Our co-founder Michael Ryabokon was honoured to take part in Golden Hopes of Dnipro forum – an annual meeting where the school’s top graduates are given an opportunity to speak to famous influencers from Dnipro city. We at Noosphere pay special attention to youth with a lot of activities organised for them, like the robotics festival BestRoboFest, hackathons and workshops at the laboratories of Noosphere Engineering School. We strongly believe that young people are most likely to share the ideas of Vladimir Vernadsky and create a new environment favourable for engineering startups.
That’s why Noosphere was pleased to commit its Head to the 19th edition of the Forum, which gathered 183 gold medalists.
The event took place at the Menorah Grand Hall.
In addition to Michael, three more celebrity speakers took part in the event: Dnipro city major Borys Filatov, the leader of the Street Workout movement in Ukraine Denis Minin and Nataliya Mitikova, the director of the educational complex Planeta Shastya.
Before the event even started, graduates swarmed Michael with questions.
After a brief introduction of the speakers, graduates commenced asking their questions.
In answer to the question about childhood dreams, Michael reminisced on his desire to be a military officer like his father, a dream he achieved and eventually devoted 18 years to military service.
One of the most discussed questions was regarding the influence of social media. Michael indicated that he posts to his social media pages himself, and spends an average of 90 minutes each day there. He also mentioned that social media is his source of news and the messengers are very important in his business life.
Speakers were also asked about their hobbies. Michael mentioned that work for Noosphere is pretty tense, and whenever he gets some free time he prefers to take a bike ride with his family. He also likes to spend time on target shooting. In order to contribute more to the business projects, Michael had to give up competitive shooting 4 years ago, even though he was once one of the top 10 shooters at Ukrainian shooting competitions.
The speakers were also asked simple questions, such as: what would you never do?
“I keep a number of key principles in my head: no lies and no harm to people around me. And I expect the same from those whom I collaborate with”.
While answering the direct question about salaries, Michael mentioned that conditions for the employees are very flexible and depend on skills. Some Noosphere members hire people without a university degree and offer educational courses, based on the company.
When graduates asked a piece of advice about choosing the profession, Michael answered: “I find it wrong giving you any advice, but engineers are the future”.
The next question was also specifically for Michael: when are we going to space? Michael stated “We’re planning the first launch of Firefly Alpha facility on the Vandenberg Air Force Base in the USA at the end of 2019. We also plan another 6 launches in 2020.”
At the close of the forum, speakers rewarded the students whose questions they liked the most. Michael chose two questions: choice of the profession and salaries. To the student who asked about salaries, he commented that money doesn’t always keep warm, so a travel mug would help. Also rewarded was Alisa Adams’ka – a graduate from Dnipro who has secured a record of 200 points for the English tests of Internal Independence Testing of Ukraine – the must-have Ukrainian exam for entering the university.
Speakers had a special reward for Alisa Adalska – a graduate from Dnipro who has secured a record of 200 points for the English tests of Internal Independence Testing of Ukraine – the must-have Ukrainian exam for entering the university.
Following the forum the students, parents and the media continued to flood Michael with dozens of questions and didn’t want him to leave.
We hope that today Michael managed to embolden the participants and that one day these talents will join our Noospherean movement.