Ural Federal University: 6,500 Picnic IT Attendees Learn More About Science of Future

On September 3, the Picnic IT popular science meeting was held in Mayakovsky Park. 6,500 people came to listen to lectures and music, take part in neural network quizzes and communicate with like-minded people. The event was organized by Ural Federal University and SKB Kontur.

Speakers from UrFU were Nikolay Domukhovsky, Ilya Obabkov, Kirill Grzhegorzhevsky, and Anna Gurariy. The speakers talked about the connection between sociology and IT, the smart home, and how we should live after the smartphone era. Many of the lecturers combine educational activities with work in IT, for example Nikolay Domukhovsky is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy General Director for Scientific and Technical Development at USSC.

“The idea of the Picnic IT is to popularize IT as a way of life and an integral part of our everyday life, in addition, to increase the recognition of SKB Kontur and UrFU brands as active players in the IT market. We expect that the “Picnic IT” will become an annual event and every year its scale will only grow. We plan to expand not only the target audience, but also the formats of activities, lecturers and much more,” said Oybek Partov, the Project Curator from UrFU.

Participants had a chance to explore artificial intelligence in a game called Neuroquiz. The quest from Neuroquiz is available in the “Picnic IT” telegram channel. There were also organized several sites with robotics: underwater robotics, a robot-soccer tournament. All activities and lectures were absolutely free, participants only had to register.