On Tuesday, we were lucky to visit Siberian Internet Week, probably the only conference that unites web-developers, clients and investors in Novosibirsk.
Having seen such large venues as TechCrunch50, I was expecting something like that somewhere at the back of my mind.
However… Well, below are some of our outputs that we carefully carried out of the conference.
- The local market of web development is focused on creating corporate websites.
- The local market of creating corporate websites is divided between 3 small young companies.
- Corporate websites are mostly simple 5-page sites on a CMS with catchy design and a couple of interactive elements.
- It is considered a great way of doing business to charge $30,000 for development of a corporate website. The development may take up to 9 months.
- There is a craze about making your website rank #1 in Russian search engines. People are willing to pay monthly fees per keyword.
- There is no clue about public relations management. Marketing efforts are concentrated on what’s hip.
- Professionals are not willing to share their practical knowledge with the audience.
- The audience, in its turn, has no idea about nice behaviour like standing up when asking questions.
- The presenters have no idea about ethics of public speech either: it is normal to present sitting in front of a laptop pointing at its screen.
- Schedule? Agenda? The popular people don’t need it. The unpopular people are reminded of time constraints.
In short, this all looked like either a vanity fair or a short catch up of old peers but… ugh… what d’ya expect for 15 bucks?