17 апреля в Киеве прошла ежегодная самая крупная украинская IT-конференция iForum 2012, которую посетили более пяти тысяч человек.Уже второй год подряд Бас принимал участие в мероприятиив качестве приглашенного спикера. В этот раз Бас поделился сучастниками советами о том, как рационально использовать свой бюджет,развивая все каналы маркетинга (на примере его знаменитой формулыC.A.S.H.C.O.W. B.O.M.B.E.R.). На своем опыте работы в крупнейшихРоссийских и западных компаниях он объяснил распространенныеошибки, допускаемые молодыми предпринимателями, а также рассказалоб инструментах, повышающих эффективность рекламы. В заключениивыступления Бас уделил время основным тенденциям в области интернет-маркетинга и электронной коммерции – теме, которая никогда не теряетсвою актуальность.

On the 24^th of April Bas was invited to participate in Adobe Digital Marketing Day, that took place at the “Savoy” hotel in Moscow. The event was devoted to the development of online-business strategies. Mike Quinn, Chief Marketing Manager Europe brought up the topic of investments optimization, citing the best examples of the Adobe Company. During the second part of the conference Adobe demonstrated its new means of business efficiency improvement. Having worked with Omniture at Lastminute.com in Europe and Ozone.ru in Russia, Bas shared his personal experience on the topic.

On the 30^th of March Bas was invited as a speaker to the conference Marketing Today presented by the youth organization AIESEC at Plekhanov Academy of Moscow. On behalf of Gogolmedia team Bas explained his famous business formula C.A.S.H.C.O.W. B.O.M.B.E.R. The audience which consisted mainly of students was anxious to ask questions about internet marketing on the whole and get some valuable advice from the guru.

In anticipation of La Conference Luxe & Digital Bas Godska has shared his opinion regarding digital luxury business. We provide our blog readers with the unique opportunity to dive into the thoughts of the internet marketing guru and gain valuable experience.  

1. Why is digital luxury a lucrative business?

Inventory management: the shopping club business model is very well suited to sell excess stock of luxury products, a product range that is hard to liquidate at basement prices, on public marketplaces, due to dumping and brand restrictions. Disintermediation: the Internet enables the luxury seller to look beyond the costly offline retail distribution channel.

Marketing benefits: reaching the luxury shopper segment is easier, arguably cheaper, better measurable and better globally scalable. Also, luxury brands will need to go where their audience goes --- online. Specifically for Russia, an added benefit for the luxury e-tailer is the better ability to cover Russia's regions.

2. Are there opportunities for new business?

It may sound conservative but the Russian Internet is still a great space for a range of performance based lead generation and conversion improvement tools for luxury items (affiliate marketing dealmakers, cpo focused retargeting technology, real time display ad optimization, data crunching wizards). There will be opportunities left for copycats in the luxury e-tail and digital media sectors; also local "sales simplifyers" showing Russified content from western e-commerce sites and local turnkey e-fulfillment solutions will reach mainstream in the near future.

3. What an investor is looking for in a luxury startup?

As with any startup -  a gifted, experienced team with a strong online idea. Preferably with high agility/mobility and especially, but that's my personal taste, anything innovative in the luxury goods performance based marketing sphere.

You are welcome to read the detailed review of the conference by Slon magazine following this link.

 EWDN - the first English-language resource dedicated to Russian IT - is conducting an international study on Russian e-commerce, which reached 320 billion rubles, a little more than $10 billion, last year. Bas Godska is contributing to its full version and it'll be posiible to download it in a meanwhile. For now you can get a free trial Executive Summary, visiting  this link .

В одном из ведущих казахских журналов - Exclusive - вышла статья о Басе Годска и его совместных планах с сервисом коллективных покупок Chocolife.me. C недавних пор Бас консультирует эту компанию. Публикация рассказывает об опыте Баса и потенциале компании, с которой он намерен работать. Текст статьи также доступен в электронном виде на сайте журнала Exclusive.

