What would bring foreigners to Siberia?
In 2008 Novosibirsk was crowded with tourists from all over the world due to total solar eclipse. But could you believe that the US celebrities, whose names (or their companies names) are known all over the world could come here in winter when even locals suffer from frosts?
Anyway, in February 2010 Novosibirsk welcomed the US delegation, which included White House officials, representatives of technology powerhouses: Twitter, Cisco Systems, EDventure Holdings, eBay, Mozilla; representatives of civic organizations, including those fighting human trafficking and corruption; and a famous Hollywood actor, anti-human-trafficking activist and the most followed user on the social-networking site Twitter Ashton Kutcher.
The main goals of the visit were discussions of the role modern technologies could play in spheres of:
- Education, Entrepreneurship, Training, and Mentorship
- Anti-trafficking and child protection
- Combating Cyber-crime
- Health
- E-governance and Collaboration
- Promoting Cultural Collaboration
John Donahoe (CEO of eBay)
- "My image of "being in Siberia" is forever changed by this trip ... this place has real potential"
- "The story for my last week is 'I went to Siberia and came back 10 years younger."
Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter):
- "A great number of visionary engineers & computer scientists I admire and have learned from are Russian."
Padmasree Warrior (CTO of Cisco)
- What did I take from Russia? Inspiration to listen better, learn more, new friendships.
Howard Solomon (Director for Russia, National Security Council)
- "I found Novosibirsk to be an exciting, vibrant, and creative city with much potential. In particular, most striking were the extraordinary students our group met. It was clear from our interactions with both High School and University students that the youth of Novosibirsk are an increasingly sophisticated group, technologically savvy, and linked in with the rest of the world through internet. It was assuring to see that many of them had a number of social causes they deeply believed in and were working to make the world a better place. (This is not a tweet; full text of interview is here)
It seems that visit was estimated as a success by our guests:
Jared Cohen (Member of Secretary Clinton's Policy Planning Staff)
- "Just landed, slept 10hrs, still tired, but energized by success of #RusTechDel. 21 deliverables driven by private sector. "
- "Successful trip w/21 deliverables in education, anti-trafficking, health, anti-corruption, e-gov"
Being a software development company, operating on international market, Fortess is specially happy to hear about enthusiasm of world-known companies about cooperation in IT sphere.
Full list of the visit's deliverables is posted in Ashton Kutcher's blog.
We always say that Novosibirsk has all precondition to become another Silicon Valley. And I am glad that interest of world-known IT companies towards our region and its potential in technological domain increases with every year.
A tweet I want to sum up the post with:
- John Donahoe (eBay): "Russia's best hope is for their young people using tech tools to drive change."
Thank you, Mr. Donahoe, we will try our best :)
I followed the link to your blog from Ashton Kutchers. It is amazing how the world has seemed to shrink over the last 20 years. I visited Moscow, Kiev, Kishenev, Odessa, and what was still Leningrad in the summer of 1988. At the time, I remember many of the young people(late teens early twenties) asking us why we wanted war with them, and what it was like to live with the freedoms we have here in the states. I am so pleased to see at least the questions seem to have changed a bit. I would love to come back to visit particularly in the St Petersburg area, it was so lovely.
steff
Thank you for your feedback, Steff. Yes, the world has really shrunk :)
I just wanted to throw you a big thanks - you cleared up some things for me!
Excellent article as always, thank you for posting all this stuff on a regular basis.
Interesting post, thank you