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On June, 8th in the Dnipro in the center of the “Menorah” the most important IT event of this summer for business of Dnipropetrovsk region – IT_Dnipro Conference 2018 took place. Four informative panels, useful content and insights from speakers, emotional discussions – this event will be remembered by more than 150 of its guests and participants. not only from the Dnipro, but also from other regions of the country. The main topics of the conference were: the state and prospects of the Dnieper IT industry, successful cases of business and technology synergies, the problems of IT education development in the region and the exit of Ukrainian companies into the world market.
This year the conference was opened with a welcome speech of a CEO of IT Dnipro Community Yevhen Hostischev.
According to her, the region generates 10.2% of the GDP of the country, yielding in this sense only to Kiev, and the volume of foreign investment in Dnipro in 2016 amounted to 1.6 billion UAH. Also, Maria told about the growth rate of the IT-community of the Dnipro and forecasted its further development.
“Today, 7 thousand IT-specialists work in the Dnipro and their number grows by almost 1000 each year, and by 2020 the number of developers in the region will increase to 10 000. But the pace of development of the IT-sector can be boosted by creating appropriate conditions and making the city more attractive to specialists from other cities and countries. For this, we need to develop an IT-industry development strategy, which will endorse three key areas of work – education development, city infrastructure and business incubator creation for IT start-ups”, – said Kot.
The panel was followed by a discussion with Maria Kot; Oleksander Kubrakov, Executive Director of the IT Ukraine Association; Dmytro Vasylinenko, Director of Sitecore Ukraine; Victor Puzanov, Advisor to the Chairman of the DniproDia Investment Forum; Dr. Wolfgang Mösinger, General Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Donetsk. Moderator of the discussion was Mykola Demchenko, a partner of the legal firm “Prave Dilo”.
The participants discussed Maria’s statement, agreeing with the concrete steps she proposed to develop the city’s attractiveness. Oleksander Kubrakov noted that the growth rate of the IT-industry is 5-6 times higher than the rate of development of Ukraine’s GDP, which makes it the most attractive for foreign investments. He also added that for the successful presentation of the city to foreign partners, it is important to have a developed infrastructure. Dmitry Vasilinenko told about the importance of the level of employee experience to increase company profits. According to him, in order to interest experienced specialists to stay in Dnipro, it is necessary to create appropriate conditions for this, both within the company itself and in the region.
The second panel of the conference was opened by Evhenia Len, CEO of Dinarys, with a presentation on “Building Business Processes at the SMI Level System”. She shared the experience in changing the business model, the problems that the company faced at the same time and the result achieved after the company’s radical transformation.
The next was Kostyantyn Lezhnin, Deputy Chairman of the Board in UkrSibbank, who spoke about how FinTech’s innovations change classical banking services.
“The rapid expansion of the latest IT-technologies has led to global users expecting new solutions from the banks, which is why the world is experiencing a revolution in the FinTech today. Only last year, the volume of investment in this field amounted to more than $ 15 billion, and almost a quarter of The total financing of banking in the world ($ 50 billion out of $ 200 billion) is the cost of implementing innovative technologies in the banks’ usual work”, – Lezhnin noted.
After the presentation on Fintech was the turn of IT-innovations in the field of medicine. Andriy Yushchenko, COO from SOLVVE’s on the example of his own company, providing services to medical institutions in the United States, spoke about the benefits of blockade technology for the preservation of medical data of patients.
A panel discussion was completed with the second block of the conference: Evhenia Len, Kostyantin Lezhnin; Andriy Yushchenko; Alexey Tulin, Founder & CEO at Archer Software and Arthur Mikhno, Co-founder and Head of WORK.UA. Moderator of the discussion was Mykola Demchenko. The participants discussed topics such as the impact of IT innovations on traditional areas of the economy, the role of the creative class in shaping the portrait of a modern country, helping the state in search of access to world markets and even gender relations in the IT industry.
The third block of the conference was devoted to the problems of IT education in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It was opened by Tetyana Kasyan, HR-director of the company ISD, which presented a successful business cooperation case and local universities. In her report, she, in particular, talked about the company’s contribution to the educational process of local high schools.
“Having a positive experience in engaging our students in our company’s commercial projects, we decided to invite students from local universities to this process as well. We chose the Dnipro State University as a recruiting center for students. After speaking at the IT department, we realized that such a long We will not be allowed to distract students from studying, however, instead we were offered to read a practical IT course for students, and ISD has been lecturing at the DSU for four years now”, – Kasyan said.
Oleksiy Dyshlevyi, Head of Training of Junior Specialists of EPAM Ukraine in Vinnytsia, continued the topic of training newcomers in the IT-sphere. His speech was dedicated to the problem of training young professionals, graduates of higher education and IT courses.
“Unfortunately, the experience shows that many graduates who work for us do not have enough practical skills, and it is not surprising that the three-month profile courses are not enough to train a full-fledged Junior specialist, so we have to invest our own resources to support and to teach at least a part of the most talented of them”, – said Dyshlevyi.
The discussion continued on the future of IT-education development in the region, the trends of the modern educational process, the need for real production practices for students of IT-specialties. Tetyana Kasyan participated in it, as well as Oleksandr Hizha, President of DataArt Dnipro, associate professor of the FMP DNU and Mykola Kuzichev, Head of the information technology center of the City Center for Education Management of the Department of Humanitarian Policy of the Dnipro City Council. The moderator of the discussion was Alexey Dyshlevyi.
After a short break, the conference participants switched to the final, fourth block of the conference devoted to the presentation of foreign clients about Ukraine and its specialists.
And Oleksander Yaremenko, Chief Legal Officer and COO at SP Advisors, was the first in this panel. In his speech, he disclosed the peculiarities of doing business with companies registered in the United States, and explained, based on Wyoming’s example, why US jurisdiction is better than doing business through offshore counterparties. The second part of his speech was devoted to the Ukrainian-Canadian Trade and Export Support Project, CUTIS.
The next word was taken by Emiliano Ramos from Emerging Europe Alliance for Business Services. His speech was devoted to stereotypes of foreign entrepreneurs in Ukraine and ways to overcome them.
“A common set of stereotypes about Ukraine is a low level of economy, corruption and war. We know that this is not entirely true. In Ukraine, the banking system was restructured, an IT-industry is developing there, but unfortunately, some foreign businessmen should invite and Personally, I believe that the level of service in Ukraine is the highest among the non-EU European countries”, – said Ramos.
Yan Chernov, founder and CEO of FullStackUA and Kaiiax, spoke in the panel next. His speech was devoted to the need to create a brand service IT-industry.
“The brand of Ukraine in the world is not of a systemic nature, it consists of separate disparate elements. Now the most significant part of Ukraine’s perception abroad is derived from customer experience – almost 90% of our brand. Consequently, the Ukrainian IT industry also has no particularities in the eyes of foreigners,” – said Chernov.
After that, Emilianos Ramos; Oleksander Yaremenko; Yan Chernov; Dmytro Primak, Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce Adviser and Maxim Bakhmatov, Chairman of the board in Radar Tech, Managing Partner of UNIT.City, discussed the most acute moments of speaker speeches on the panel. Moderator of the discussion was Mykola Demchenko.
A vivid conclusion of the event was the presentation of the POPCORP project, a joint initiative of UkrSibbank and Radar Tech, aimed at supporting startups and companies operating in the Fintech area and offering innovative solutions for modernizing classical banking services.
We are grateful to all the guests for the warmth of feedback and active participation in the discussions with the speakers, and the partners for their tangible support.
This year IT_Dnipro Conference would have been impossible without support:
