Author’s note from 2023: I will leave this post in Russian intentionally. It carries no practical meaning as a source of brilliant ideas or high philosophical thinking. It was just a regular event at that time in that country, when we all were hoping that everything was normal, if not good. Unfortunately, that past Barbie’s world is ruined now, some of the heroes of the article are imprisoned in Belarus, and some have left the country.

The PartyHard! 2016 conference has just ended. I want to share my impressions of the final day, as well as some thoughts that may not be directly related to it, but that arose in its context.

1. There are hardware developers in Belarus, despite everything and against all odds. How they survive is a mystery to me. Obviously, competing with numerous Asian developers in mass-market products is not an option. The options left are either niche products, which for reasons of security or commercial secrecy cannot be given “out”, or the release of products based on Chinese “hardware”, but with their own software.
2. BeetsBlu went the second route, finding Chinese suppliers of “hardware” and writing their own low-level software, as well as Android / iPhone apps. The company’s products are sold directly through Amazon ("Fulfillment by Amazon") - this is more profitable than building your own logistics network.
3. R-Nox is a startup, with extensive developments in the field of radiation safety, releasing their own personal dosimeter Zive. I can’t write about it better than Vadim Stankevich did. The product apparently is still in the stage of debugging - pre-order with a 30% discount on the website is unavailable, the domain http://www.r-nox.eu/ does not respond - and needs a final push. Guys, focus!
4. The products of Promwad company consistently stand out for their well-thought-out and great design. Unlike software projects, each iteration on “hardware” is a forced step, when developers face unexpected difficulties. A portable breathalyzer or a set of sensors for iPhone Lapka underwent several iterations before the final sample was handed out to the customer, during which the breathalyzer got rid of the secondary function of a whistle, and the nitrate meter of the sensor set stopped accumulating the measured substances in the pores of its case - such is the price of invaluable experience.
5. Belarus is not on the sidelines of world trends, in particular, crowdfunding. This topic was introduced by Belgazprombank and the “Ulei” platform. The latter currently has 2000 subscribers, is interested in offering its services to hardware developers, and considers it possible to raise funds to finance projects up to 50,000$. Let’s not assess how sufficient this amount is for hardware development, - the presenter of “Ulei” Eduard Babariko undoubtedly earned the title of the best speaker of the conference.

That’s pretty much it. With this, the thoughts that I want to number and share, end, and I delve into the depths of vague sensations of what was, and what could have been different. I liked the venue of the conference, the PVT Business Incubator building inspires faith in the victory of the forces of light, science and technical progress. I enjoyed the exhibition of projects, where alongside a student LED cube there were Google Glass projecting images from a compact thermal imager, a massive quadcopter capable of flying for hours, an all-weather surveillance system with a 20x optical zoom and an extremely long-range radio channel, a kit for turning your home into a “smart” one, various moving and flashing robots. The project exhibition was open throughout the entire event - if desired, one could take their time and talk to the author of an interesting development…

…and then it was sometimes discovered that before you was an incredibly interesting person, with a lot of experience, ideas, capable of almost everything, but for some reason not succeeding in conveying his thoughts within the report, or remaining misunderstood. Perhaps, we should ask ourselves “why” more often. Why talk about global experience, when our, local experience, is interesting? Why do a 40-slide presentation, when you only have 20 minutes? Why.. No reason – just rehearse your performance in front of colleagues several times, and finally, if everything still doesn’t turn out very well, assign the presentation to someone else, or perform in tandem. One area where our country lags behind places like India is in the skills of self-presentation of developers - but in fact everything is good with us! We can! We can do it! We are worthy!

And we will succeed!

P.S. well you all figured out what’s wrong with this photo 🙂

The original content has been translated by an AI tool.