This month  started under the West Coast sun for some of Digiteum team members. In particular, Digiteum co-founder, Michael Grebennikov, together with the member of Digiteum advisory board, Alex Golod, have held the MeetUp on SmartSourcing to Central Eastern Europe in the heart of Silicon Valley. Here is the short wrap-up of the event.

March 8, Redwood City, GSV Labs, MeetUp on SmartSourcing to CEE

We’ve chosen the heart of Silicon Valley to hold a meetup on such a tricky topic  for a reason. It’s not that we expected the whole local tech community to show up.  

Rather it appeared a bit symbolic, and extremely convenient.

First things first, we had 4 speakers assigned for presentations and panel discussion:

• Alex Golod, the member of Digiteum advisory board, confirmed outsourcing expert (think of development teams for Navteq/Nokia, Frontrange, Addus, and Popcorn Palace) was leading the panel discussion and took up all the tricky questions.
• Roman Kaplun — Director of Engineering Services at Expedia – was in charge of the buyer’s point of view on the outsourcing to CEE.
• Brian Venneman introduced outsourcing to CEE in such industries as music, social media and e-commerce.
• And finally, Digiteum co-founder, Michael Grebennikov was in charge of providing the basics on IT outsourcing and sharing exclusive experience of building remote dedicated teams for such companies as AdoramaPix, Oxford University Press, IKEA, Efinancialcareers, Ladbrokes from the providers’ side.

In a nutshell, upon the discussion the attendees — CEO, entrepreneurs, investors and tech professionals — have found the answers to the basic questions regarding the fears and insecurities that businesses have while choosing a remote partner.

• What to outsource and what not to outsource?
• How to prepare one’s business toworkingwith the teams remotely?
• How not to get lost among various partnership models and locations?
• Why tochoose this particular partner, what legal procedures to go through?
• What platforms and technologies to rely on and how to manage projects?
• Where to search for realistic prices and deadlines?
• How to predict quality, results, outcomes and perspectives?

Soon after the meetup audience went through the basics, they sit down topaneldiscussion. This is when Alex took the speaking part into his expert hands.

For the records, it took an additional hour to go through all the pointing issues.

Not only did the attendees study the development technologies in CEE with scrutiny, but also expressed great interest to the places where one can find reliable tech partners.

We have made a profound analysis on Belarus as an outstanding outsourcing destination ourselves earlier this month.

Here’s the full presentation to learn more about the basics for IT outsourcing.

Basic Outcomes of the Event

— Was the meetup a success?

— Considering the set of opinions and multilevel discussion — investors, providers, advisors, buyers — we managed to perform out this time. So it definitely was a success.

— Was the meetup on time?

— I make this conclusion relying on the opinion of Megan Smith, former Google executive, who mentioned that  “there’s going to be 1.4 million tech and I.T. jobs coming within the next decade [in the U.S.] and only 400,000 trained people to fill them.” In other words, the demand of IT talents in the U.S. only is going to grow exponentially, so the interest to outsourcing to the IT locations that provide outstanding quality will grow directly. Basically, this is the answer: we were right on time.

If you have missed the event for some reasons or haven’t had a chance to learn about IT outsourcing basics, GO TO THIS CHECK-LIST to find out if your business is ready to rely on IT outsourcing.