The text repeats an interview that also appeared on another platform, with minor edits and remarks marked "A.M." The conversation revolves around a question that concerned the entire Ukrainian internet industry in April 2014: who should speak at the venue where the industry gathers when the country is at war.
A forum that grew out of a banner network
iForum appeared on April 1, 2009, as the first Ukrainian Forum of Internet Figures. It was held to mark the tenth anniversary of the Ukrainian Banner Network, which Mas and Ruslan Dmitrakovich launched in January 1999. Back then the network was written in Perl in three weeks, and costs amounted to about $100. In 2009, the forum gathered 1,280 participants, and in 2014 it was held for the sixth time.
Mas drew up the forum program and moderated the "Internet Business" track. In 2013, he gave a presentation on Google Glass. The co-organizer of the forum was Alexander Olshansky, head of Internet Invest Group, and Mas himself in 2014 worked on the program just as he had in previous years.
Why no "Russian landing force"
The main part of the interview is devoted to the lineup of speakers. Mas explained why the organizers rejected a "Russian landing force": in a year of war, the venue should not become a tribune for those waging an information war against Ukraine. The decision was made as a principle, not as a list of specific names.
The only "star" the organizers would like to invite for money, Mas named Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group. The other speakers, he said, appear for free. For a forum that from its earliest years relied on the industry's own participation, this was a familiar model, and in 2014 it was preserved amid political disputes around Russia and Ukraine.
Information war as a working topic
In this version of the interview, information wars are given noticeably more space than in previous conversations between Mas and industry publications. For a man who had been building internet business in Ukraine since 1999, the question was not theoretical: the work of the advertising market depended on the quality of the audience and trust in the platforms.
Mas spoke separately about mobile marketing. According to him, without 3G it remained a theory in Ukraine. Mobile advertising existed as an idea that advertisers discussed but that was hard to implement fully until data networks developed.
Mas's own experience was tied to several major projects. In 2000, he became director of the Ukrainian Portal (UAPortal), and in 2008 he served as architect of the Mail.ua email service, launched in closed beta by the Internet Invest group with investments of more than $1 million. In July–August 2012, Mail.ua passed to Mail.ru Group, as confirmed by the company's vice president Anna Artamonova.
What happened next
iForum continued. The seventh forum was held on April 16, 2015, and in 2016 Mas became an advisor to Kyivstar on digital technologies. On October 6, 2021, Alexey Mas died in Kyiv at the age of 47 after an illness. His death was reported on October 8 by his brother Viktor Mas.
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