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The President-elect attended the annual Runet conference

At the Russian Internet Forum (RIF), which opened yesterday, the elected President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev privately talked with the heads of IT companies, was outraged by the high prices for Internet traffic in the regions and reported that he had found more than 600 of his doubles on Odnoklassniki.ru. The Internet community is pleased with the attention of the elected president to the industry and is inclined to consider Dmitry Medvedev “one of their own.”

Dmitry Medvedev came to RIF-2008 together with the head of Rospechat, Mikhail Seslavinsky. The only road to the Lesnye Dali boarding house, where they were waiting for the elected president, was blocked long before the start of the event. Miraculously, the participants who broke through the traffic police cordon were stopped 500 meters before entering the boarding house. And they walked - towards the main organizational surprise: but they failed to get into the assembly hall to listen to Mr. Medvedev.

On his way to the assembly hall, Mr. Medvedev toured the exhibition of IT companies. It cannot be said that he really wanted to waste time on the exhibitors, but there was no way to ignore them: the passage to the hall lay precisely between a couple of dozen stands. First of all, Dmitry Medvedev stopped at 1C: Bitrix (supplies a software product for website development). The president-elect was met by General Director Sergei Ryzhikov. He told with visible pleasure that his company started with four people working in a one-room rented apartment in Kaliningrad, and that today they already have more than 20 thousand client companies. “Small,” Sergei added modestly. “It’s still a small business, but we’re trying to turn it into a medium and large one.” “How does your company differ from its Western counterparts?” - Medvedev asked. “Firstly, we are Russian,” Sergei Ryzhikov answered patriotically and continued: “Secondly, we are adapted to our legislation and, thirdly, we provide all the services necessary to work with our software products.”

Dmitry Medvedev made his second stop at the Kaspersky Lab stand. It was noticeable that the head and main owner of the company, Evgeniy Kaspersky, was worried. As soon as some kind of confidential conversation began between him and the elected president, the security pushed back the curious. This ensured the privacy of the ten-minute conversation between Kaspersky, Medvedev and Mikhail Seslavinsky. After the conversation, Mr. Kaspersky quickly left. “He knows our company and what it does. This is pleasant,” Evgeny Kaspersky told Vremya Novostei. According to him, in addition to the Laboratory’s products and its achievements, Dmitry Medvedev was very interested in the salary of Russian programmers and Russia’s prospects in the global IT market. “So I told him that the incomes of Russian programmers are approaching American ones and that our programmers are in great demand,” said Evgeny Kaspersky.

Vremya Novostey managed to discover a company that Dmitry Medvedev did not look into. This company built an unusual stand - the visitor found himself in a small cinema hall with two rows of swinging chairs. To those sitting in them, “Virtual Reality” - that’s the name of this company - showed a video in 3D format about how Sochi will be transformed to host the 2014 Olympics (the work was commissioned by the Russian National Olympic Committee). “This is Putin’s project,” a lady from a State Duma subcommittee quietly told us, deciding that she had discovered a political intrigue. “That’s why Medvedev didn’t come to us.” Nevertheless, “Virtual Reality” attracted a record number of visitors.

After standing at several more stands, Dmitry Medvedev finally entered the hall, where he opened the plenary session. “Yesterday I went to Odnoklassniki and found 600 of my doubles there,” the president-elect cheerfully told the audience. The stalls laughed cautiously. Here the speaker added that he also visits Vkontakte.ru, but not all Russians have such an opportunity. Residents of distant regions are most unlucky - the cost of Internet traffic for them is much higher than in Moscow and St. Petersburg. “We will support the development of the Internet in the regions,” Mr. Medvedev promised.

“Of course, the problem of Internet development and access is not limited to the speed and price of traffic. Maybe this is not very clear to the residents of Moscow, who account for 80-90% of all Russian traffic. Investing in infrastructure and motivating providers to reduce traffic prices is something that the government can really do, says Boris Ovchinnikov, head of the research department at SUP (owner of the LiveJournal blogging service). -- This will benefit those who produce content, i.e. website content - more traffic, opportunities for new services and advertising. If this is done with the participation of the state in this format, good. If we are talking about strict state regulation in the IT field like a school project (Mr. Ovchinnikov apparently meant a project to connect Russian schools to the Internet - Ed. ) - that’s a different story.”

The task of providing all Russian citizens with the Internet in a short time is unrealizable, however, RIF participants believe. “It is possible to achieve results. But so far there are no real outlines of an action program, otherwise we would know about it,” says Boris Ovchinnikov.

Be that as it may, the Runet community, represented by RIF participants, can rightfully be proud of the attention paid to itself by the top leadership of the state. Let us recall that Vladimir Putin, eight years ago, even before his first election, met with domestic Internet figures. But I never went to RIF.

Victoria MUSORINA, iToday.ru, - specially for Vremya Novostei