A three-day IT event "Fresh AIR 2023" was held in Odesa, which brought together the best students and graduates of Ukrainian schools who know how to create websites, chatbots and mobile applications.
During three days, the teams performed the task of developing socially oriented digital products, which were presented to the jury.
The event was organized by the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of the National University "Odesa Polytechnic", which is headed by Candidate of Technical Sciences Mykhailo Lobachev and a charitable foundation "A noble cause" Serhiy Shutov, with the support of the organization Odesa IT Family, which unites representatives of the IT sphere of the southern region. The main sponsor of the event was a Danish company Akkerman Solutions Ukraine, headed by Thomas Cillesen.
Boris Voloshenkov, the first deputy head of Odesa OVA, Oleg Radkovskii, the first deputy head of the Odesa Regional Council, and the head of the Odesa National Police Service, general of the third rank, Mykola Semenyshyn, were also invited to the closing ceremony and awarding of the winners.
The three best "Fresh AIR 2023" teams received 20, 12, and 8 thousand hryvnias for their designs for first, second, and third place, respectively. Valuable gifts for creativity and experience were also awarded to other participating teams.
"Over the last twenty years, the world has changed a lot, and the IT sphere is currently the main engine of progress. That is why events like the "Fresh AIR 2023" hackathon are extremely important - they support our youth, allow us to exchange experience and be creative. It's no secret that Ukrainian IT specialists are among the best in the world, so supporting them at the start of their career while they are still studying is extremely important. I am very pleased that we were able to organize such an event in Odessa and we are already planning the next one in Europe," said the co-organizer, head of the charitable foundation "A noble cause" Sergey Shutov.
It is worth noting that the "Noble Cause" charitable foundation has been helping residents of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions since the first days of the war, and is concerned about displaced persons and soldiers on the front lines. Special attention should be paid to the young generation - gifted students and schoolchildren - according to the head of the fund, Serhiy Shutov.
In turn, Thomas Cillesen, director Akkerman Solutions Ukraine, said that his company is not the first to support such events.
"Such initiatives make Ukrainian software and engineering stronger and this is interesting for our company, as it increases the qualifications of engineers and software specialists that we may need in the future. Over the years, we have supported several educational projects in Ukraine, the most notable being at the University of Severodonetsk, where, with the help of DAI/USAID from the US, we trained teachers and students on the special software used by our company. As a result, we helped make future work in Western companies more attractive for students. We even almost bought an office in Rubizhny, near Severodonetsk, but the war started. Now we plan to expand our business with an office in Mykolaiv," said Thomas Cillesen.
"Fresh AIR 2023" is a hackathon dedicated to the development of creative social applications. In general, such events have been held around the world since the early 2000s, and gather the best IT specialists from various fields of software development, who solve the tasks as a team.
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