16 ноября в Алматы прошла первая профессиональная Интернет-конференция «iProf’2011», посвященная интернет-маркетингу и стартапам с участием самых интересных проектов, инвесторов и экспертов из СНГ.

Целью конференции «iProf 2011» было создание площадки для  развития казахстанских Startup-проектов при поддержке инвесторов и создание атмосферы неформального общения с гуру интернет-маркетинга России и стран СНГ. Помимо  выступлений спикеров, участникам мероприятия была предоставлена возможность получить советы у таких профессионалов интернет-индустрии, как Максим Спиридонов (продюсерский центр «Ройбер»), Дмитрий Даниленко (компания «Бегун»), Любовь Симонова (Almaz Capital Partners), Юрий Синодов (Roem.ru), Бас Годска (частный инвестор). Кульминацией конференции стало подведение итогов конкурса на лучший стартап, в котором одержал победу проект по тестированию приложений TestLab. Также экспертами был отмечен проект HealthCare – предлагающий технологию предотвращения развития заболеваний связанных со зрением и опорно-двигательным аппаратом во время работы за компьютером. Еще пяти стартапам была дана возможность бесплатного двухмесячного обучения в стартап-школе «BusinessLab».

Позднее этим вечером были подведены итоги IX Национальной интернет-премии Award.kz. Члены жюри, в состав которого от лица Gogolmedia был приглашен Бас Годска, отдали главный приз конкурса за лучший сайт 2011 года интернет-изданию Tengrinews.kz.

On the 25th of October 2011 I went to Kiev to visit the International Conference “Investor Day Central and Eastern Europe 2011: Internet Technologies & Innovations” (IDCEE 2011) . The main goal of IDCEE 2011 was to bring together ideas and insights of leading experts and start-up entrepreneurs with expertise and experience of investors and business-angels, as well as organization of keynote speaker presentations, panel discussions, startup competition, and meetings with prominent world experts. Among the speakers were such famous people as Esther Dyson, one of theleading angel investor,entrepreneur, a member of the board of directors of Medstory, Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe, Voxiva and Yandex, and LeWeb’s founder.
I was asked to participate in the third panel of the conference together with David Waroquier, the Principal at Mangrove Capital Partners, Yegor Anchishkin, GVMachines’ founder, Teodoro D’Ambrosio, an Italian-Swiss IT entrepreneur and Oskar Hartmann, CEO of KupiVip (the online Russian shopping club which recently attracted $55m investment).
There were many innovational projects, but the projects that attracted my attention most are kitapps and endorphin. I wish IDCEE and its organizers further development and innovational ideas.

View video with Bas from the biggest conference in Kiev (Ukraine) -- iForum-2011. This video represents the panel discussion of "Going Global". 

Moderator -- Dmitry Repin, participants – Vlad Voskresensky, Alesha Jenko and Gennadiy Netyaga talked about the do’s and don’ts of international business expansion, dividing business in a few categories and wondering where the differences lie between national and international entrepreneurship. In fact, all businesses need local knowledge, strong partners and excellent staffing.

В ночь с 3-его на 4-ое ноября в Москве прошла первая в России «Ночь Карьеры».  На мероприятии собрались студенты со всей России, а так же представители таких крупных

компаний как Unilever, Mars, Ikea, Groupon, Lufthansa и Lamoda.ru. Пожалуй, это первая в своем роде «ярмарка вакансий», которая стала неформальной площадкой для общения между молодыми и талантливыми выпускниками ВУЗов и опытными специалистами топовых компаний – всё это в по-настоящему «семейной» атмосфере, где все смеются, шутят и улыбаются. Больше всего внимания привлекли дебаты о преимуществах стартапов перед большими корпорациями, где пришлось серьезно отстаивать права первых!

От лица Gogolmedia присутствовал Бас Годска, который рассказал о своих будущих планах, а именно - о построении бизнес-инкубатора ACRobator, который будет специализироваться на стартапах в сфере электронной коммерции и интернет-маркетинга. Господин Годска заинтересовал молодую публику и просто зажег всех вокруг желанием работать с ним, благодаря чему ушел с большим количество резюме молодых специалистов.

