Opera Software University Tours

(РУССКАЯ ВЕРСИЯ)

Our team (myself, Chris Mills and Alexey Feldgendler)is back from a short, but a very successful university tour we had in Ukraine. Within three days we visited three cities, talked in three universities and slept three nights in the trains.

We had the seminars, the community meetup, the round table with journalists and the Campus Crew meetup.

MONDAY. KIEV

Our tour started with meeting the journalists from the Ukrainian developers community (http://www.developers.org.ua/). After a very nice talk with those guys we ran straight to the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, where we were supposed to have a seminar with Kiev students.

When we arrived, we had the room, equipment and Wifi all prepared. That was perfect! By the time we started our presentation we had over 200 students in the room. It was amazing to see them all interested in Opera and Web Standards.

Taking about the standards, Chris gave many examples illustrating the usage of web standards in real life. Alexey provided the full and professional translation of Chris speech and answered all technical questions.

After the seminar we had a round table with the journalist, which also went well.

More fun to go - Community meet-up. A chance for anyone to have some beer with us and talk in unofficial atmosphere. We had about a dozen of Opera fans who joined us for beer and sushi . A couple of hours later we jumped into the train, which took us straight to Kharkov.

TUESDAY. KHARKOV

This was the city with the biggest Campus Crew team and audience we got. Over 300 students attended the seminar. I'm was very happy we got a big room This
was also the place where we got the longest queue for our "browse me" t-shirts after the seminar!

After the seminar we went for a walk and a quick dinner with our Kharkov Campus Crew. They guys were so nice and showed us the city, which in fact is very interesting to see.

We had to leave Kharkov the same day in the evening, and the next rain took us to Donetsk.

WEDNESDAY. DONETSK

We had a wonderful weather in all cities we went and Donetsk wasn't an exception. The city was welcoming us and so did the university. Again, the room was full with over 200 students itnerested in Opera seminar. This time it looked more like a rock concert where each of us was greeted with the storm of applause.

The seminar was a complete success with Chris speaking about Web Standards and Alexey showing our new Turbo feature. We stayed for about an hour after the seminar answering students' questions in the hall and taking pictures with them.


We came back to Kiev next day and had some time to discuss the tour results before we left home. All of us came up with the same conclusion: Ukrainian students are fun to work with and we are very happy with this tour.

The report in Russian is now available here: http://my.opera.com/russian/blog/show.dml/3242195
The pictures of the tour are available at: http://my.opera.com/kumenova/albums/
You can also find Chris's report here: http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/2009/05/06/ukraine-university-tour-april-2009

Попрощавшись с Одессой, мы сели в поезд и отправились в маленький город Тернополь на западе Украины.
After saying goodbye to Odessa we jumped into the train on the way to the small town Ternopil, the western part of Ukriane.

Там нас ждали студенты Тернопольского национального технического университета им Ивана Пулюя. Этот университет оказался одним из самых хорошо организованных и подготовленных к семинару Opera Software. В зале набралось более сотни слушателей.
We knew that the students of the Ternopil State Ivan Pul'uj Technical University were waiting for us. This university turned out to be one of the most organized and well prepared for Opera Software seminar. The room was filled with more than 100 people.

Навжот, как обычно, рассказывал про безграничные возможности открытых стандартов на простых и увлекательных примерах с котятами, играми и историями из личного опыта.
Nav as usual was talking about unlimited opportunities of open standards by showing simple and interesting examples with cats, games and his life stories.

Студенты в Тернополе оказались с хорошим чувством юмора и выразили свою любовь к Opera очень оригинальным способом:
The Ternopil students seemed to have a good sense of humor and showed their love to Opera in a very special way:

А в конце семинара наш "суперстар" фотографировался со студентами и раздавал автографы:
At the end our "superstar" was posing for pictures with the students and giving autographs:


На этот момент нас оставалось посетить еще один семинар, который должен быть пройти в городе Львов...
At that point we had one more seminar left, which should take place in Lviv...

