On September 18th, 2014, with the support of the Consulate General of Ukraine, the large-scale IT Conference “UKRAINE TECH GEM” was held in San Francisco (http://utgem.co/).
Over 500 attendees participated in the Conference. There were executives of all IT sectors of Ukraine, including outsourcing companies, technological enterprises and business-incubators, venture investors, educational and scientific institutions, non-governmental organizations (in particular, AVentures Capital, SoftServe, Ciklum, Bionic Hill, Brain Basket Foundation) as well as representatives of the world and American leading technological and investment corporations (Google, Apple, Cisco, HP, Andeerssen Howorowits, 500Startups).
The Conference was opened by Sergiy Aloshyn, the Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco, and executives of «Happy Farm business incubator», «European Business Association», «EPAM».
There were 10 panel discussions focused on various sectors of Ukraine’s IT industry held within the Conference. In particular, the most pressing issues were: opportunities of venture investment in Ukraine’s most perspective start-up companies; the significant potential of highly skilled Ukrainian IT specialists in remote development of wide-range software; strengthening of cooperation between educational and scientific institutions of Ukraine and California.
During the discussion of Ukraine’s role as an IT destination in Europe the executives of the leading outsourcing companies, having highlighted the advantages of work in Ukraine, emphasized the essential perspectives of Ukraine in this field and the absence of effect of the situation in the Eastern border with Russia on their business.
World known Ukrainian singer and civil activist Ruslana Lyzhychko participated at the “Media war” panel discussion, during which she stressed on the necessity to have critical attitude to the mass-media information about the situation in the East of Ukraine and do not follow Russian information propaganda.
The Consul General of Ukraine met with Matt Gardner, the CEO of California Technology Council, within the framework of the Conference. The issues of IT cooperation intensification, in particular establishment of R&D centers of the world IT corporations (Intel, Microsoft, Google) in Ukraine and opening of Ukraine’s IT Center in the Silicon Valley were discussed.
The first in the history of US-Ukrainian relations large-scale IT Conference became a very important event aimed at promoting services and products of Ukrainian IT companies in the Western regions of the USA, which confirmed the expediency of arranging such events on the regular basis.