beregovo. Even those who don’t drink alcohol degusted — who can resist such an interesting narrative…
And then, we had to go home. And we did — refreshed, rested and full of readiness to burst up into the daily routine.

More photos: our Facebook page and Instagram.

Programmer’s day was Monday this year, and as we know, all Mondays are too hard to celebrate. That’s why we decided to make the day sweeter and cheer up everyone with holiday muffins!
Thank you, programmer guys, you’re so cool!

This Friday we had a major competition of this century — Olimpiada-mamina-pomada, where teams took part in different competitions, struggling to win the main prize, a teambuilding event for their whole department.
The tension was extreme. The air was full of competition and bribery of those counting the points. But everything was honest. The leaders of the whole competition almost lay their hands on the prize, but thanks to Arkasha’s and Yura’s ping-pong and table football mad skills, they remained empty-handed.
Ping-pong and table football contests have been held during the day, and in the evening we had the main part, which started with radio-controlled car race on a special track. You think this is easy and fun? Perhaps it would be if the cars we got that day have been fully-functional. And as they were not, the task turned out to be impossible, that’s why points were awarded to whoever managed to make a full circle.
Hanky-panky contest you’ve already seen on video turned out to be the most favorite one. Jet-fast Kolya and scrupulous Yarik earned their eternal fame. By the way, Kolya confirmed his longstanding beer pong championship.
Basketball and shooting are contests for the most accurate and precise ones. They were anything but easy. Destroying a paper cup tower from the distance with a money rubber band faster than your opponent does it definitely takes some nerve.
The major attraction was cheese and wine test-off. Experts have been offered four types of wine and three types of cheese. The task was to test them and put them in the order from the cheapest to most expensive. That was hard. Still, we have a developer who managed to estimate all the cheese.
In general, Olimpiada-mamina-pomada went great. We’re looking forward to Winter Office Olympics now!

More photos: our Facebook page and Instagram

We celebrated Independence Day in the way only Ukrainians can do that — with borsch, varenyky, and pyrizhky. Indeed, true Cossacks have to be well-fed.
We finished borsch with outstanding speed. If Guinness World Record Book representatives were here, the record would be ours.
Apart from national cuisine, there were some gifts for those who arrived at work in vyshyvanka, — some goodies with national symbols and ethnic charms.
Glory to Ukraine!

Pirate Party is here to keep the best corporative traditions of Aurora Technologies afloat!

Here it goes, our favorite month of the summer — July, which means it’s time for summer corporative party and fun! Aurora Technologies Team is against boring and dull corporative parties — this time we have a cool Pirate Party!

We don’t subdue the oceans (although we’re ready to), but we managed to subdue a swimming pool and a bar counter where we were dealing with pirate drinks! Four teams had to pass various trials to win the main prize: the Deadman’s Treasure Chest! Obstacle zone, table football with players of the size of a human, fence play on the arena, beerpong and water contests at the pool zone — they were fighting courageously for an honor to become the pirate of the day. Photo contests were the most creative part of it: you had to take pictures with 10 different trees, 10 treasures, under the water, lying horizontally with the rest of your team in 10 different places and so on. For creativity and contests, the teams were awarded piasters. And the richest one had redeemed the Captain’s treasure eventually, and the beautiful life of the winners had started…
The evening chill out time had been furnished out with a dancing party. Vitalik, head of the creative team, turned out to be not only a gifted designer but also a talented DJ — his awesome tracks lifted even the most tired and lazy ones and made them dance all through the night!

Tunderbird, pirates! That party had gone down a storm!

More photos - our Facebook page.

We celebrated the holiday of children at the first day of the summer getting nostalgic about the bright times of our own childhood.

We arranged a day from 1990’s. That was a serious piece of organization: we got chips, Tetris games, 8-bit consoles (and we decided to leave those in our office permanently — it’s definitely something to be proud of).

