Jobs: Arseniy Finberg - a man in love with Kiev

Today our guest is a well-known public figure, businessman, guide, a person who knows everything and even more about his city. Arseniy Finberg, coordinator of the "Interesting Kiev" project. He will tell us how to organize your workspace in order to successfully run a business, continue to explore your beloved city and spend time with loved ones.

What do you do in your work?

When I was finishing the "grave", I thought that I wanted to do logistics. True, by logistics I understood organizational logistics, i.e. organization and coordination of joint work of people (perhaps it would be more correct to call it management).

It turned out that in the "adult world" this term means something completely different, because 2 years after university I moved containers and cargo around the world, then for another 2 years I analyzed the logistics of Ukrainian companies that supplied cargo to Metro stores.

My logistics career ended at P&G, where I tried to forecast the sales of Vest shavers and Brown equipment in Ukraine for a year and a half. As a result, realizing that it was still not mine, he went into his own business, which grew out of a hobby - passion for his native city.

First, he created a community in LJ, then he began to encourage people from the community to walk around the city. When 50 people began to come for such excursions, he opened a full-fledged excursion bureau. This is what I have lived for the last 6 years.

In fact, I am responsible for the overall coordination of the agency's work, in which three people work in the office every day, they organize up to 200 excursions every month with the best Kiev guides in all languages of the world.

In addition, I have negotiations with strategic partners, PR (mostly personal and company), the development of new topics for excursions and "listening" to new guides. Accordingly, correspondence with customers, social networks (Facebook and Twitter, mainly) takes a lot of time.

It is also entirely on me to prepare and conduct corporate quests, which also often take a lot of time and “dirty” a lot of paper.

What does your workplace look like?

My workplace is a creative mess. I spend a lot of time at meetings and on the road, so it would be more logical to say about three workplaces:

1. Desktop in the office. I go there for several hours a day. Everything on the desktop is minimalistic. The laptop used to go everywhere with me, so I took a light model with a large battery - Acer Aspire 3810T, but now I realized that I can solve most of the tasks using an Android smartphone (now Samsung Galaxy SII, this is already 5 Android phone). As a geek, I use my phone one hundred percent, solving almost all work tasks on it (except for writing large texts;-)).

Nearby - placers of business cards. This atavism seeks to occupy all the space around the computer, and has not yet decided what to do with them. By the way, I'm looking for a smart startup to work with contacts. I haven’t found such an option yet, and I have a lot of contacts, not counting thousands of friends in social networks. Who else could handle scanning crowds of business cards …

Well, a gift from colleagues - a ball for the most correct decision-making.;-)

Well, the wall is banally hung with all sorts of certificates, most of them for participation in various charitable projects, well, and a little of our prizes and awards.

2. Working table "on wheels". I spend a lot of time behind the wheel, so the most comfortable workplace is also in the car. Branded car holder for a phone with a charger (android) plus a bluetooth headset from "Zhabra".

Also, since I don't have enough regular battery for a day now, I always have a spare charged battery for my smartphone in my pocket.

Well, the "command center" of the car, aka "balalaika" - a Chinese 2 DIN player, aka radio, aka GPS based on WIN Ce (yes, there are Navitel, Aygo and even Garmin there). True, the screen is crappy.

3. A place to meet. I spend a lot of time meeting with friends, colleagues, partners. Most often this happens in one of the best coffee houses in Kiev - "Teatr Kofe".

Firstly, it is located 5 minutes from the office, and secondly, it has the best coffee in the city. Well, the atmosphere is appropriate: I got hooked on coffee in Lviv, and there they teach that for coffee you need an appropriate environment. If I am in the center, I prefer either "Kafu" or "Chasopis".

What kind of hardware do you use?

As already said, the main bundle is the Acer Timeline computer and the SGS2 phone.

At home I use 3 more Android devices - a B&N with Glowlight reader (I read mostly at night in bed, which helps a lot), a 7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet (most often used on trips or for my daughter's games). And finally, Google Tv (Logitech Revue), which is used to temporarily neutralize the daughter (if necessary, homework) and watch TV series.

What software are you using?

There is a seventh Windows on the laptop: I chose a laptop with a pre-installed Windows. The main program of work is the browser (Chrome Forever!).

The trend of recent years is everything in the browser, everything in the cloud. We actively use Google Apsy: all excursion schedules in Google calendars (some public, others closed), working documents in Google Docks.

I actively use dropbox to exchange files between devices. For communication - Google talk, Facebook, Skype. Well, all our mail, of course, is in gmail. I read my mail all the time when I am at the computer, it’s on it, the rest of the time from my phone.

And yes, I also admit that I am a sinner, at home there is a torrent rocking chair on the media server, to which external access is configured from any place.

You can write a lot and for a long time about the software on your phone - at some moments up to 300 programs are installed on it. I attach a screenshot of the desktop on my computer, the picture changes every hour with the Bing Walpaper Downloader - sometimes it shows very beautiful views.

Is there a place for paper in your work?

Unfortunately there is. First of all, business cards - I would like to digitalize them, but it does not come out. Plus small notes that you don't have time to put in your mail / calendar. As for the rest, I don't print often.

Is there a dream configuration?

There is no limit to perfection!

Now I'm thinking about two purchases: a new phone from Motorola / Google - Razr MAXX HD (with a 3200 mA battery), which should be enough for 2 days; and the latest Chromebook for 250 bucks - after all, in fact, 95% of tasks are now solved through the browser.

Perhaps another version of "my" ideal setup is something like the latest ASUS Padphone 2 with two docking stations (one in the office, the other at home). But we need to experiment how it suits me, plus give my daughter a separate device.