Game|Changers

Two-years ad-hoc education and research program

Monthly Digest October 2012

INTRODUCTION | GENERAL MEEINGS | TRACKS | RECOMMENDED

1. Introduction This is an official Game|Changers ad-hoc education program digest containing information about meetings and events we have organized and took part in and results we achieved during the month. Game|Changers is a free two-years program for ad-hoc education and research of IT business designed for 20 students. It also includes open innovations, business development and HR platform for organizations and event series with the whole expected audience of 500 people. In the program students have meetings with experts. This semester we have a general track called Introduction into IT. During October we focused on the following main topics:

1 Social Aspects of IT: Media and Education. 2 Companies and Their Structures. 3 Business Models in IT: free software, open source, crowd-sourcing, monetization and

non-profit. There were also two extra-meetings within tech journalism and biotech tracks.

2. Alumni information (2010-2011, 2011-2012) We track previous year students’ achievements and involve Game|Changers alumni in further program activities. Aleksandra Vachnadze got summer internship in EMC; successfully finished her graduate project during the internship Alexander Kim became Ingria incubator resident; expanded the network of SashaTravel project to Moscow and Surgut Alexey Knorre joined European University in St. Petersburg as Research assistant October 2012 – Present (3 months); Assistant of Mikhail Sokolov Dina Chubareva passed the admission and participated in the Forsight Trip with the leading industry experts and Russian Government officials; joined team of CSR as an analyst; successfully graduated from the exchange program at Lappeenranta University of Technology Dmitry Konchalenkov entered the MITIM program at GSOM SPSU Igor Asonov graduated from SPbSPU with honors; became a Director of Center of technical creativity of youth and is working hard to start up a Fab lab in his university Mikhail Vink joined JetBrains as Product Marketing Managers; participates in GameChangers as student’s mentor

3. General Meetings

Game|Changers program is an experiment in the sphere of IT Education. That is why it is possible to thought about our #0 Org meeting @ 2nova Interactive (23.09.2012) as a practical work on Educational track. We spoke about goals and format of the program. The important point is that the Game|Changers program has no goal to teach, in meaning to oblige to study some formal subjects. Instead, program provides the possibility to carry out as many useful knowledge, contacts and understanding of situation in the industry as student can.

Program is strongly oriented on self-responsibility of students. It actively involves them into its organizational part. Meeting preparation, lecture-notes making, video recording, interaction with experts — this is not the full list of activities, which should be distributed between students. It is easier to get more experience and contacts this way. We assigned roles and activities to each other on the second part of this meeting. During the next two meetings we spoke about the way technologies influence on media, education and even on the society in common.

Meeting #1 IT history @ ITMO - Master of Technology Entrepreneurship (25.09.2012) was devoted to historical retrospective of influence technologies on the society. We build timeline and tried to determine key events and inventions from ancient times to nowadays. We also continued this work at home and wrote articles in groups on one of the following topics: Before Digital, Before the Internet, From Internet to Nowadays, IT in Russia and IT in Saint-Petersburg. Key experts: Sergey Dmitriev, Pavel Votchintsev, Gleb Kalinin, Olga Kalinina, Alexander Shtuchkin

On the meeting #2 IT & Media @ 3rd Place, Zona Space (02.10.2012) - we discussed not historical, but modern influence of IT on the society. Elnara Petrova told about SMM and Yury Lifshits - about differences between new and traditional forms of education. Than Vitaly Yanko and Irina Matyushonok gave a short summary about analytics agencies and different kinds of press: industry media (enterprise and consumer magazines), papers and new media related to IT. We defined what is mass media and what is not. Key experts: Yury Lifhsits, Vitaly Yanko, Elnara Petrova, Irina Matyushonok.

During the next two meetings we were guests in two different companies - IT and Non-IT. We spoke about the structures of these companies, current goals, tasks and ways company prefer to achieve them. Meeting #3 IT in/for Business @ International Paper (13.10.2012) was placed in non-IT company and we analyzed, how an IT department works in it. What tasks should be automated? Where is it cheaper to use manual work? How do SAP systems influence on work productivity? On the example of International Paper we saw, that modern large non-IT company also can have strong IT department with its own data-center and powerful servers in it, which use virtualization technology to decrease total machines number. As a preparation to this meeting we work on a case study and tried to find ways to improve situation with IT in an a non-IT company. On the meeting some teams presented their solutions to experts. Key experts: Michail Karasinsky, Andrey Valuev, Alexey Korotkevich

