NotForum of bloggers: the dinosaur in the arena and the armored car at the entrance
Kazan Arena stadium has mounted an unexpected challenge to IT-Park and Innopolis by hosting the 5th NotForum of bloggers – the annual meeting of active social media users from all over Russia and neighboring countries. The event, however, has a pronounced educational character, but the ambition of the organizers and the stadium infrastructure allowed to look at the platform from another angle. Read more in the report of the correspondent of Realnoe Vremya.
NotKazan Arena
At the entrance to the Kazan Arena stadium the participants were welcomed by the car of the KAMAZ-Master racing team and the armored car BRDM-2. According to the owner of the armored vehicle, all the guests' attention was captivated by it, not by the legendary KAMAZ. The real hero of the opening ceremony was an unknown animator from Yurkin Park, dressed in a suit of an ornithopod. It was clearly very difficult to move in the massive suit, and the dinosaur was literally led by a guide who periodically asked the actor about his state of health.
The forum was held in several rooms of premises under the tribunes, as well as on the field. Extremely self-ironic was the hashtag of the organizers of NotForum, which in the translation into English means 'not a stadium'. Although, most likely, the Moscow guests simply do not know the difficult fate of Kazan Arena, which a few years after the opening could not host a football match. Firstly it was destined to become the arena for opening and closing ceremonies of the Universiade, and then to become a large pool of the World Aquatics Championships in 2015. The hearts of the journalists sank when they saw the expensive lawn crammed with a variety of architectural forms, they remembered the cost of its installation and relocation (200 thousand euros).
Despite the fact that the forum occupied only one section of the stadium, it looked pretty empty (in total 300 participants). The regulation of the opening ceremony was 1.5 hours and consisted entirely of speeches. On the lawn there were girls- cheerleaders practicing, the children from the kid-space and other residents of the Kazan Arena stadium.
New items in VKontakte
The chief of the Republic Presidential Administration Asgat Safarov welcomed the participants on behalf of Tatarstan, he gave the parting words of Rustam Minnikhanov and wished the participants the good work, then left the stadium.
The main report was made by the head of the press service of 'Vkontakte' Evgeny Krasnikov. He told about the design changes to the social network. Krasnikov told about 400 thousands of views of test streaming video from the Moscow metro when a popular band gave a concert right in the car. Also, the social network provides the opportunity to earn on uploading videos of own production (if it enjoys sufficient popularity).
Witty colleagues of Krasnikov during the speech showed behind the speaker the dinosaur, at the same time the reptilian was teasing. As a result, of officialdom tone of the event disappeared. Krasnikov finished his speech by stating that any user will be able to enjoy the new design of social networks now, if they write a request to the support team. The start of the event was given.
Answering the questions of the journalists why the forum has such name, one of his organizers Aleksey Pilko noted that the prefix 'not' is used to designate some informality of the event.
On 3 June, the bloggers of Russia and the CIS countries were awaited by the educational sections on how to get in the top LJ, to monetize their posts, to organize broadcasts (by the way, the broadcast of the football game between two gamers was organized just on the media façade of Kazan Arena), and many others useful activities, the Saturday was allocated for the blog tours 'Historic Tatarstan', 'Industrial Tatarstan', 'Innovative Tatarstan'. Accordinf to the organizers, the most popular was 'Historic Tatarstan'.
