Aleksandr joined the hacker community in 2016 when he participated with his friends at Junction in Helsinki, Finland. He was looking for other hackathons in Russia but there was a lack of a local hacker community. However, he was extremely motivated by his first hackathon. It was an incredibly well-organized hackathon with a lot of swag and the brilliantly talented people. He attended more MLH hackathons in 2017 and realized that he wanted to grow his own hacker community back in Russia. 

In 2016, Aleksandr was a second year at his university majoring in computer science. He worked as a programmer to pay his bills. Using the extra money he had saved, he took courses to learn English. In the summer of 2017, he saved up enough money to pay for a UK Visa and attend an English summer school. 

First, he wanted to go to Ireland or Southern England but in the end, he decided to go to London because of the number of hackathons and tech events occurring on the weekends. He felt like he had hit a goldmine. 

When Aleksandr was preparing to move to London, he decided to write a blog about hackathons, so he created his first Telegram channel, where he wrote about his life. He bought a non-direct ticket to London, with a stop-over in Berlin to attend one more hackathon. He went to ConCarHack alone and made a new team. He had two outstanding entrepreneurs in his team including a 40-year-old CTO. The team helped him to learn lots in a very short period of time. At the time, he was 19 years old but felt confident that he could keep up with his experienced teammates. While his team didn’t win the hackathon, their project received its first investment just one day after the event was over. Aleksandr found out about the investment immediately upon arriving in London and was shocked at how much one hackathon could change his life.

After his English courses in London, Aleksandr went back to Moscow to finish his studies and to work. That fall, he was sitting in an office checking his emails, coding and dreaming about new hackathons. One day, he received a message from Mike Swift with an invitation to Hackcon EU 2017 in Birmingham. He was so happy to be invited but didn’t have the funds to attend. He was humbled and motivated by the invite as he had 70 people following his blog.

The second problem was that it was only a week away. So, he asked MLH to help him with travel reimbursements and was fortunate enough to receive a grant to cover the costs of travel. At Hackcon EU 2017, he met many different organizers and made the decision to organize his first hackathon, but he didn’t know how to start. Local Hack Day had been announced and Aleksandr knew he needed to host his own.

Since 2017, Aleksandr has increased his readers and followers from 70 to 5000. With his friends Alexander Prosolkin and Maksim Diakov, they have created the biggest international hackathon in Russia and The Commonwealth of Independent States (Hack.Moscow). Through the community, they have inspired over 10,000 people to make their own projects and even created a national hacker team, the “Russian Hack Team.” This select group of 30 are the best hackers from Russia who are trained on how to win hackathons and to create the best tools possible. It is their job to inspire hackers to continue learning.

Aleksandr didn’t stop there. He coordinates Local Hack Days in 9+ other cities across Russia, runs Hack.Moscow for developers and students, and runs startup hackathons (EmergeHack) and Startup Villages (TestUp&Demo day) where his team invites hackers to pitch their startups in demo format without presentations. Aleksandr currently works on his own projects full-time.

His favorite hackathon project was an indoor navigation app for big business centers where users can create a custom route for their segway and it will take you to your exact office.