Plus, we had a very sweet contest. Some guys brought photos of them in early childhood and we arranged a quiz in which we had to guess who’s who. The winner, Ilya, got the best prize you can imagine at the 1st of July — a large box of ice-cream!

For our team, the major holiday of May (or perhaps even of the whole year) is our Company’s Birthday.

Of course, we celebrated it in keeping with the best traditions: with a large birthday cake and Champaign. But the main event of the day was the general meeting where our director Roman congratulated everybody with finishing another successful year and starting the next one: full of new aims, and new results. Many deserved words of gratefulness had been said, and not only the teams had been awarded honorary awards, but also some of our most heroic individuals got their awards. We’re proud of you guys: without you, we’d never achieved such results.

Happy Birthday, Aurora Technologies!

We decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on Friday. Tuesday was so productive that we decided to reschedule that holiday and arrange a little home party the next day. Such an evening is a perfect time to drink some beer, but only the green one!

The greenest colleagues have been awarded with prizes, the, um, not-so-green ones — with some memorial gifts.

In general, the greenest Friday of the year went extremely well — tabletop games, a hookah — we really had a good time.

As most of our team has been lounging around at home, its active part decided to spend the weekend properly and set off for Bukovel. Why would anyone stay at home at the eighth of March, if there’s skiing and snowboarding?!

That ride was tremendous!

Naturally, we divided into professionals and amateurs at once, but everyone still had their fun! The weather was warm, and fitted the learning process best. Until the end of the weekend our team was ready to take part in X-Games!

Apart from that, we managed to ride ATVs and horses! What’s our secret, you may ask? We don’t know. Perhaps, it was that magic mountain air.

After Bukovel we got on a gourmet trip in Ivano-Frankivsk. The cuisine in that town is marvelous! We’ve managed to gain back all the weight we lost during the active part of our vacation at once!

International Women’s Day, the first holiday of the spring, it always brings joy to one’s home, and, in our case to our office as well.

Our beautiful 15% of the team started their morning with discovering some nice presents from our company: spa cosmetics and accessories. What else a woman needs to achieve complete happiness? Flowers, right. But our guys had thought about that beforehand, and their flowers weren’t just some ordinary compositions, those were real masterpieces! And of course, we couldn’t do without some goodies, but girls didn’t lose their mind and consumed them carefully to keep fit.

Oh, it’s so cool to be a girl in a team of guys!

Our girls are the best! We’re glad to have them all on board!

Aurora Technologies team took part in Blagodar Foundation’s charity event and made a fair share of contribution to a good cause.

Thank all of you who took part in fundraising and special thanks for those who joined the ride. Can you imagine how much happier you’ve made those kids by helping the sponsors and participators of the campaign?

Blagodar Foundation was founded by one of our colleagues, Klim. And our team always supports every campaign the Foundation starts.

It’s good to do good!

On the threshold of St. Valentine’s Day, “love is in the air” in our office already!

Our favorite characters from “Love is…” bubble-gum papers follow this holiday everywhere. This time, they’ve dropped in our office to uncover a couple of secrets of Aurora Technologies.

We made a massive heart from the thematic pictures of those two with little descriptions of our team’s routine and named the whole project “Aurora Technologies is…” It’s so sweet! You can check it out in Facebook.

Although St. Valentine’s Day suggests romantic dinner with beloved ones as a proper celebration, we couldn’t help but arrange a little celebration in our office as well. Here in Aurora Technologies, we love each other very much, that’s why it’s our company’s holiday, too!

Romantic and sweet tea-party was very touching and inspiring: everyone got a branded tea cup, and those muffins with different fillings were so good!

But those weren’t the main presents. Balloons turned out to be the best ones! If you weren’t there, you don’t know how many ways of having a good time you can afford if you have a balloon. It seems a few completely new ways of using that fabulous invention of the mankind were discovered in our office that day.

The Holiday has come to its end, leaving warm memories and surviving balloons all over the office.

We wish you all harmony and lots of love for life!

