On February 2, 2017, the FAI, the World Air Sports Federation signed an agreement making Noosphere Ventures the new Global Technical Partner.

The agreement was signed by Noosphere Ventures Managing Partner Max Polyakov, FAI President Frits Brink and Secretary General Susanne Schödel. It lays out several areas that the two organizations will work together on. Noosphere will help modernize the tools used by the FAI, which has always stayed as close to the forefront of technology as it could for it’s 112-year history.

Commenting on the new partnership, Max Polyakov, Managing Partner of Noosphere Ventures, said, “Through our strategic partnership with FAI, we are eager to bring the innovation revolution to the world of technical sports. Our first steps will focus on providing modern tracking solutions to air sports. We believe that it takes teamwork to develop truly valuable products. Wikipedia, Uber, and Airbnb are only possible because of collaborative efforts and are now changing the landscape of the current digital economy. This is why Noosphere is creating special events with the FAI to engage with global communities of entrepreneurs and scientists.”

FAI President Frits Brink said, “I am very pleased to be able to announce this new technical partnership with Noosphere. The competition and event management system that Noosphere is developing for the FAI will enable us to manage competition data and results with even greater efficiency than ever before.”

FAI and Noosphere Ventures began working together nearly 2 years ago, when they organized the FAI European Championship for Space Models 2015. The next year, Noosphere hosted the FAI World Championship for Space Models 2016. From the beginning, Noosphere Ventures began initiating the development of software solutions for FAI to use. The first was the event management and scoring tool, Cup Navigator, which can organize every aspect of an amateur rocketry competition — from registration, to scheduling events and result scoring. It was used for the first time at the European Championships and was greeted with widespread excitement by organizers and competitors.

Noosphere Ventures first plans to adapt Cup Navigator to work with the other air sports supported by FAI and extend the score tracking system. Score tracking for air sports has always been a difficult process. Noosphere hopes its new systems will improve the accuracy of the measurements, the transparency and simplify the large amounts of data that need to be managed to score each launch. It will make its debut at the IWGA World Games in Wroclaw, Poland, in July 2017.

In addition to these events, Noosphere is also actively trying to bring in new ideas by organizing a hackathon for engineering enthusiasts nd students at prominent Ukrainian universities. They will be asked to come up with a solution to a technical problem for the FAI. The winners will be given support from the FAI expert committee to implement their project by creating a prototype and testing it at the FAI championships.

FAI organizers will be given access to Noosphere’s in-house volunteer management system. The system has been used at several Noosphere events and other social initiatives in Ukraine. It is designed to coordinate and manage volunteers at any event. Volunteering has exploded in Ukraine as a response to the current instability in Ukraine. FAI will use the tool to organize and unite those people giving their time to the near 700 competitions that they host annually.

Noosphere Ventures and FAI are excited see these solutions integrated into their already highly-technical organizations. Air Sport competitors around the world work hard to overcome gravity in their competitions. Everyone is excited to improve the organization, transparency and scoring accuracy of the events. By working together, these two organizations are overcoming the challenges ahead of them, while increasing the popularity of these highly technical sports and lifting the air sports industry to new heights of citius, altius, and fortius!