First of all congratulations! Romania finally arrived in Europe.


Cristina Werther: Yes, we are extremely happy that now we belong to the European house. But for us as a company, this is just one more political and economic milestone. From the business point of view, we have already been working in Germany and Europe for a long time.


In your home town, Sibiu, the IT sector - in particular eLearning - are especially booming. How did this rapid onrush come into being?


Cristina Werther: Most of our clients in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland don't know that we have a long German-speaking tradition in Transylvania. This area belonged to the "Dual Monarchy" of Austria - Hungary for more than three centuries. Even today, many of the IT graduates speak German in addition to Romanian, and Hungarian and English as well. Also, due to the commitment of our German mayor, Klaus Johannis, and the German Economic Club of Transylvania, we owe the revival of "ancient contacts" and the settling of over 300 foreign companies here in Sibiu alone.


Why does eLearning attract you so much?


Cristina Werther: Personally, I've always been fascinated by the question of how to educate children in remote areas of the world or how to impart complex technical facts in a simple, short, and efficient way.


Romanian eLearning experts are found in great numbers abroad. Doesn't the constant exodus of specialists decrease the supply in Romania?


Cristina Werther: No, we really don't have a shortage of eLearning experts. For a long time, Transylvania suffered from the departure of highly qualified IT graduates who went abroad for financial reasons and were employed to design applications for learning purposes that would have been useful for us, too. Meanwhile many of them have returned home from the USA and Germany because they realized that you can reach a lot here with your own initiative, and you also can earn good money.

eLearning has been an important topic in Romania from the very beginning because we wondered how to educate our employees in Bucharest, Timisoara, or in the country in the most efficient, competent, and cost-effective manner.


With the company Eytro Media Dimensions, you launched your own subsidiary, which is deeply involved in three-dimensional eLearning among other topics. What does 3-D Learning mean, and why are you so attracted by it?


Cristina Werther: With Eytro Media Dimensions, we match the growing need of people to receive the training material and the product courses not only in a flat, 2-D world. All of us mainly learned in this way; at school and also during my studies, I was tied to the flat, 2-D world of paper sheets. But that doesn't train the three-dimensional imagination, especially for future product designers.


What does E-Learning in 3-D concretely look like?


Cristina Werther: 3-D education and training has to go far beyond the previous form of pure production of eLearning courses and knowledge tests. Wherever it is possible, the learners are supported by visual and auditive applications. Besides realistic learning videos, you find 3-D trailers above all for the users of technical equipment. These allow them to learn to view and understand the objects in the space. Zoom functions lead you nearer; guided applications can be viewed as trick course. And all that, of course is due to the newest developments in the eLearning sector. For example, the audio podcast is also available as a solution for mobile terminals.


Please tell us something about the special situation here in Romania. What makes Romania different? What can eLearning developers benefit from here?


Cristina Werther: Everybody thinks that eLearning is still in its infancy here in South East Europe, and yet the IT sector here has thirty years of tradition. The foreign companies that settled here realized this potential quite quickly and profited from it just as fast. So, for example, in the beginning, the company Continental took on the complete year of IT graduates from Sibiu. Surely the favourable production costs are among the main reasons for foreign eLearning companies to set up offshore subsidiaries here, but in the first place, the reason is the very good qualification of the local employees.


Qualification in which sectors?


Cristina Werther: For sure the Romanian IT workers have good and long-standing experience in programming and developing, but furthermore, the local universities already impart knowledge from the project management sector. They also engage in design and cooperate with international companies. From the cultural and mental points of view, Romanians are closer to Europe than people think, which simplifies the communication and the creative crossover substantially. As I already mentioned earlier, for many Romanians it is natural to speak a second or third foreign language.


Wouldn't the low corporate taxes also be a powerful argument to put one's feelers in the direction of Romania?


Cristina Werther: Certainly. There is a very low tax rate for companies with a small turnover, and companies with a higher turnover also benefit from a flat tax. However, only the building of new infrastructures will increase the competitiveness significantly. Until quite recently, we were also able to tempt the IT companies with favourable land prices and low turnover taxes.


... and now?


Cristina Werther: Prices have exploded. But when you think of it, why should companies move over here if they can win us as a cooperation partner? The production of mobile eLearning solutions, which modern thinking users can also use as video casts, 3-D trick casts, or pure audio podcasts, is substantially cheaper here in Sibiu than in Germany or Austria. We don't have restrictive regulations of working hours and we have highly motivated and excellently educated developers and programmers. Just to give an example, our company for ERP and eLearning solutions founded at the millenium had just one employee in the year 2000. Today there are already twenty.

But in Germany, objections are growing in view of such ideas like offshoring or even outsourcing.


Cristina Werther: Our German, Swiss, and Austrian partner here have a completely different point of view. We all profit from better eLearning products. Whether we are located in Germany, in Switzerland, or in Transylvania, we are interested in international top quality; that is our standard. Also, the aesthetic and the usability in the eLearning sector play an expanding role here in Romania. No wonder that women are increasingly entering the management level in these sectors, which is gradually changing the purely rational, playful, and often routine-blinded men's world. For instance, we want to reach the situation where the distance learner in the future can really understand products and processes and additionally finds them in an aesthetically sophisticated design.

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