Russian Znanie Society is a nonprofit public organization that is engaged in regional educational work, forms intellectual content, organizes and hosts free lectures and all kinds of events in the field of education, social support and social protection of students attending educational institutions as well as older people.
According to the memorandum, the Center and the Znanie Society commit themselves to holding joint field-specific activities, contributing to the development of instruments and solutions for innovation and information technologies, preparing solution implementation proposals, coordinating and promoting collaborative approaches and incentives for awareness-raising amongst young people in the information and communications technology field.
“Russian Znanie Society is now facing the challenge of turning 600 hours of educational content that’s been already created into a well-structured knowledge base supporting search and data labeling operations. This will basically lead us to create some kind of alternative to Wikipedia, which is still unmatched today. Our online encyclopedia will include a feature that will allow users to find many different answers to the same question. One can approach the same topic either in a more scientific or in a more entertaining way. We’d like to allow our partners to get more traffic and opportunities and bring them together on the same platform rather than try to compete,” said the General Director of the Znanie Society Maxim Dreval.
In addition to that, the Center concluded agreements with two esports organizations, one being the Russian eSports Federation represented by its President Dmitry Smith and another being ESforce Holding, whose CEO Nikolay Petrossian was the one to sign the agreement on behalf of the company.
ESforce Holding is one of the world’s largest esports organizations and the leader of the Russian esports industry. The holding company unites all key esports business areas—from running its own professional esports club to organizing international tournaments, from content creation and broadcasting to managing advertising and infrastructure projects.
Russian eSports Federation is an all-Russian public organization responsible for the development of broad-based electronic sports (i.e., esports) in Russia. By the order of the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation, the eSports Federation was accredited as an all-Russian sports federation for Computer Sports. It is also worth noting that the eSports Federation is building a full-fledged broad-based esports industry infrastructure by training and certifying judges, providing platform accreditation, preparing instructional materials, managing educational projects, and promoting clubs and classes.
According to the document, the parties commit themselves to exchanging experience and information on current issues in esports and promising computer and Internet technology developments, as well as organizing and hosting joint sporting, information and educational events, such as workshops, expert roundtables, symposiums, forums, conferences, exhibitions, congresses, contests, press conferences, other media activities, and so forth.
“The partnership agreement between the Russian eSports Federation and the Center for Global IT-Cooperation provides new opportunities for the organizations’ collaboration in the field of promising comprehensive studies, as well as in organizing expert roundtables, forums and conferences on technological and esports advances. Deepening cooperation will also have positive effects on the development of Russia’s broad-based electronic sports, primarily among young people in school and college esports organizations,” said Dmitry Smith, President of the Russian eSports Federation, commenting on the document signed.
“Esports is an important component of today’s digital society and high-tech economy. Rather than being sports of the future, esports is a part of the reality. We appreciate the fact that more like-minded people are entering adjacent industries, one of which is information technology. Together with the Center for Global IT-Cooperation, we are planning to work on building Russia’s community of experts engaged in the video game industry and esports,” noted the CEO of ESforce Holding Nikolay Petrossian.
“The collaboration between the Center and such important organizations provides a wide range of new opportunities for human capital development in Russia’s IT industry. By participating in educational activities together with the Znanie Society, we will be able to raise young people’s awareness of new ICT trends. It is also worth mentioning that esports can become a real digital economy “talent foundry.” Therefore, signing memoranda together with esports organizations is a brilliant opportunity to undertake joint research in the field,” said Vadim Glushchenko, Director of the Center for Global IT-Cooperation.
