IT Jam 2012: Taking Ukrainian IT Community to the Next Level

Sept. 12, 2012 - PRLog -- The long awaited IT Jam 2012 took place on September 1st for the 5th consecutive year and gathered more than 3,100 IT people from Ukraine, Belarus and other Eastern European countries. It has become the biggest gathering within the Ukrainian IT community in 2012. This year, however, Ciklum has changed IT Jam’s format and converted it from a bar-camp conference into a true meet and mix event with a series of interactive networking sessions and visionary presentations.

The event went under the slogan “What’s on the next level?” and aimed to draw a connecting line between the concept and implementation of innovative ideas in today’s hectic and volatile world. In order to foster networking and knowledge exchange, the event was divided into 3 zones with parallel activities:

1. “New ideas and technologies”

On stage 1 IT geeks and novices could listen to presentations of the invited visionary speakers such as Christopher Marsh, Head of Technical Architecture at AKQA, Greg Young, independent consultant and entrepreneur, Alora Chistiakoff, COO of SysIQ, and Sridharan Ravichandran, product Marketing Manager at SoundCloud. The bright and charismatic IT professionals shared their outlook on the future of software development, cloud technologies and IT outsourcing.

2. “From Vision to Implementation”

On stage 2 recognized IT and business thought leaders presented their viewpoints about the future of IT and different aspects of creating and implementing a vision. Among them were Max Ischenko, Founder of the Ukrainian Community of IT specialists (DOU), Torben Majgaard, Founder and CEO of Ciklum, Mikhail Zavileysky, General Manager of Dataart, and Lasse Meilsoe, General Manager of WorldTicket.

3. Interactive networking within 22 IT community spots (e.g. .Net, Microsoft, Drupal, iOS, WP7, GDG, DOU)

It was a self-driven and the most heated IT Jam’s zone. Short presentations, contests, new product demos (e.g. Nokia Lumia and WP 7), podcasting workshops, video game tournaments – these are only some of many activities launched and run by leaders of the Ukrainian IT communities. Many of them also used this opportunity to pre-announce/register people for their upcoming events such as DrupalCamp Kyiv, Agileee Conference, RubyShift and others.

Commenting on the event, Marina Vyshegorodskikh, Ciklum's VP HR, said: "We realize that when more than 3,000 people are gathering, the traditional expertise sharing in the form of technical presentations would not be optimal. Today, there are many other opportunities for technical learning: both online, including good quality webinars, courses, presentations and tutorials, and smaller scale knowledge sharing events we’re lucky to have in abundance in Ukraine (in Ciklum alone we run around 100 IT events across locations every month). That's why we decided to create a disruptive event in a format that is still quite new in Ukraine, a format that would encourage every participant's proactivity and interaction with other IT professionals. We also spiced up these self-driven activities with inspirational visionary presentations. I believe with this event we've reached the goal of uniting different elements of the Ukrainian IT eco-system as well as further popularization of IT industry and taking it to the "next level".

Sharing his impressions with IT Jam 2012 and the Ukrainian IT community in particular, Christopher Marsh, Head of Technical Architecture at AKQA, said: "I attended IT Jam in Kiev as a speaker, and found it to be an excellent event. It was refreshing to find that instead of the tired old conference format, there was a much more vibrant and involving environment to engage with the IT community. The passion and talent of Ukrainian developers is truly inspiring, and in addition to the privilege of sharing some of my thoughts on stage, it was also an outstanding opportunity to learn from the people who spoke to me as I visited all of the community areas. An amazing experience, looking forward to next year!"

"Overall, it was a very intense, yet light hearted event and it was nice to see the Ukrainian IT community come together for it." said Sridharan Ravichandran, Product Marketing Manager at SoundCloud. "Also, in spite of the broad, visionary nature of my talk, a lot of developers came up and spoke to me after the event which is usually a really good sign of a desire to do things differently!"

Ciklum is very grateful to all companies and organizations that helped to co-organize and supported IT Jam 2012. Among them are: DataArt, SysIQ, JetBrains, Levi9, Sigma, Intetics, CyberBionic Systematics, DioSoft, Ustas Technologies and others.

About Ciklum

Ciklum (www.ciklum.com) is a Danish IT outsourcing company specializing in nearshore software development by establishing and servicing clients’ own development teams and/or centres in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine and Belarus. The environment of services and knowledge sharing within the company helps clients to market quickly and with less risk and minimal investment.

Established in 2002, Ciklum employs nearly 2,000 IT specialists with 165+ global clients’ own software development teams. Ciklum has six development offices in Ukraine, one in Belarus, and two in Pakistan, as well as representative offices in Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. Ciklum is recognized as CeBIT 2010 Top 20 innovative company delivering services/products for small and medium sized companies, and named the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Top 100 global services provider. Ciklum is rated Best Larger IT Employer 2010 and  2011 in Ukraine by DOU, the Ukrainian Community of Software Developers.