Thank you for supporting DevFest for Ukraine ❤️
Hi everyone!
Two months ago our GDG Ukraine community decided to organize a tech conference to raise money for Ukraine. After weeks of intense work on June 14–15th we ran the conference and want to share the results and some highlights with you!
The goal
Our initial goal was to raise $50,000. Thanks to multiple donations from individuals and partners, we’ve reached our $50,000 and $75,000 milestones, and, including the conference days, we raised almost $130,000!
We are beyond grateful to every person, team and company who joined our cause — we could not have done this without you!❤️
We’ll direct all funds to three Ukrainian non-governmental organizations: “Come Back Alive”, “Nova Ukraine” and “Children’s Voices”. Each of them support a different cause in a transparent public way to provide support for Ukrainians who temporarily moved, lost their homes, or are fighting back against the Russian aggression. With these funds, we can buy about 1300 first aid kits, or 380 bulletproof vests, or 90 tons of humanitarian aid, which can save the lives of thousands of Ukrainians. Let’s do it together!
The conference
We streamed live from three studios in two locations:
Lviv, Ukraine:
And London, the UK:
During two days, we had 18 breakout sessions within AI, Web and Mobile streams, and two inspiring keynotes: Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, talked about how Ukraine is accelerating towards being a digital-first country, and Carl Miller, co-founder of CASM Technology and Research Director at Centre for the Analysis of Social Media talked about fighting back against information warfare.
While the conference is over now, you can still donate on the website to support our cause and access all recordings: devfest.gdg.org.ua
Huge thanks to our amazing speakers for joining our cause on such a short notice and supporting Ukraine!✊🇺🇦
Participants
Thank you all for participating in the conference and making it such a memorable experience for everyone! Here are some stats:
- 800 participants 👨💻👩💻
- 53 countries. Most of participants outside of Ukraine came from the United States, Poland, Germany, and the United Kingdom
- 55% of donations came from abroad 🌏
And some feedback from participants:
Thank you again for being a great community!❤️
The team
Normally, it took us 12–13 months to organize a conference on a level that we find acceptable (yes, we are crazy perfectionists — ping us if you want to hear the details!). This time we were doing everything 6x faster — in under 2 months, which also meant it was 6x more intense and challenging. Huge thanks to our amazing team who invested their time and best effort to make this conference happen! Vasylyna Mytsak, Sofiia Pavliak, Mayya Vu, Vitalik Zasadnyy, Ostap Andrusiv, Sofiya Huts, Diana Pinchuk, Vika Nosova, Mariya Hirna, Oleh Zasadnyy, Valeriia Rubtsova, Nataliya Shevelyova, Alina Yurenko, Nikita Maltsev, Roman Levkovych, Roman Khrupa, Volodya Karpliuk, Marta Maxymiak, Yuliana Oselska, Dima Maleev, and Serj Miskiv ❤️
The partners
Big thanks to our amazing partners who #StandWithUkraine: Google Cloud, Google Developers, Outreach, Avenga, Wix, and Lemon.io. These organizations went above and beyond to help us reach our donation goals.
What’s next?
The conference is over now and we are grateful for your support. We will transfer all funds to 3 Ukrainian NGOs we mentioned previously, and will report on the results.
Yet the war is ongoing, Ukraine keeps fighting back, and needs your support more than ever. Please spread verified news, donate directly to Ukrainian NGOs, and demand further sanctions and military support for Ukraine.
Thank you for being with us and standing with Ukraine!
With ❤️,
the DevFest for Ukraine team
