Pre-introduction (Feb 20th, 2023): I'm Anna Pedchenko, a Pulsoid app founder. I'm Ukrainian(as well as the rest of the team) and I live in Poland for a year because of the russia-Ukraine war (which lasts for 9 years already). During this terrible year, I got a lot of questions about how we managed to continue working and developing Pulsoid while it all is happening to our country and nation. In October 2022 I decided to describe the very beginning of this horrible year from my perspective and tell how we planned our TwitchCon trip. I started this text in October and couldn't finish it because it's too damn hard; I just can't finish it. Today I decided to publish unfinished text, for those who want to know how it was for us. fuck russia (👇this was written in October 2022) Introduction: TwitchCon Amsterdam 2022 was the first ever offline event as a company and as exhibitors for Pulsoid
Hi. It’s Anna, a Pulsoid co-founder. Some of you might’ve seen our booth at Twitch Con, seen our Tweets, or had a chance to chat with us at the event. I have to say that the whole TwitchCon was a great and fun experience for us. For many people, TwitchCon is a 2 days event; getting ready for it means saving money, getting tickets, arranging a hotel, and deciding how to travel to Amsterdam. But for Twitch employees, showcase participants, cosplayers, and exhibitors, it’s a long journey with a lot of preparation, decisions, and work. It was our first experience as exhibitors and I’d like to share the whole journey of getting ready for TwitchCon with you. It’s fair to say that this TwithCom was awaited for 3 years by many thousands of people, same for us, but being honest, it’s something we have been waiting for over 5 years since we came up with the idea of showing heart rate on stream. TwitchCon Amsterdam 2022 for the Pulsoid team was not only the first event since Covid started but also the first-ever event as a company and as exhibitors. Finally, we could meet our users in person, chat about how the tool changed your streaming, and find out about interesting ways how widgets are used. It was amazing and interesting but let’s see how the preparation was going for us.
Chapter 0: TwitchCon 2020
Back at the end of 2019, when TwitchCon 2020 was announced, I was thinking of having our first offline appearance at TwitchCon EU, even contacted Twitch to get a booth and received pricing for the booth. Back then I took additional time to think if we can afford a booth (spoiler, no), meanwhile, Covid cases started occurring in some countries. It was a hard decision but I understood that because of the fact that we as a company can’t afford to rent a booth and as it’s not all expenses required, I have to decide to not go to TwitchCon 2020 and do it the next year (next year, haha). We all know what was next 2 years.
Chapter 1: The (full-scale) war started
Sep 22, 2021 Twitch announced TwitchCon in Amsterdam for July 2022. I’ve started planning, packing our things(in our minds), and dreaming about how our team of 3 people is going to travel to Amsterdam and meet all our users! As you might know, Pulsoid is a Ukrainian company, so 2022 started with all the rumors that the full-scale war would start (spoiler, yes), every day we were reading more and more news about russian army near the Ukrainian border, about the whole world being worried, world leaders were calling to putin every day, I guess to chat. In mid-Fabruary Pulsoid founders, me - Anna and Yaroslav, went to Poland for 2 weeks (spoiler, over 5 months so far)(upd: Feb 2023, it's a year now) and Tolya was in Kyiv. On February 24 at 5AM russian federation attacked Ukraine. Putin has launched a full-scale war on Ukraine and over 100 thousand russian soldiers came to Ukraine to kill, rape, and torture all Ukrainians, destroy and shell schools, theaters, hospitals, houses, bus stations, malls, etc. I do my best to keep this part short but to be honest, it’s been a part of our lives for the past 5 months(upd: 1 year) and so it’s a part of Pulsoid, because we keep creating the tool and were getting ready for TwitchCon during these 5 months of the war in Ukraine and it’s not getting easier, civilians keep dying in all parts of Ukraine EVERY DAY. You can follow my personal page on Twitter to get some info about this war.
I just checked Twitter and aparently TwitchCon dates were announced on February 24th as well. Of course, I couldn’t think of anything that day even though I knew we have to go to TwitchCon, noone from Ukraine could think about work back then when the whole Ukraine was shelled with missiles at 5am and it hasn’t stopped yet. Maybe some day I will tell more about this period but today I’m telling you about TwitchCon. Chapter 2: Getting back to work
According to my emails, in almost 3 weeks on March 11th, I managed to pick up the pieces and decided to ask Twitch about the booth. We didn’t know yet if we will be able to attend the event but it was clear that we have to keep working because war is expensive and as all Ukrainians, we started donating a big part of our income to the armed forces of Ukraine and it’s even more clear that more money will be required to rebuild everything russia destroyed in Ukraine. So we got back to work to support our country and ourselves!
Really soon we received the floor map and prices for a booth to rent. I needed more time to think about the whole idea because of the budget and logistic complexity, as we were going to order everything in Ukraine but the war made things more complicated. From now on we were donating a big part of our income (actually during February and March we donated much more than we earned), so we couldn’t waste money, and also we had to double think if we can even make things work now when our country is on fire.
Chapter 3: Decision
On March 26th, 2 more weeks after I received a floor map, I understood that we have to go to TwitchCon because ‘this event is important for Pusloid and it will help us grow and now it’s more important than ever!’ It was a month since the war started and all I could think about was ‘it will end in a month and we’ll get back home and will have time to get ready for the event’(spoiler, I was wrong).
Chapter 4: Design
At the end of March, we understood that if we go to the TwitchCon AMS we need to plan a booth now. For over 5 years Pulsoid operated with the same logo created by me back when we were just thinking about the idea, amazing rhombus with shadow. All posters also were created by us without a designer in the team, which you could’ve noticed(haha). It was fun for sure but we couldn’t go to TwitchCon with a booth and designs made 6 years ago. It was a point when I decided that we need help and add some cool designs to Pulsoid. A brand is something that powers up a cool product, that’s why it never was the first priority but became important before TwitchCon so we could show up what we were creating for 6 years.
We started looking for designers to create a brand identity for Pulsoid and found a team we decided to work with. (Feb 20th, 2023) It's been almost a year since the full-scale war started, and hundreds of thousands of civilian Ukrainians were killed. As a Ukrainian I thank every country and person who supports us in this fight, we couldn't make without you. As a Pulsoid founder, I thank every Pulsoid subscriber because it helps us to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a person, I thank Ukrainian Armed Forces for independence and life. Donate to support Ukraine: https://www.comebackalive.in.ua/home