Фотографии со всех семинаров доступны здесь:
Pictures from all seminarы are available here:
http://my.opera.com/kumenova/albums/

Четвертый день университетского тура прошел в городе Донецк и пользовался не меньшей популярностью среди студентов. Мы провели два семинара, везде аудитории были переполнены.
The forth day of our university tour was in Donetsk and not less popular than the past ones among the students. We had two seminars with both rooms overcrowded.

Государственный университет информатики и искусственного интеллекта - очень уникальное учебное заведение с дружелюбной атмосферой и активными студентами.

The State University of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence is a very unique university with friendly atmosphere and active students.

Навджот, который был уже почти без голоса, старался заинтересовать публику практическими примерами и показывал много демо, и был очень рад, когда ему удалось успешно закончить презентацию и передать слово Илье Шпанькову.
Navjot, who almost lost his voice by that time, tried his best to keep the audience interested with many practical examples and demos, and was very happy when managed to finish his presentation succesfully and give the word to Ilya Shpan'kov.

Илья рассказывал об образовательных проектах Opera и карьерных возможностях для студентов, иногда выглядев как пророк , ведущий студентов к светлому будущему(на фото: С нами Бог и ...).
Ilya was talking about educational projects run by Opera and career opportunities for students. Sometimes he looked like a prophet leading the students to the bright future (on the pic: We are with God and...)

Мы завершили семинар раздачей подарков и ответами на вопросы студентов.
We finished the seminar with giving out the Opera gifts and answering questions.

Донецкий Национальный Политехнический Университет тоже встретил нас с радостью.
Donetsk National Polytechnic University was also happpy to see us.

В этом университете у нас очень активный член Opera Campus Crew Иван Дядин, который помогал нам как в организации семинара, так и во время его.
In this unversity we had a very active Opera Campus Crew member Ivan Dyadin, who was very helpful both with organizing the event and during the seminar.

В обоих университетах нам удалось пообщаться с деканами технических факультетов, у которых уже были идеи по поводу сотрудничества в Opera Software. Мы очень надеемся, что все идеи у нас получится совместно реализовать.
In both universities we had nice talks with the deans of technical faculties, who already had few ideas of partnership with Opera Software. We hope we manage to realize all these ideas together pretty soon.

Второй день нашего тура по Украине прошел также в Киеве. На этот раз мы посетили Национальный технический университет Украины КПИ.
We also spent the second day of our Ukrainian tour in Kiev. This time we visited the National Technical University KPI.

В большой физической аудитории собралось около 90 студентов, которые с интересом слушали презентацию Навджота Павера, рассказывающего о веб-стандартах и мобильном Интернете. Мы также ознакомили студентов с образовательными возможностями от Opera Software и ответили на интересующие их вопросы.
We held the seminar in a big physics auditorium with over 90 students, who showed great interest in Nav's presentation about web-standards and mobile Internet. We also talked about educational programs run by Opera Software and answered all questions.

После семинара многие из студентов не покидали аудиторию и продолжали общаться с нашими докладчиками. Каждому участнику семинара мы подарили фирменные ручки и эксклюзивные блокноты, сделанные специально для университетского тура в Украине.
Many students stayed in the room after the seminar to discuss a few questions with our speakers. Every participant got an Opera pen and exclusive notebook made specially for this tour.

Члены Opera Campus Crew, помогавшие нам в организации семинара, получили отдельные подарки от Opera (на фото: КПИ Opera Campus Crew в полном составе - Ярослав, Сергей и Андрей).
Campus Crew members, who helped us a lot in organizing the seminar, got special gifts from Opera (on the photo: the full team of KPI Opera Campus Crew - Yaroslav, Sergey and Andrey).

Аудитория, в которой проводился семинар, очень понравилась нам, и особенно Навджоту, который смог это даже продемонстрировать
The seminar room impressed us a lot, especially Navjot. You can see how he liked the room.


В этот же день поздно вечером мы прибыли в Харьков, город студентов, где нам предстояло провести 2 семинара 26-го ноября...
The same day late in the evening we arrived to Kharkov, the city of students, where we were supposed to have two seminars on the 26th of November...