Tabletop games are lots of fun! We’re still cautious about Munchkin, as it will most likely last forever if we ever risk to start playing it. Some part of our team doesn’t feel very good about it, but what can we do?
Dynamic Jungle Speed helped us perk up and concentrate, and then we matched our acting skills playing Voobrazhariy— a game akin to Alias and Activity.
That Friday night was loads of fun! We should do this more often, don’t you think, folks?

So, what was your New Year’s company party like? Was it a smug burlesque party, the Great Gatsby himself would gladly attend? Well, lucky you!

Aurora Technologies Team had a mind-blowing rock throwdown —we celebrated at full throttle!

Everyone could try on the role of tough drummers and guitarists with real instruments in the photo zone. The most courageous were challenged by a fierce bull on a rodeo attraction — that ferocious beast wasn’t easy to saddle and ride even for a few seconds.

All the party long we’ve been enjoying the tremendous shows: barmens’ show, drummers’ show, and those dancing girls did quite a show as well! Also, there was a bunch of competition with true rock prizes!

But the most fierce part was when Kiev’s best cover group — Rebel Rocks — appeared on stage. Those guys made even the most modest geeks dance and sing along! Then our teammate Sergey Manyuk rendered Okean Elzy’s song “Kvitka”. After that, the poor fellow had to fight his way through the crowd of fans —girls gave him no peace!

We welcomed in our New Year with Bengal lights and Champaign, but not to the chime of bells, but to the rhythm of drums!

They say you’re going to spend the whole year the way you welcome it in. If that’s true, our 2016 will be lots of fun!

We’ll rock it!

More photos - on our Facebook and Instagram.

This Halloween, the Jack-o’-lantern contest has become an annual family tradition.

Each year our folks keep trying to scare the souls out of each other creating those fearful pieces of art. This year was no exception, of course. A bit of humor, a bit of technology (fairy lights and flashlights), loads of candles and zest... And presentation matters a lot, of course!

This year one of the departments did an amazing work and got the top score for it. The Perch Lantern won this year’s contest and marked its own place in history as one of the most amazing masterpieces of all time.

Fear and terror inhabited our residence last Friday.

We did our best to survive.

As we understood clearly that evil spirits could only be driven out with fear, we’ve made a bunch of dreadful Jack-o'-lanterns to scare them away. We did our best to make them look frightful — we don’t lack the fantasy for that, oh no. But we failed to keep them out of this place. Our teammates have all been possessed by those foul creatures… or have they always been that way?

Solutions and potions we drank, poisons and antidotes we took. We almost prayed for those lanterns. But they showed no mercy, which made us leave the battlefield for bowling. But that was a different battle…

More photos - on our FB page and Instagram.

We’ve bought a gyro board to ride in our office! Now we’re trying to master it by falling, getting loads of bruises and crushing stuff. Water dispenser and a few pieces of floor molding— that is the price we had to pay to learn to ride that infernal thing.

But if not to mention that, it’s kinda cool. Now we have a hi-tech vehicle to ride along with our traditional scooters. For pictures and more details, please visit our social networks.

How could we overlook this holiday on October, 14 if more than half (way more than half, actually) of our team are men? Of course, we couldn’t!
As everyone is aware that “winter is coming”, we decided to present our guys with something warm so that they could survive even the most severe frosts. Warm smiles of our own as a bonus, we feasted jolly along with our defenders, rolling themselves cozily in their new plaid rugs.

One more thing — we care about each other’s health. We purchased an exerciser and installed it in our gaming lounge. That thing isn’t only good when you’re cold, it’s a life saver when your back hurts. That’s how we take care of our men!

Once more, we've got a new residence! Of course, we've been experiencing certain difficulties saying goodbyes to the superheroes in our old office, but that has already become history, which means it's time to turn the page and start everything all over again!

Our new place is kinda austere, but we’re gonna fit it up and make it look neat and cozy, so the environment tunes everyone’s mood up for high-productive work.