Opposite to International Paper the next company we visited was exactly from the IT sector. On the meeting #4 Internet companies @ Yandex (16.10.2012) we talked about top Internet companies and the place of Yandex among them. Vladimir Gorovoy (Head of Yandex.Uslugi) gave us a history of the lead-based structure of Yandex and listed the most successful projects such as Yandex.Money, Yandex.Taxi. Victor Bocharov (Project Coordinator at OpenCorpora.org) explained the role of linguistics in the search engine, Ekaterina Vagina (who is not only a business analyst at Yandex, but GameChangers student as well) clarified the role of analytic department. Key experts: Vladimir Gorovoy, Victor Bocharov, Ekaterina Vagina

The end of October was devoted to studying business models and types of markets. Meeting #5. Current Markets and Players @ MTE IFMO (23.10.2012) had a goal to clarify IT terms as technology, market, types of markets. Sergey Dmitriev marked several important dates and described types of business models, which were used in

different time. Alexander Zverev, from the partner’s point of view, told about the types of outsource's customers. Key experts: Sergey Dmitriev, Alexander Zverev, Elena Koskur-Ogly

Meeting #6 Opensource, non profits and crowdsourcing @ Ingria (30.10.12) consisted of three parts. The first one was about specifics of non-paid software and differences between free software and OpenSource. Pavel Frolov named liberties of free software and described ways to get profit from both free software and open source projects. Kirill Shikhanov told how to distribute outsourcing tasks to volunteers and Vladimir Medeyko - about the Russian branch of Wikimedia Foundation that helps to run Cyrilic part of Wikipedia. Key experts: Pavel Frolov, Kirill Shikhanov, Vladimir Medeyko

4. Track meetings Next semester we will work on thematic tracks instead of our current main topic “Introduction into IT”. But this semester we also have some specialized meetings belonging to future tracks. There were two such meetings in October: the first one belongs to BioTech track and the second one was about Tech Journalism. BioTech track meeting On the first track meeting #1 Biotech. Genotek @ Academic University (20.10.2012) we understood goals of the bioinformatics company: to do DNA diagnostic more simple and cheaper and this way to provide information about possible genetic diseases. Artem Elmuratov told about the way he made this start-up and about importance of studying bioinformatics. Key experts: Artem Elmuratov, Alexandra Vachnadze

Tech Journalism track meeting The meeting #1. Interview. Origins @ Plombir (13.10.2012) was about problems, which we need to dissolve in journalistic work. Kirill Artemenko named several types of interview - informational, telephone - and described theirs specifics. Key experts: Kirill Artemenko, Ivan But

5. Recommended and Co-located events The first two events were organized by GC curators in the V International Innovation Forum. Both events organized collaboratively with Committee for youth politics and public organizations relations. The open lecture Trends in Bioinformatics @ LenExpro (28.09.2012) was about why bioinformatics became so popular, how it helps to improve our life and more. Speakers: Nikolay Vyahhi, Sergey Safonov

The interactive lecture St. Petersburg IT Stories @ LenExpro (28.09.2012) covered young IT entrepreneurs' stories, who acted in St. Petersburg and gained global success. Speaker: Sergei Dmitriev Other recommended events, that were visited by our students:

● From Conversational Interactive Robots to the Human-Robot Cloud ● Mobilization and resource sharing in the business: Theory and Practice ● Applying Machine Learning Algorithms with Hadoop @ CS Club

Additional information Feedback party and Mentorship Meetings belong to a special kind of events, where participants discussed current situation on the Game|Changers program with mentor or whole GC Team. The first one was Feedback party @ Tkachi, where we discussed entrance exam, requirements for candidates and format of the program. All of the candidates - accepted and not - had possibility to take part in it. During Mentorship Meetings we usually discuss our current homework, quizes and quests. Also we had some social events:

● Cafe after Org Meeting ● Visiting Performance “Need more freedom” @ Teatr Pokoleniy ● Cafe after meeting at International paper ● Halloween party @ Zona Space

October Statistics

● 7 base course meetings ● 2 track meetings ● 9 different places to meet ● 25 experts ● 6 recommended and co-located events

6. Authors

● Anna Lioznova (text, photo) ● Ayunah Badmarinchinova (text) ● Ekaterina Zaikina (text, editing) ● Roman Musatkin (editing)

7. Contact information For more information, please, visit our web site-site: http://gamechangers.ru You can leave any feedback regarding the Program by following the link or emailing us at info@gamechangers.ru Join as at Vkontakte and Facebook, follow on Twitter to stay tuned for the news and updates about the Program and Industry news.