Roundup of most recent developments... In Moscow --- Enjoyed being at the start and propelling the growth of Lamoda.ru, Russia's leading fastest growing e-commerce startup in the fashion sphere. In 4 months we managed to beat our main competitor in sales quantity! :-)

Also, today, as Gogol, we had the honour to launch Okean Elzy (Ukraine's biggest band) on iTunes and other major digital music platforms globally outside Russia/Ukraine. A tinkling, warm summer of Melodies and Fashion!

What an end of the week!

A week ago I left on Thursday night from Moscow to Kiev, invited by Ukrainian networker-deluxe Denis Dovgopoli to speak at iForum (www.iforum,ua) on Friday. iForum is Ukraine’s largest IT conference, I was told. Indeed, the conference was fairly big – 3500 people attended according to Denis.

Though iForum is hard to compare with the likes of WPP’s Stream 2010 in Greece, with over 300 online superstars gathered for three days in Club Med, the conference was a useful experience for many.  A lot of time could be saved as practically “everybody” was there. In the afternoon panel discussion Going Global, with fine

Attended WPP’s Moscow version of the Stream un-conference yesterd. Stream Moscow 2011 is a smaller, localized follow up of the traditional event hosted by WPP’s CEO Sir Martin Sorrell and Yossi Vardi in Club Med near Athens, Greece.  About 100-150 people attended, the Digital Elite of russia’s internet scene. My dear friend Esther Dyson (EDventures, serving on both the boards of WPP and Yandex) and Mark Read (CEO of WPP Digital) hosted the Moscow event, in the posh Ritz Carlton.  Outside snow was falling which made stark contrast with Stream Moscow’s older brother, the big Stream --- three days of casual mingling and mindsharing with the hand-picked top 300 peers of the global digital scene.  I was there the last two years in October,  with pleasant temperatures near 30 degrees.

It was good to finally meet Yuri Milner, albeit it very brief, the founder of Digital Sky Technologies (DST), shareholder in Groupon, Facebook and Zynga and large stakeholder in Mail.ru whose IPO he realized end of last year.  Yuri is very upbeat about e-commerce and believes there is a lot of space for niche players, like shoe sellers… <

The internet is an accelerator. It blows up existing sectors and when the dust settles all has fallen back on earth --- better sorted, more efficiently organised.

People in the online scene, the "Internet sector" have for many years been evangelists. Disconnected sociopaths propagating a new digital hyperconnected lifestyle. Now they're the thought leaders, proficient in riding the wave, sourcing the niche, converting the disbelievers, leading the flock.

I enjoy the rolling tide, the splendid wave of digitisation. But --- all these computer screens each and every day, the mobile displays, all that other tech stuff it should never wipe out the beauty of a walk in a forest. An Apple versus an apple. :-)

In Ukrainian GrowthUP and Startup Crash Test's photo project "Ukrainian IT Goddess 2011", dedicated to spring time and beautiful girls from the Ukrainian IT sector (Боґини IT).

Gogol's Viktoriya was invited to participate in this contest; the results you can see below.

Bas Godska on a panel Go global on a Startup crash test 18 in Kiev (January 2010). 

In his interview by Alyona Popova, founder of on-line StartUp School , Bas Godska shared with some tips for startups. Whatch to learn more!                                                                                                         

Event - IDCEE-2010 in Kiev, Ukraine (October, 2010) - investor's day. Bas took part in a panel discussion - "Pro" an "Contra" of copycats versus disruptive start-ups".

Below is a brief interview after the panel discussion with Mike Butcher from TechCrunch, Elena Masolova from Darberry/Groupon Russia, Fabio Cannavale of Bravofly Group and Honor Gunday of Payment Wall.

Interview (in Dutch) of Bas Godska as dep. CEO and CMO of OZON.ru by Vincent Everts for Marketingfacts.nl and Dutchcowboys.nl.