PowerBlog Review: @rgumente

Editor's note: We're very pleased to bring you the thirty-second in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...





This week we review the @rgumente blog.



The @rgumente blog is a Romanian business blog, written entirely in English. This is a gem of a blog that keeps getting better and better.



Dragos Novac, a software entrepreneur, edits @rgumente. He offers keen insights about business in general and specifically about business in Romania.



Romania is a big mystery to many in the English-speaking world, in part because the Romanian language is not often taught in English-speaking schools and universities.



A source like @rgumente is indispensable if you want to understand the Romanian business environment -- and make connections there. With the Romanian software industry playing an increasing role in outsourced software development, that could be very important.



In addition to Romanian business matters, @rgumente covers European Union business and cultural issues, software industry issues, and general business issues of all kinds.



Recent posts covered everything from the Romanian environment for high-tech business as compared with the U.S., to commentary on what blogs are good for, to the IBM/PeopleSoft deal.



This post with insight into Romania's culture and the whole outsourcing situation is the sort of unique insight you can expect at @rgumente:

"Understanding the cultural differences and acting accordingly is clearly one of the sensitive issues on the whole offshoring agenda. For example in India they discovered that fingerprinting the programmers for security reasons touched a very sensible chord on the Indians - fingerprinting is considered offensive in the Indian culture. I think that this is an important card Romanians can play in the offshore project contracting - besides being Europeans Romanians are fairly adaptable and rather open minded."

I asked Dragos what benefits he got from blogging. This is what he told me:

"@rgumente is a great tool helping me synthesize topics of interest for me and my business. As such, besides acting as a business intelligence repository, the writing gives me the opportunity of crystallizing my thoughts and ideas while having permanent feedback from my readers. Last, but not least, it gives me the chance of meeting very interesting people both online and offline, people otherwise I wouldn't have had the chance of meeting."

Dragos says there are a few Romanian online forums and discussion groups covering business topics, but Romanian business blogs are very rare.





The Power: The Power of the @rgumente blog is in its coverage of Romanian business issues in a forthright way, often comparing the situation in Romania with other parts of the world. And in the process it provides a unique glimpse into the Romanian business scene for non-Romanians.