Today Aurora Technologies team was celebrating three recent IT holidays: Tester’s Day, Designer’s Day and the Day of the Programmer — all of these were celebrated on the last week, can you imagine it?

That was a really soulful feast: those holiday-themed cupcakes were most delicious, they made our guys’ Monday! Let’s hope that was a proper start of the week and it will keep them in the right mood until weekend!

Aurora Technologies team has decided to lift the veil over some of the unrevealed secrets of space by attending a spherical cinema in ATMASFERA 360 planetarium.
We watched ‘Threat from Space’ and ‘Realm of Light’. The show was far shorter than we’d hoped. Chilling music and pretty offscreen voice (thanks to which some of our mates had managed to have a nap, by the way) harmonized with stunning footage.

Inside of the planetarium building a truly special thematic atmosphere prevails — planets, telescopes, multimedia games, oh, and there is an extraordinary ‘Under-the-Microscope Zoo’ there!

Anyway, we were thrilled to bits. And we’re gonna visit that marvelous place once more, for sure!

Bruised people roam around our office this week.

No, there is no physical punishment penalty here. And no meeting with senior officer ends up with fighting in our company either.

We just played paintball. Now that was a psychological release! What a venting! Those fierce team-on-team battles were lots of fun: we built strategies, made up designations, codenames, and phrases.

After the ‘war’ everyone was tired, ‘wounded’, bruised, but totally happy and satisfied.

No doubt, we’ll do that again!

This Friday night was dedicated to tabletop games. Believe it or not, our Jenga tower came out to be 38 floors high! Few Aurora Technologies Team members proved themselves to be Jenga gurus: what they’ve been showing is a real magic!

Dixit, on the other hand, has turned out to be harder than it seemed, as it’s not all about juggle, but for the creative thinking and imagination.

Anyways, that was an interesting Friday.

Here comes the hot summer, and our July, 4th American Style Party rocks in right on cue! Our celebration was just as cool as in the USA!

Rodeo on a tramp, sumo battle challenge, beerpong, pool competitions and water rides — that was tremendous!

Plus, our chefs also put their hand in play: everyone was stuffing their face with delicious burgers, hotdogs and barbecues. And punch, of course. Lots of it.

We’re not sure how do they do it in the USA, but our American Style Party was rocking the place!

More photos - on our Instagram and FB page! 

This weekend Aurora Technologies team visited Chernobyl.

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is a restricted area, which has been designated for evacuation after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. Sure enough, this was not the most positive excursion, but the Chernobyl disaster is an important page of history that made its mark on our land and people, so we just couldn’t miss our chance to behold the consequences of the world’s largest nuclear accident.

It was interesting and a bit scary – to roam around the stone jungle of the abandoned city of Prypyat, to explore an old tottering school and find there a bunch of old exercise books and school journals untouched for decades; to get lost in an old swimming-pool and deserted hotel – sometimes it felt like a horror movie…

We also learned a couple of quite interesting facts about the Chernobyl disaster and visited a Soviet over-the-horizon radar Duga-1 – so huge that we felt like tiny ants...

This excursion evokes mixed feelings. It’s exciting by all means, though on the other hand it’s sad and kind of depressing. Nevertheless, we were glad to be there as we realize such an opportunity doesn’t knock at your door often.

At last, sunny May is here along with its so welcomed flowers and tempting green grass. Is there any better season for a picnic?

That was so cool! Steaks and barbecues, burgers and grilled vegetables… Yummy! Many compliments to our chefs!

That outing has gone down a storm: Frisbee, volleyball, football and badminton — a picnic with no active outdoor sports and games is not a picnic at all! Live hiking songs and “Alias” game were a wonderful final flourish to conclude the event with.

In one word, hiking season has officially been opened in Aurora Technologies. This is just the beginning!

More photos - on our FB page!

Aurora Technologies football team is one of 12 teams participating in DOU IT CUP 2015 IT LEAGUE.

