VONOG means "falcon" in Latgalian language. Vonog kin hails from the heart of Latgale, a region in Eastern Latvia sometimes called "the Land of Blue Lakes".  Stanislav Vonog was born on May 4, 1983 in Konotop, a small town in the north-east of Ukraine. A citizen of Ukraine, Stan is now living in California. He keeps coming back to his native Konotop on every fortunate yet brief occasion.

PHYSTECH

Vonog received his B.S. and M.S. with honors in Applied Mathematics and Physics with concentration in Computer Science from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, widely regarded as "the Russian MIT". Not only has MIPT schooled many generations of prominent physicists, it has also been the birthplace of several great software companies such as Parallels. 

And it is in Phystech hostel #7 where in 2003 Stan Vonog met Nick Surin, a friend, future roommate, teammate in software design competitions, co-worker, co-inventor, and business co-founder.
Among other things Vonog is still working on his Ph.D. thesis at MIPT.


IMAGINE CUP 

Imagine Cup is the largest student technology competition in the world. Held annually, it is organized and sponsored by Microsoft. Stan Vonog and Nick Surin competed in the Imagine Cup since its foundation in 2003 when they won 2nd place in Russia but did not qualify for the World Finals.

In 2004 Stan Vonog, Nick Surin, Konstantin Zhereb and Taras Kushko won the silver medal in Software Design in the Imagine Cup 2004 World Finals in Brazil . 


In 2005 Team Russia of Stan Vonog, Nick Surin, Alexander Popov and Ruslan Gilfanov were named World Champions in Software Design and received an unofficial title of "Technology Rock Stars" at the award ceremony in Yokohama, Japan.


 Stan and Nick coached Software Design Team Russia to get to the top12 in the 2006 season of the Imagine Cup.


MUSIGY

Building on the momentum of omniMusic, the Imagine Cup 2005 winning project, Stan Vonog and Nick Surin  decided to start a company called Musigy together with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vlad Kuznetsov. Musigy's mission was to dissolve boundaries between people with the power of music.

Stan, Nick and two engineers created Musigy Music Conferencing technology which enabled musicians to play over the Internet in real-time by delivering very low latency and tight synchronization of high-quality audio streams. 


JAZZ @ THE SPEED OF LIGHT


In fall 2006 Musigy co-organized and sponsored Jazz @ the Speed of Light, the world's first distributed jazz festival with jazz stars, 5 international venues and 10,000 spectators across 3 countries.






MEETING BILL GATES

Musigy was among the 3 Russian hi-tech startups who were presented to Bill Gates, the Founder and Chairman of Microsoft during his one-day visit to Russia in November 2006. So Stan and Nick played John Lennon's Imagine to BillG in person! And just a month later they played Imagine again when showing Musigy to Dmitry Medvedev, the future President of Russia.


MUSIC BRIDGE BETWEEN GEORGIA AND RUSSIA

Holding on to its mission of dissolving the boundaries between us  Musigy agreed to organize a live music bridge which   linked Georgia and Russia during a political TV show on Channel Russia in December 2006. 

The balalaikas in Moscow, Russia and the violin solo in Tbilisi, Georgia played "Podmoskovnyye Vechera" ("Moscow Nights") together over Musigy Internet bridge more than 1000 miles away from each other. 

Dmitry Kiselev, the program's anchor, invited many prominent Georgian and Russian celebrities to sit with glasses of wine and share their memories and personal stories about the two countries' shared culture and history. The goal was to help ease the tensions between Georgia and  Russia as they started getting very unhealthy in the fall of 2006. A former Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs was among the show's guests.

The program went on air on January 14 2007, Russian 'Old' New Year, and was estimated to have reached over 50 million people in Russia and Georgia.  

Musigy has received extensive coverage in print magazines and newspapers worldwide and on top TV channels  in Japan, UK, Ukraine and Russia(see episode from Good Morning, Japan on NHK, the #1 Japanese TV channel). 


SPIRIT OF CHANGE

It's 2009 and Stan - together with Nick, of course! - are working on a big big new thing which is even more exciting than Musigy!