Tech Week – 2019: results
From October 29 to November 1, Moscow hosted the annual Tech Week, an event that brought together 3,200 participants, more than 280 speakers and 120 exhibitors in 11 rich thematic streams. Tech Week has become a traditional platform for discussing issues related to the introduction of innovative digital technologies in business and the exchange of experience based on the cases of leading Russian and global corporations. The event is organized by Technocrat with the support of the Skolkovo Foundation and MegaFon.
At the autumn meeting, the conference was attended by a record number of participants – 3,200 people from Russia and abroad. Tech Week was held in the format of four thematic days – the pre-party evening "Epic Fail", at which famous Russian entrepreneurs told about their biggest failures in business; a two–day multimedia conference and exhibition; an applied training day for company managers - "Manager 2.0".
The main part of the event was held from October 30 to 31 at the Skolkovo Technopark. The conference was opened by Olesya Mashkina, Innovation Manager of Vkusville, who spoke about future trends in the development of the retail sector in Russia, and also presented the company's innovative cases for working in the food market in her report. A total of 11 streams worked at the conference: digital transformation, new management methodologies, HR-tech, design and product management, fintech, blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital marketing, business analytics.
One of the headliners of the event was Dmitry Shushkin, CEO of ABBYY Russia, who spoke about how to make artificial intelligence work productively for the company and about the prospects for the development of this technology in Russia: "Russia is moving ahead confidently in terms of the penetration of artificial intelligence in the global market. And it's nice that already 2/3 of Russian companies are planning to introduce artificial intelligence into their work within 1-2 years. The main priorities of Russian business in this direction are: increasing labor productivity, reducing costs and improving the quality of customer service. Therefore, we are pleased, not only as business representatives, but also as ordinary citizens, that companies are interested in this technology to take care of us. From this we can conclude that Russia's prospects for the development of artificial intelligence are very good."
Founder of the Evotor company (one of the leaders of the cash register equipment market) Andrey Romanenko spoke about how the company's new developments are changing small businesses in Russia: "There is a digital transformation in Russia. It is clear why a huge number of digital products go to B2C, but there are not so many for B2B. However, the state has undertaken a trade reform and one of the key changes is the Law 54–FZ "On the use of cash registers". In accordance with it, all retail outlets must use online cash registers when making payments with consumers. Interestingly, just 3 years ago there were from 4 to 5 million retail outlets in Russia, but only 20% of them had cash registers. Today, the reform obliges all outlets to have an online sales register. Our team accepted the challenge of creating online sales registers for entrepreneurs, and in 3 years we have built a large IT company for small businesses. Today we can be proud that every fourth entrepreneur in the country works with us."
Memorable for the participants was the charismatic performance of the popular YouTube blogger Alexey Kartynnik (the Ityborod channel), who spoke about the development of soft skills among employees: "Recently, everyone has heard the phrase "soft skills" - overprofessional skills, which it is impossible to do without today. An employee who does not have soft skills today becomes an outsider in the market. Such a person in the team will not be so productive. Therefore, today it is no less important to develop soft skills among team members. If you want your company to work as a single mechanism, then you must teach employees to adapt and work harmoniously in a team. They should enjoy working in a team. And then their labor productivity will increase."
The event participants also noted the reports of: Executive Vice President for Sales and Customer Service of PJSC VimpelCom (Beeline) Yuri Smagarinsky, Director of Digital Transformation of PJSC VTB Bank Mikhail Matveev, Head of the International Partnerships Department of Asana Mary-Patton Eisen, Head of the Sales Department in Russia and CIS Countries of Viber Sergey Samorodov, Product Director of Lamoda Group Kira Matveeva, Executive Partner of Gartner Nikolay Butvina, Waves Platform CEO Alexander Ivanov, Investment Partner of REDangels and ex-Director of Business Development in the Russian and CIS markets of Alibaba (AliExpress) Mark Zavadsky, Director of the Fintech & Blockchain Competence Center of the IT cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation Pavel Novikov, President of the Free Republic of Liberland Vitus Yedlichki.
In parallel, more than 120 exhibitors were represented in the exhibition area of the conference. Among the interesting stands, it is worth highlighting: "Home Credit Bank", which demonstrated the process of issuing a loan using remote identification, as well as its unique marketplace with goods in installments; the company "Asana", which demonstrated its task manager for project management; the company "Dbrain", which showed its products based on machine learning for automation of business processes and work with documents; the company "Events", which demonstrated its mobile application for the event market; food delivery "Balance of Taste" and its ready-made business-class healthy food rations.
An agreement on strategic cooperation between the Skolkovo Foundation and NLMK was also signed during the event. An interesting innovation was the work of the mentor lounge, where participants could receive an individual 30-minute session with an analysis of their business projects from experts in the field of digital technologies. The finale of the event was an investment pitch, where the largest venture funds and accelerators listened to the presentations of 20 selected startup projects.
The partners of the event were: Konica Minolta Company, Innopolis University, Biplane marketing agency, Mandarin Solutions company, AboutBrand platform, ClickChat service, Treasury Systems LLC, Vostok-Media outdoor advertising agency, Unitpay company, InterActive company Media Group", TV channel "Tsargrad", TV channel "Point of separation", domain name registrar "REG.RU ", "National Banking Journal", "All-Events" project.
Tech Week 19 participants noted the high level of organization, selection of speakers, and raising topical issues related to the development of innovative digital technologies in Russia and in the world.
The organizers of the event report that an early sale for Spring Tech Week 2020 has already been opened.
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