The event was attended by about 60 non-governmental and non-commercial organizations, IT specialists and representatives of local mass media.  

The program of the Conference was opened by Inessa Grikurova, Head of Strategic Programs of Microsoft in Russia, who spoke about company’s activities directed to assistance in information society development, about new Microsoft’s abilities and partnership with non-governmental and non-commercial organizations, including a resource portal for NGOs as an instrument of technological and information support provided to NGOs.  

Welcoming speech was delivered by Natalia Svechnikova, Consultant of the Department of Information Technologies and Communications of Samara Region. She highlighted different aspects of department’s activities aimed at popularization of information society in the region, including interaction with different categories of citizens.  Project “E-citizen” is being successfully implemented in the region. Under the project it is planned to teach 10 thousand inhabitants of the region to use e-services. Technology park “Zhigulevskaya Dolina” is operating.  Department is working with higher education institutions and schools on popularization and introduction of ICT.  Department is also supporting participation of disabled citizens in work aimed at converting city archive materials to electronic form.  

Elena Ivanaevskaya from the Povolzhskaya State Academy of Social Sciences and Pedagogy in her speech encouraged representatives of non-governmental and non-commercial organizations to broadly use ICTs in everyday life, proposed to establish an Integrated Resource Centre for organizational and technological support to non-commercial and non-governmental organizations.

Tatiana Skoraya, representative of the Fund of Regional Social Programs “Our Future”, reported on “Social Entrepreneurship – Possible Way of NGO Development” and spoke about regular support and development of social entrepreneurship in the Russian Federation. Activities of the Fund are devoted to rendering financial and organizational support to entrepreneurs involved in social projects.  

Ekaterina Fedotova, Director of the project “Your Course: Increasing Computer Literacy” (PH International), presented an overview of the first year of implementation of the project aimed at provision of assistance to vulnerable people in studying ICT use for free, finding their right place on the labor market and preserving active social and living position.

Alexandra Kapustina, Manager of "infoDonor" program, in her speech reported on implementation of the software donations to NGOs program in Russia and at global scale, on procedure of obtaining Microsoft products by non-commercial and non-governmental organizations under "infoDonor" program, and on perspectives of its development.  

Moreover, Microsoft in Russia leading specialists reported to the representatives of Russian NGOs on new abilities and advantages of software developed by the Company.  During "New Microsoft Products" section advantages of operation system Windows 7 for non-commercial and non-governmental organizations, as well as new abilities of Office 2010 were presented. Participants of the Conference were shown a web-site constructor WebMatrix - free tool allowing quick and simple creation of modern web-sites.

In course of "Joint Work" section Microsoft cloud services, free services of Windows Live and creation of distant learning courses based on Microsoft Learning Content Development System were examined.

The work of the Conference was concluded by speech of Alexey Malov – employee of the iSpring Solutions Company (www.ispring.ru), which provides software to NGOs allowing distant learning courses training tests of any level of difficulty creation, as well as construction of flash-based presentations.  iSpring Solutions Company joined «infoDonor» program as a donor in June this year.

All materials of the Conference and reports made by participants will be available on the Microsoft NGO resource portal: www.microsoft.com/rus/citizenship/ngo.