Maksim Diakov, 21

Hacker, Organizer, Mentor, Administrator
Maksim Diakov
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Maksim first got in touch with the Russian community at Junction in Helsinki, Finland, a place quite popular among Russian-speaking hackers. At the event, he met MLH representatives who talked about all of the other hackathons around the world. This was a turning point in his life because as he continued to travel to different countries for hackathons, a small sub-community of Russian hackers started to grow. As it started to develop, Maksim felt something special around his friends and him.

Maksim began developing a club called HSE Hackers at his university with his friend and future co-founder, Alexander Prosolkin. The club traveled to hackathons, including HackUPC in Barcelona where Maksim met Aleksandr Malyshev, his third co-founder.

In 2018, Maksim founded Russian Hackers LLC with Alexander Prosolkin and Aleksandr Malyshev. The organization helps to share hackathons in Russia and all over the world to empower Russian hackers to participate in events and the future of the tech industry. Working with more than 4,000 hackers, Maksim and his team are working to reshape technology as well as host their own, Hack.Moscow.

 In addition to this, Maksim works to empower hackers through various initiatives such as raising the value of hackathons within the academic sphere, advising young hackers, encouraging participants to organize their own hackathons (resulting in 7 Local Hack Days in 2019), helping more international hackers to participate in Russian hackathons, and speaking out about the power of hackathons to corporate companies and universities.

Maksim credits hackathons with a lot of personal growth. His favorite project was created at HackUPC in 2018. He made Whale Protection, an application that helped to detect a person in a poor psychological condition (with the intentions of self-harm, deep depression, etc) based on their social media activity. The app goes so far as to connect individuals with professionals who will help them to overcome their condition or call a special service to the location transmitted by the app. At the time that his team and he created it, there was a string of suicides among young people in Eastern Europe, so the theme had already caught the public eye. The project was very meaningful to his team and was Maksim’s first hackathon victory that not only helped him to learn new things like frontend basics but empowered him to develop as a programmer.

Quick Facts

Pronouns: He/Him
Hometown: Moscow, Russia
School: Higher School of Economics
Graduation Date: 2021
First Hackathon: Junction (Fall 2016)
Favorite Coding Language: Python, Flask, Angular
Can't Live Without: MLH.io
Maksim demoing his project from HackUPC (Winter 2017)

Maksim Diakov, 21

Hacker, Organizer, Mentor, Administrator
Maksim Diakov
Share this profile

Maksim first got in touch with the Russian community at Junction in Helsinki, Finland, a place quite popular among Russian-speaking hackers. At the event, he met MLH representatives who talked about all of the other hackathons around the world. This was a turning point in his life because as he continued to travel to different countries for hackathons, a small sub-community of Russian hackers started to grow. As it started to develop, Maksim felt something special around his friends and him.

Maksim began developing a club called HSE Hackers at his university with his friend and future co-founder, Alexander Prosolkin. The club traveled to hackathons, including HackUPC in Barcelona where Maksim met Aleksandr Malyshev, his third co-founder.

In 2018, Maksim founded Russian Hackers LLC with Alexander Prosolkin and Aleksandr Malyshev. The organization helps to share hackathons in Russia and all over the world to empower Russian hackers to participate in events and the future of the tech industry. Working with more than 4,000 hackers, Maksim and his team are working to reshape technology as well as host their own, Hack.Moscow.

 In addition to this, Maksim works to empower hackers through various initiatives such as raising the value of hackathons within the academic sphere, advising young hackers, encouraging participants to organize their own hackathons (resulting in 7 Local Hack Days in 2019), helping more international hackers to participate in Russian hackathons, and speaking out about the power of hackathons to corporate companies and universities.

Maksim credits hackathons with a lot of personal growth. His favorite project was created at HackUPC in 2018. He made Whale Protection, an application that helped to detect a person in a poor psychological condition (with the intentions of self-harm, deep depression, etc) based on their social media activity. The app goes so far as to connect individuals with professionals who will help them to overcome their condition or call a special service to the location transmitted by the app. At the time that his team and he created it, there was a string of suicides among young people in Eastern Europe, so the theme had already caught the public eye. The project was very meaningful to his team and was Maksim’s first hackathon victory that not only helped him to learn new things like frontend basics but empowered him to develop as a programmer.

Quick Facts

Pronouns: He/Him
Hometown: Moscow, Russia
School: Higher School of Economics
Graduation Date: 2021
First Hackathon: Junction (Fall 2016)
Favorite Coding Language: Python, Flask, Angular
Can't Live Without: MLH.io
Share this profile
Maksim demoing his project from HackUPC (Winter 2017)