We’ve got into the Silver group, so our opponents are Crytek, Luxoft, Infopulse, DAXX and Level Up teams. This should be interesting! Go for it, guys, we believe in you!

We decided to celebrate this April Fool’s Day by organizing a “Guess who?” contest. Everyone had a chance to show their mental acumen by guessing our colleagues on their 16-year-old passport photos.

Those pics are really interesting. We thank peeps who allowed to use their passport photos tremendously. Though some folks are still sure that people on those images are strangers. You bet!

Also few Aurora Technologies team members have proven to be extrasensory perception experts by guessing almost every photo.

Anyways, that was cool!

These times are tough for every citizen of our country and it’s impossible to remain uninvolved, especially when your friends are fighting for Ukraine.

They aren’t just our friends anymore — these people are living heroes.

By their own efforts, our folks gather goods in order to kit out soldiers involved in anti-terrorist operation with welfare assistance.

And recently we’ve received a present from the flash point in Donbas: a flag of Ukraine signed by our combatants. From now on that flag hangs in our office as a motivation for everyone to join this mission.

Aurora Technologies held a chess tournament— huge intellectual competition where the strongest minds of our team fought for champion’s title and eternal glory.
The struggle was fierce, unbelievable multi-way combinations astonished all the common spectators and fans. Everyone was sweating out the final battle and so the vicious duel ended, determining the best of the best. The champion was rewarded with a trophy cup and a valuable prize.

You can see photos on our FB page and Instagram.

From the 7h to 10th of March Prague hosted the European Summit – the major international conference bringing together the representatives of the various online business services, from webmasters to designers and ordinary users. Aurora Technologies team has also shared its own business ideas.

At last, we start setting up our own traditions! From now on, one Friday night per month is dedicated to watching films here in our office! We had the first movie night on March, 6 and it was actually cool! Pizza, pop-corn and Marvel superheroes made the event fun so everyone was happy! Iron Man and Thor fought the universal evil and they did win, of course — at the crack of the dawn. 

And the night movie tradition is to be continued…

One does not simply take away the chance to hang out with Santa Clause and The Snow Maiden from those childish in spirit. That’s why Aurora Technologies team decided to celebrate the New Year 2015 in its comfy office, with presents, allcomers and, of course, festival heroes of the childhood.   

That’s why, when Friday time had come to attend the holiday occasion, no one could resist temptation to join the party and have fun with real-deal Santa Clause and his charming – but a little bit chilly – assistant. Where there plenty of presents? Lots of! Yet, every kiddo, even the one far beyond thirty, knows nothing is ever given away for free. You either keep yourself out of mischief all year long, or… take an active part in Christmassy contests! Those most active got most lucky, and the number of goodies won grew exponentially. Plus, peeps that had arrived all dressed up in a jolly New Year outfit got special – and most fascinating – presents.      

Party came off splendid. Everyone was pleased with the atmosphere and the presents. Aurora Technologies team hopes 2015 will grant positive emotions only, pretty much like those brought by a faery play-day for grownups.   

We’ve been invited to the 2014 Vendo Seller Conference (VSC), an exclusive event where Sellers from around the world will join Vendo team members in Barcelona.

The #1 question? "How do I stop leaving money on the table and grow my revenue?". The answer? "Sell Different." 

Attendees of the Vendo conference were current Vendo sellers and key partners and our team was among them.

We've explored ways to sell better than ever by knowing your customers and selling differently to each one. Sessions hosted by Vendo technologists and analysts will focus on how sellers can get the most out of their products.

International Women’s Day was celebrated here in Aurora Technologies in keeping with its best traditions — our guys sent their compliments to the ladies and showered them with sweets and spring flowers.

The company also couldn’t afford to leave our women out in a cold and complimented them with some nice presents, as well. Our residence was shining with smiles, as both male and female members of team were happy to be a part of the celebration.

The spring sun itself was celebrating with us, as it seemed.