Bionic Hill Ukraine review

For so far ago Bionic Hill became one of the most discussed themes among Ukrainian high-tech community. The main reason for that is Innovative Forum “Kyiv City Open Door” which took place on the 19th-20th of April.

This forum was organized by Kyiv City State Administration, Innovation Park BIONIC Hill, All-Ukrainian competition “Innovative Breakthrough”, Development holding company ”UDP” and «Silicon Valley Innovation Center» (USA). The composition of the delegation was 11 leaders from a list of 35 leading venture funds in Silicon Valley. As a result the city authorities and 11 venture angels have signed several documents assuring their interest in that innovative development project.

About Bionic Hill:

BIONIC Hill is an IT and hi-tech park located within Kyiv city limits (Svyatoshynskyi district).

Total land area: 147 Ha. Total floor area over: 900,000 m2.

Work force of approx. 35,000.

III Project phases - Phase I is expected to be completed in 2013 – 2014.

Three main sphere of activities:

• Information and Communication Technologies;

• Biotech and pharmaceuticals;

• Energy efficiency and green energy solutions.

BIONIC Hill will offer convenient business campuses, an up-to-date research centre, a specialized university and hi-tech production facilities.

BIONIC Hill business centres (225,000 m2 in total) will have: Data Centre, Business Incubator, Venture funds, Banks, Patent offices, Law firms, Accounting firms, Visa processing centre, Courier services, Tour agencies, English language schools, Dining facilities.

The Research Centre (25,000 m2) will offer state-ofthe-art laboratories and R&D facilities. Cooperation with leading foreign research centres and reputable international experts will be an important success factor for BIONIC Hill.

The Specialised University (attached to the Research Centre) will promote further professional development and offer specialised training in IT, medicine, energy efficiency and other promising hi-tech industries.

The Business Incubator (attached to the Research Centre and Business Centres) will help to select the best projects and develop them while cooperating with leading national and international venture funds to finance and promote these projects on a global scale.

Commodity will contain: An Onsite Hotel (160 rooms) with Conference Facilities and Comfortable Housing (230,000 m2 in total).

Thoughts about Bionic Hill:

The idea of Bionic Hill looks attractive due to is obviously high potential. But it is also a very challenging project that depends on many variables. It is a good sign that Kyiv authorities plan to engage foreign venture capitalists as well as local business representatives, scientists and strategic consultants in the spheres of IT, biotech, energy efficiency and green energy solutions in order to increase the competitiveness of Bionic Hill, making it useful both for business and the national interests of Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Kyiv as a center of IT outsourcing will only benefit from the project as it will attract even more qualified specialists and investors to the capital of Ukraine.

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If you regularly find the time to read tech articles and white papers, sooner or later browser bookmarking does not seem to satisfy your need in classification and storage of your collection. There is a solution we found useful in this regard called Tech Briefcase.

Tech Briefcase has much in common with a bookmark service, but offers many extras for techies. It allows to:

• store data that many publishers require you to enter before giving access to materials - you won’t need to re-enter it each time;
• find related technical content easier (with options like New, What’s Hot and Recommended) and eslily check if it fits you thanks to accessible detailed decription;
• convenient options for viewing content - you can do it  from the Description View or from your Briefcase, or go to original publisher’s piece; if the publisher requires information not in your profile, you will be asked to add this data to your profile so it can be passed to the publisher;
• organize and share content via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or e-mail within just a few clicks.

Tech Briefcase is available as and iPhone app or a Bookmarklet for your browser. We found it helpful for orginizing our collections of tech stories. One more proof that it’s useful is that Tech Briefcase button is in every article of Computerworld.com. Try it - maybe you will also find it helpful.

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Even more opportunities for career growth, all-new souvenirs and a chance to win an iPod for those who filled in our application forms - that’s what Softheme offered young specialists from the best technical University of Ukraine during the Fair.

