To unite talents interested in the development of technological entrepreneurship for their further growth through the educational and business programs of Astana Hub - this was the goal of the regional community managers program.

“Today, the main forces of the startup community are concentrated in the megacities of Nur-Sultan and Almaty, while the regions remain without due attention. At the same time, we are confident that there are many talents in our country that we can give the necessary support to,” said Arkady Seleznev, Managing Director of Astana Hub.

This is not the first experience of the international technopark working with regional IT communities. In 2020, the first Regional Agents program was launched. Representatives of six cities of the country participated in the program.

The new program has a wider geography. This time it covered the cities of Aktobe, Aktau, Atyrau, Kokshetau, Kostanay, Uralsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Pavlodar, Taraz, Turkestan, Zhezkazgan, Kyzylorda, Petropavlovsk, Taldykorgan and Shymkent.

Serious demands were made on the ambassadors of the technopark in the regions. A fundamentally important selection criterion was a good knowledge of the potential representative not only of the IT industry as a whole, but also of the urgent needs and characteristics of the region.

“The formation of a community in any field is a multicomponent and multifaceted process. Sometimes it comes naturally, but often people need to be pushed and fertile ground created for them. This requires the right selection of meeting topics, networking and clear rules of interaction. With extensive experience in building communities, we were pleased to be part of such a large-scale and significant IT program for the country. As program operators, we felt the incredible potential and enthusiasm of regional IT specialists,” said Indira Shah, Head of Impact Hub Almaty, operator of the regional IT community formation program from Astana Hub.

During their work, regional managers held 129 events where technology entrepreneurs, programmers and experts from 15 cities met. Managers organized meetings with successful IT entrepreneurs, webinars on popular topics, workshops and master classes by experienced experts, hackathons and much more. All events were aimed at the development of IT and technological entrepreneurship and were held in Russian and Kazakh languages ​​in online and offline formats.

One of the highlights of the program was the Idea Battle contest. Participants had to offer a solution to the social problem of their region "Idea Battle". The winners were teams from the cities of Kyzylorda, Aktau and Pavlodar with projects to teach older people computer literacy, a map of the city indicating comfortable routes and places for the movement of people with disabilities, and an environmental project to obtain an additional source of moisture from the atmospheric air. Each team received 200 thousand tenge to develop their idea.

Hackathons, which took place at the end of November in Petropavlovsk and Kyzylorda, received a great response among novice developers. Schoolchildren and students in the allotted time solved problems on a specific problem of their city with the help of smart technologies. For example, at the First Petropavlovsk Hackathon, 15 teams from schools, colleges and universities were looking for a solution to the problem of employment of IT specialists and developed projects for new products: telegram bots, platforms and mobile applications.

The hackathon and the Idea Battle have become an example of how the joint efforts of the IT community members help to find technological solutions to urgent social problems in the regions.

In total, 3701 listeners from all over the country took part in the events organized by the regional managers of Astana Hub.

Astana Hub plans to work with the regions on a regular basis so that each city of the country forms and develops its own community of IT specialists and IT entrepreneurs.

The Astana Hub regional community managers program is being implemented as part of government support measures for IT start-ups.