A new fan of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

I attended today the address of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium. Last thing I’d expected was that in 45 minutes I will convert from being Medvedev-neutral to Medvedev’s fan.

It did not change my political views or position on any internal or external topic in Russia, but it did change the way I perceive the Russian leader now.

His closing remarks (as I recompile my memory now) were:

"I visited the Silicon Valley and must admit that what’s going on here leaves a
huge impression, even on a President. I envy you. I envy that you can work every
day on what you love, you can reach self-realization and earn the money and live
fulfilling life. Isn’t that a definition of happiness? My dream is to enable the
same in my country and that’s also my politics".

I buy it more that any general political talks about reforms, court and law system, fight with corruption, and so on. All this is important but freedom of self-realization speaks directly to my heart, and is easy to understand.

While all other points he made in his speech about transparently, openness, predictability, laws

and reforms are covered in large by the press, this concluding short remark had really touched me. When the President of one of the most beautiful, yet somehow challenged by its own history, countries speaks in the laymen terms about how exactly he envisions his citizen’s happiness, he, I believe, earns the try.

It’s yet to be seen if such ambitious projects as Skolkovo or his other reforms and projects will be successful, but for me this short concluding remark of Medvedev showed that the current Moscow leadership has a great chance to make these projects work and raised my confidence.

I left the meeting inspired; not a bad score for a day.

Update 6/24: Voice of America reported about this visit and as part of this report interviewed me (watch around minute 3). The report in Russian is called "Президент Медведев покорил Калифорнию" which means "The President Medvedev conquered California":

NTV will report about eMazeU and how it is related to the upcoming visit of President Medvedev

On the week of June 21 during his visit to the United States, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is going to visit the Silicon Valley.

For those who follows recent developments at the Russian technology sector, this visit echoes with one of the most daring and talked about projects in Russian Federation right now – building Russian version of the Silicon Valley, “Skolkovo”, just 12 miles outside of Moscow. Being very clear on importance of technology development in Russia, President Medvedev pays a special attention to this project.

Naming technology innovation as one of his key priorities, Medvedev plans to meet several prominent companies in the Bay Area and have a better “first hand” view on their technological and commercial advancement and the dynamics of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

At the first glance these political news seem far from being of interest to eMazeU, a company which is dear to my heart and soul. However, presidential news brought an interesting twist to our recent development.

Prior to Medvedev’s trip to the USA, Russian television networks are doing a wide coverage of the planned trip and different topics of it are being discussed in the news. In particular, since technology agenda is very high on the President’s list, the networks show many items related to this subject.

Last week the crew from NTV, one of the major Russian TV channels with an audience of more than 100 million people, visited the Valley to create a report about Silicon Valley innovation and entrepreneurship.

During their 3 days tour of the Bay Area they visited several famous companies, such as Google. But also they wanted to meet some startups too and eMazeU made it to their list.

We were told that the report will be part of the weekly prime time news commentary program Itogi ("Summing up") and planned to be aired on Sunday June 20 at 7pm Moscow time. If you do not have a Russian NTV channel, you would be able to watch it online at http://www.ntv.ru/.