SKOLKOVO graduates: Alexey Voronin, Executive MBA, about building relations

We continue to acquaint you with our graduates. And here's a story from our EMBA-3 alumni Alexey Voronin about his project "SKOLKOVO Link".

Everyone who enters the SKOLKOVO business-school has his or her own motivation – knowledge, projects, search for new guidelines, desire to change his or her personality, own business or even the whole country. But I would assign primary importance to people! We enter the school in order to find like-minded people, gain contacts, hit the mark of businessmen and entrepreneurs. And after a year and a half we ask ourselves how, having graduated, it is possible to maintain those relations staying a part of the SKOLKOVO community.

So we have come up with the idea of SKOLKOVO Link! In order not to lose relations between students, graduates and the school itself my partner Dmitry Kazachkov, Executive MBA student, and I have elaborated the idea of a SKOLKOVO social network creation. We have conducted surveys among the programme’s listeners and employees, have analyzed their wishes and taken the project on the final stage of its implementation.

SKOLKOVO link: what is it? What opportunities does that application offer?
This is a closed social network implemented in the form of an iPhone and Android application.
A user downloads the application, signs up, creates his profile where he places basic, but still essential for us, information and gets access to profiles of the SKOLKOVO community participants, contacts, news, invitation to events and other opportunities!

We are all busy people and, obviously, do not manage to tack everything that happens in lives of our mates, not to mention the whole group. However what we tell about ourselves on the first programme module may significantly change in a month. It concerns work, projects, interests and even the family status. SKOLKOVO Link will help to find out everything mentioned above and lots more as there a user can change his personal information online.

Следующий момент - безопасность. The next point is security. You are not going to publish a start-up idea or photos from a student party in the common group on Facebook. You do not want them to travel around the net and be openly accessed to. Being a SKOLKOVO Link user, firstly, you upload everything for “friends only”, secondly, you can easily restrict access to any content.

There is a great amount of answers to, “why do you need it?” For instance, you have a new project idea. The question arises, “How can inform all the students about it and make them subscribe for my news?” For sure, you are probably signed up in this or that social network: Facebook, LinkedIn, Odnoklassniki (Classmates). But the opportunity to find everybody in one place is a definite advantage! Just to push a button and publish a post. To push another one and have the access to ideas, projects and teams.

Here is another example: you are in search for interesting investment projects. So a project base is at your service. There are lots of well-off people who always search in what project they can invest their money, while the business-school’s students have a great amount of ideas. Why not to relate them? Such a user can find and consider a new start-up idea, subscribe for updates and find out everything that happens to that start-up receiving messages.So easy!

Actually the application will have lots of its cool things! We plan to implement the geo-location service for you to find out who from the SKOLKOVO students are near you at the moment, to open the access to an electronic library and souvenir shop, to organize automatic pass-order on Campus.

SKOLKOVO Link will give students and graduates an opportunity to be aware of everything going on Campus, get informed about upcoming events, receive invitations and, if needed, create them and invite people themselves. And in order to do this there is no need to call everybody or search for their e-mails.

Surely, SKOLKOVO Link is not a social network about business and studying only! An important component is search for like-minded people, friends who share common interests. For example, you would like to travel to Elbrus. You are looking for a team. All you need to do I to update your status or create a hash-tag, and everybody interested in mountaineering will automatically find you. And it does not matter when it has been mentioned and in what event branch the publication has appeared. The whole application will be searched.

And the most important thing: our system will be synchronized with the SKOLKOVO internal portal, and it enables mutually advantageous exchange of information!

People ask me why I have engaged myself in creation of that social network, why we have decided to implement such a project with our own means. Actually it is really interesting to create, elaborate and bring to life such a thing. If you have been a student yourself, if you know the needs and understand advantages that the project can bring to you personally, to everybody who has studied at SKOLKOVO and to the school itself, you have motivation to go straight forward to the set goal!