Ural Federal University: Nearly 40 Thousand Spectators Gathered at the Science Festival “IT Picnic”
The Mayakovsky Central Park of Culture and Recreation hosted the science festival “IT Picnic” on September 23. Nearly 40 thousand spectators from Yekaterinburg and the Sverdlovsk region attended the science-pop meeting, which is twice as many as last year.
Dmitry Pobedinsky, physicist, blogger and author of the Telegram channel “Physics from Pobedinsky”, gave a lecture “Theory of Relativity for Dummies”, and Asya Kazantseva, science journalist and popularizer of science, spoke on “Attention Management: is it possible to improve the ability to focus?”. Speakers from UrFU and Kontur talked about the impact of technology on fundamental research, magnetism, and whether artificial intelligence is something to be afraid of.
The audience of the IT Picnic was also shown a chemistry show. There were activities and quizzes that immersed them in the world of science and technology. The event ended with a concert by Maxim Svoboda, the founder of the band SvoboDA and finalist of the “Songs” project on TV channel TNT.
“The number of visitors to this year’s festival was astonishing. We, of course, hoped to gather more visitors than at the first festival, but we were pleasantly surprised by this result. So, we hit the mark with the invited headliners and entertainment program. Thank you to everyone who came that day to the Mayakovsky Park to listen to the lecturers, ask questions, participate in quizzes made by neural network, dance at the “silent” disco and do other things. Together we confirmed the thesis that science is really popular and society is interested in technologies. Once again we were convinced that there are a lot of active, thinking and inquisitive people in Ekaterinburg”, says Ekaterina Vlasiuk, the curator of the event.
The “IT Picnic” was held in Ekaterinburg for the second time. Last year the speakers were famous bloggers-popularizers of science, employees of SKB Kontur, scientists and teachers of UrFU. The audience was also offered to play neuroquiz with artificial intelligence, perform tasks created by a neural network and play robot soccer. In 2022, the site was visited by about 19 thousand people.