Professional communities:
the cities of masters in the network age?

Moderator: Alexander Lozhechkin

This panel discussion is about professional communities of software developers and architects, system engineers and IT-managers. What is their purpose, what is the outcome of it for their members, business, customers and, perhaps, to the whole society.

Question that will be discussed:

• What is a professional community?
• How and why are they created?
• Who and why creates them?
• Who and why supports them?
• Who do they give to their members, business, customers and society?
• Whether it possible to exploit them, why and how?

Experts: Ivan Bodyagin, Mikhail Elashkin, Andrew Koryavchenko, Nikolay Mitushin, Felix Muchnik, Maria Ushakova

Alexander Lozhechkin

Bio

Alexander Lozhechkin is responsible for the technological partnership in Microsoft Russia. Alexander has been working as an evangelist and Evangelists Lead in Microsoft since 2004, was responsible for the creation and development of such developers communities as GotDotNet.ru and ineta.ru. Before Microsoft Alexander was leading software development team of document management solution DocsVision in Digital Design company. Alexander holds master’s degree in Electronics from Saint-Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, PhD in Computer Science from University of Railways Communications.

Ivan Bodyagin is head of internet development group in ABBYY. Since 2005 Ivan hold a Microsoft MVP award in competence of Solution Architect, and since 2007 in competence of Visual C#. Also Ivan is member of RSDN Team, (this team are create and support RSDN.ru project) where he playing as developer, administrator, moderator, author of articles and forum messages, and editor of RSDN Magazine responsible for technical accuracy of articles.

Nikolay Mitushin

Bio

Dr. Mitushin joined ABRT Venture Fund as Investment Director in 2007.

From 2003-2007 Dr. Mitushin was Technology Entrepreneurship program manager at Intel Corporation helping Russian entrepreneurs to turn technological ideas into successful businesses. Prior to that in 2000-2003 Dr. Mitushin founded software company Arptek and served as it’s CEO. For his achievements in Arptek Dr. Mitushin received recognition award from World Technology Network and was elected as Individual WTN Member in 2002.

Mitushin received his master’s degree from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2001 and a PhD degree in Investment Strategy Optimization from the same college in 2004. In 2005 he successfully completed Entrepreneurship Colloquium at Harvard Business School.

Felix Muchnik

Bio

Was born in 1961. Graduated from mathematic faculty at Voronezh State University. He is one of the founders of software online store Softkey

Felix Muchnik was born in 1961 in Inta (the Komi Republic). At thirteen Felix left school and gained university entrance for mathematic faculty at Voronezh State University. Having graduated at the age of eighteen, he set forth to teach mathematics in the village school. Since being twenty-one, Felix turned to programming: participated in development of DBMS Linter, automatization of the road-building department.
In 1998, Felix Muchnik formed program registration system and in 2001 the area of focus was detached in a separate company, software internet-supermarket Softkey. Today, the company is the leading internet-distributor of software in Russia. The Softkey’s catalogue counts about 15 thousand of programs, and the database of customers makes up over 500 thousand users. In December 2006 the company joined the well-known IT-holding IBS.
Felix is married, has an adult daughter and granddaughter.

Maria Ushakova

Bio

Maria Ushakova joined RIS Ventures team in 2008 as an education program manager. She worked on “Start in Garage” – intensive trainings for Russian technology entrepreneurs with Internet and software start-ups. “Start in Garage” education program originated in 2007 with support of Microsoft-Russia and ABRT Venture Fund.

In 2009 Maria became the leader of a new educational branch of RIS Ventures: “Win the Market” education program for IT professionals. She organized a series of “Software Sales” seminars as a part of “Win the Market” initiative, supported by Microsoft and Siemens Enterprise Communications.

Maria graduated from State University - Higher School of Economics, specializing in Economics and Finance of a Company with a research on