The best tech wisdom from Lviv's annual IT Arena festival
Wealth & Democracy: Advice from Maye Musk, Google, AirBnB, and many others
A. «Invest in smart friends who have integrity»
B. «If you know you’re good at something, make sure you find people who appreciate you»
B. «The opposite of fragile isn’t strong. The opposite of fragile is resilience.»
These quotations are some of the advice offered by the world’s greatest tech minds at IT Arena in Lviv. From 7-9 October 2021, Lviv, Ukraine, hosted its 8th annual tech festival, with a mix of virtual panel sessions and in-person meet-ups in the city’s grand hotels, cafés, the Pravda Beer Theatre, etc. The event culminated with a Saturday gala at the 19th-century Lviv Opera House with a start-up pitch competition, a champagne reception, and live music by a cello-violin-drum trio.
In the Western press, Ukraine is often described as a “beleaguered” country—watch for it, that's usually the word—but events like IT Arena show great vibrancy here. And that vibrancy is why we have a section on our Lviv Now website called Wealth & Democracy. There is wealth here, especially in the energy and hustle of the people, and local democracy—rule by the people, not the elites—is often functioning quite well.
From our Wealth & Democracy page, we have compiled below highlights of the IT Arena panel talks on a variety of topics useful both to business leaders and to those just starting out in tech careers.
—Joe Lindsley; Editor, Lviv Now
«Express Your Expertise»: Maye, Mother of Elon, Gives Tips to Lviv’s IT Arena
«YOU COULD be really good [at what you do] but you have to let people know how good you are»: Model and dietician Maye Musk shared ideas about self-promotion, self-determination, and nutrition in keynote remarks to Lviv’s annual tech festival.
«Every tweet you do and every post you do is a risk because you could offend someone, but you have to promote yourself,» she said. «You need to express your expertise and get a weird following and [then] people will come to you.
«If you know you’re good at something, make sure you find people who appreciate you»
Read more, including Musk’s tips on nutrition …
Six Questions You Should Ask. AirBnB’s Expert on How to Make Decisions
AIR BnB PRODUCT MANAGER Colleen Graneto shared her techniques about decision-making and “analysis paralysis” at Lviv’s annual IT Arena event.
According to Graneto, before making any decision, you should consider three questions: What’s going on? What’s the context? What’s at stake?
«Make sure that you framed the decision,» she said, in her panel talk. «So that you actually understand what’s being decided.»
Then, she proposed that your idea be weighed by these six aspects:
«Do Not Put Humans in a Robot’s Job.» Ten Rules Google Follows.
AT LVIV’S IT ARENA, Google’s engineering lead Christof Leng shared ten things his team learned from running production infrastructure, focusing on the balance between reliability and velocity.
Reliability can’t be taken for granted. It is essential to have a voice at your decision table that focuses on the reliability of the product and pushes this topic on the agenda so that it’s not constantly postponed.
«Invest in Smart Friends Who Have Integrity». Advice from Angel Investor.
IHAR MAHANIOK, an angel investor based in New York, has been coding since he was 12, graduated from the Belarusian State University, spent years at Google and Facebook, and now is managing partner of Geek Ventures, an angel fund that invests in «immigrant founders building amazing scalable products.»
Mahaniok told a virtual audience at Lviv’s IT Arena that a warm introduction from an investor will boost your prospects for start-up success. Here is more of his advice:
What are the personal qualities you desire in a founder?
«Be nice. Responsive to feedback and not dismissive. … Investment is a long-term partnership. [The founder] needs to be both humble and ambitious. This is a very difficult combination. The best CEO is someone who wants to change the world and who has the drive but is also humble enough to know they are not the smartest person in the room.»
What are your tips for the 30-second elevator pitch?
«The most important [thing to express] is vision and something about the founders. Vision and something about the founder. Everything else is next. If the vision is completely unusual that is enough but most likely that is something I have heard of [and I need to hear about the founders].»
U.S. Cybersecurity Expert: Focus on Resilience, Not Strength
LAURA GALANTE, an American cybersecurity and cyberwarfare expert with significant experience in Ukraine, offered IT Arena three strategies to build resilience in the face of cyberthreats.
«The opposite of fragile isn’t strong,» Galante said. «The opposite of fragile is resilience.»
1. Build relationships.
2. Resilience can look like humility.
3. Give the edge of your organization power …
Six Positive to One Negative. How To Lead Your Team
A STRENGTH is only a strength if the person enjoys the work, Chris Cassarino said in a virtual session. The leader of global business development for international tech firm Softserve, co-headquartered in Lviv, Ukraine, and Austin, Texas, Cassarino has spent years helping many people find their strengths, or their «true north.»
With a series of practical tips, he encouraged the audience to focus on developing strengths rather than fixing weaknesses.
Product-Builders Need to Talk with Customers Every Week
TERESA TORES, a product development and research expert, warned an IT Arena panel about the «escalation of commitment»: «The more we invest in an idea the more we forget other things.» This leads to confirmation bias: You might create a product based on the loudest complainer or a false narrative.
To counter confirmation bias, she is an advocate of continuous discovery: obtaining regular, accurate, and useful feedback from customers. Here she offered step-by-step tips: what questions to ask, whom to ask, and how often—and who on your team should be involved in the discovery process.
Ukrainian Innovation Profile: Vasyl Dub Makes Platform for Pet Owners
A western Ukrainian, currently in the USA, wants to catalogue all the pets in the world—so the lost might be found and to make life easier for pet-owners. Read about his start-up, Animal ID, here.
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Lviv Now: Showing How Strong a Community Can Be When Creating Quality Changes Together
LVIV NOW created by Ukrainian and American journalists, brings you the universal ideas of a vibrant city, a place of culture, freedom, and innovation. Join the conversation about how we can build better cities and democracies.
Lviv Now is a project of Tvoe Misto (“Your City”), Lviv’s solutions-focused media hub, working with American journalist Joe Lindsley.
Each week, the journalists of Tvoe Misto, led by editor-in-chief Svitlana Zhabiuk and publisher Taras Yatsenko, host problem-solving public forums, one topic at a time, to activate democracy for all citizens. Their newsroom provides daily reporting as part of their solutions-focused journalism. We welcome you to share this newsletter or individual stories with digital nomads, creative people, travelers, diplomats, researchers, entrepreneurs, the Ukrainian diaspora, and more!
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