Softheme's bags and application forms

No surprise that our booth was popular

Early morning - awaiting for students

Young specialists filling in our application forms

Guests of our booth with Softheme's See Sharp bags for C# developers

Related articles

• Taras Shevchenko University Employment Fair + Date we announce iPod winner (softheme.com)
• Softheme at MS SWIT [Pics] (softheme.com)
• Softheme at iForum [Pics] (softheme.com)

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With more than 6000 registered visitors, iForum definitely is the largest industry event for those interested in Internet technologies, Internet marketing, social media and mobile development. More pics and comments on what it was like in 2012 >>

Mr. Ol'shanskiy giving introductory speech

In his introductory speech Alexandr Ol’shanskiy, Chairman of the Internet Association of Ukraine,  has raised many legislative and ethical questions of intellectual property and Internet. His main point was that the rights of the consumer of intellectual property are not protected as they should, and that Ukrainian analogues of initiatives like SOPA and PIPA can be extremely harmful to all market players, because they stand on the way of progress. What will happen if the Internet providers will be obliged to control the content shared via their networks? Why the consumer has a right to return merely any good back to shop, but can not do the same thing with content or software? What will happen if all other inventions of humanity (e.g. medicines, production technologies or even apparel) will be protected in the same way as software and content?  All these are very complicated questions, and the way each country answers them will define the future.

The main sections of the event were Internet promotion, Start-Ups, Internet technologies, Social Media and Mobile. Each of them attracted strong speakers and broad audience, but we would like to highlight the ones that refer to Softheme’s field of interests.

Viktor Dostov at iForum

Victor Dostov, President of Russian Electronic Money Association, has told about the main trends of the Internet audience (children and older people join in; Internet is becoming easy to use, eliminating intellectual barriers for the users; the audience is getting richer; political issues rise actively in the Internet), his vision of start-up potential and good niches to concentrate on.

Internet technologies section at iForum

At the Internet technologies section we heard many interesting presentations covering wide range of issues - from architecture of SaaS solutions on Amazon AWS to noSQL DB, high-loaded systems and industry-specific solutions. HTML 5 was one of the big topics - the aspects of its application in web, mobile and smart TV were highlighted and broadly discussed by specialists from the leading IT companies.

Technologies and tools for Windows 8 developers

Mobile development was one of the most interesting sections, as this market in Ukraine is growing even faster than in the rest of the world. Of course, the majority of the solutions created are promoted and monetized in the USA and Europe. Nevertheless, Ukrainian mobile developers are in demand thanks to their high technical qualification and good understanding of the specific requirements to mobile applications.

Yuliya Klimentovskaya from Cogniance on importance of desigining proper mobile UX

And a few words about the Internet promotion and social media section. Speakers and presentations we would like to pay attention to were:

Anna Matveeva from Yandex

Anna Matveeva – leading specialist of Yandex – explained the benefits of working with Yandex Metrics instead of, or in addition to Google Analytics.
Igor Ashmanov – probably the most popular Internet professional in Russia – has clarified the meaning and variety of modern advertising platforms and explained the differences in approaches to using them for promotion.
Anton Voronyuk introduced new methods of Search Engine Optimization by integrating different social media features. The approach is popular in Western countries, but is still at the beginning level within our local startups. Actually, we already use the majority of his tips with Softheme’s customers.
Dmitry Satin’s report on improving website’s usability was one of the most interesting and involving. He covered not only the most common usability problems website developers meet, but also some tips one should focus on to make things work for his site since its creation.

Below you can find more pictures from the event:

Google's booth at iForum

Rest zone for guests of iForum

Softheme's web marketers Antol Blotskiy and Yegor Ivanchenko

Funny symbols of Webmoney with guests of iForum

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• Softheme at Agile Base Camp + Pics (softheme.com)
• Softheme at MS SWIT [Pics] (softheme.com)

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On April 10 we took part at Taras Shevchenko University Employment Fair “Impulse”. This was the third time we participated at the event, and once again we assured that it’s the right place too look for promising young technicians.

We would like to remind you that an iPod will be drown among the guests of our booth, who filled in our application forms. We will announce the winner tomorrow, so get ready - Friday the 13th might become a lucky day for you!

Here are some more pics from the event:

HR specialist Tatyana Maslo with guests of our booth

We've prepared all-new souvenirs for our guests

By the way, if you want to meet with the representatives of Softheme in person, soon you will have one more chance - at NTUU KPI Employment Fair on April, 18.

See you!

See also:
Softheme at Taras Shevchenko University Employment Fair [Pics]
Awesome! Photo report from T.Shevchenko University Employment Fair

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