The BrainBasket Foundation, an NGO aiming to develop IT education in Ukraine, is to set up the first television channel in Ukraine about the IT industry.
According to the foundation’s director Vladimir Liulka, the channel will be able to expand the information environment of those Ukrainians who are interested in IT, as well as enhance the Ukrainian IT market brand abroad.
“People who are interested in the IT sector, but have a rather poor understanding of how it works and what potential the sector has, will be able to learn more about it via the channel,” Liulka said. “With the help of BrainTV, they will also be able to learn programming and get inspired by the examples of Ukrainian IT businesses.”
Daytime slots will have programs in Ukrainian, while those in the evening and nighttime will include more English-language shows for the potential audience in the United States.
Bozhena Sheremeta, a former Kyiv Post journalist and marketing specialist at Ukrainian IT company Coppertino, has been appointed executive director of BrainTV.
“We’ve already started putting together a team in order to launch online streaming in test mode,” Sheremeta told the Kyiv Post. “So during January-February we’re planning to make a team that will create content for testing, and then they will work on more difficult programs, like reality-shows.”
“With the emergence of BrainTV, Ukrainian tech companies finally get a promotional platform for video advertising, while Ukrainians receive original educational and entertainment video content about IT 24/7,” she said.
Among the other partners of the project are also Ciklum, a Ukrainian IT company with Scandinavian roots, and Luxoft, an international custom software development and IT outsourcing company.
Vice President of HR and organizational development at Ciklum Marina Vyshegorodskikh told the Kyiv Post that television was an excellent communication platform – both for the further integration of the IT industry and for providing opportunities to “step into the future” to those people who are still remote from IT today.
“People will be able to learn more about modern technologies and maybe even acquire a new profession over time,” Vyshegorodskikh said.
The BrainBasket Foundation was set up to develop IT education in Ukraine. It was established in April 2014 by the country’s leading IT companies, with the help of the Economy Ministry and Kyiv City Administration. The foundation’s main goal is to facilitate the training of 100,000 new IT specialists by 2020.
Earlier this year Brainbasket launched several projects, including Coding for the Future and Technology Nation, to help Ukrainians learn programming languages.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at krasnikov@kyivpost.com. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Looksery, Ciklum, Steltec Capital and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.
