nowEurope

I have just found an interesting guide, published by the project “USEandDIFFUSE” that was co-financed by the European Commission DG Research under the 7th Framework Programme. They have produced a guide packed with helpful information advice, quotes and real-life examples from SMEs that participated in 24 Best Practice projects (most of them in the ICT domain, some even in Central Europe). You can download the report here.

I found it interesting because it provides several hints on how you can transfer/uptake technologies!

We read several posts here in nowEurope about the latest social media services. You can also see these fancy tools around this site.

However, I personally still keep myself away from Facebook, Twitter etc. My biggest doubt is how to separate the different aspects of my real and virtual life from each other. What are these aspects?

1. I work on several projects with interesting people, but basically they don’t care about my sport or hobby activities.
2. I do different sports. In one of my sport activities, most of the team don’t know each others’ business background. It is simply not important, we are there to enjoy the same sport.
3. I’m a member of an online community. We are there for a certain hobby, but don’t care about others’ business or sport activities.

Continue reading ‘How to keep privacy in social media?’

There’s tons of ICT conventions, and here’s another one, you might say, reading these lines. Yes, but (a frequent initiation in my blog posts, as I’ve recently realised), this is different. Why? Because ICT Centrope offers, as it says: A view on the ICT landscape of a region that was no region for quite a while. Since 1989, a lot has happened, and if we think of Europe, we must get rid of political structures that were initially created about 90 years ago.

The ICT Europe event looks at ICT business and research in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, focusing on technology transfer, highlighting opportunities and obstacles, and presenting best practices. Although this is an “end of term event”, this conference is the unofficial launch of a new project aiming to build a Centrope-based ICT cluster.

Our keynotes speakers are John Tait, Chief Scientific Officer at IRF, Vienna, and former Professor at the University of Sunderland, Francisco Eduardo De Sousa Webber, the CEO of Matrixware and Chairman of the Executive Board of IRF, and Eugen Antalovsky, CEO of the Vienna based Europaforum platform.

Our CITT team will present their findings, plans and tools. Regional experts will outline the technological and economical features of Centrope. Potential stakeholders and interested parties will have the opportunity personally meet the representatives of the cluster project.

The conference will be hosted by Vienna’s business agency WWFF and welcomes ICT entrepreneurs as well as researchers, opinion makers, strategists and decision makers, people who are involved in national and European ICT strategies, representatives of ICT platforms and the press.

Admission is free, but registration is required. For more information, click on the ad on this page or got to www.centrope-itt.eu.

Centrope is not just a new geographical term. With projects such as CITT which is behind ICT Centrope, and its successors, it is being filled with life. Join!

The centrope_tt team has just published a comprehensive map of R&D institutions, which provides the location and further details of more than 2,200 R&D facilities in the CENTROPE region. My organization, Pannon Business Network, took part in building this map.

With the quick search function, you can find easily who is who in R&D in Centrope. As I mentioned in a previous post, the centrope_tt international voucher system awards 50 fortunate companies up to € 5,000 worth of research service, at no cost. This call will be published some time before summer 2010, so stay tuned, Meanwhile, use the R&D Map to located your potential partners, and let me know what you think in the comments!

I confess that TEDx Danubia completely slipped in under my radar. Having said that, I was looking forward to attending TEDx Budapest - which was previously announced, but yet to be scheduled. Confusing? Yes. The events appear to be competitors, but I don’t know the background.

TEDx is a spin-off of the popular TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) event series, organized around the mantra ‘ideas worth spreading.’ Speakers are strictly limited to 18 minutes. TED videos featuring prominent figures including Bill Gates, Al Gore and Gordon Brown are widely linked and commented, helping to spread the TED meme. The TEDx format offers independent event / community organizers a license to hold one event at a time, following the event format guidelines.

Upcoming TEDx events in Central / Eastern Europe include Vienna, Sarajevo, Sofia, Zagreb, Tartu (Estonia), Warsaw, Bucharest and Cluj (Romania). Vlastimil, does this give you any ideas?

TEDx Danubia takes place this coming Wednesday just down the street from my apartment in downtown Budapest. I’ve made a last minute application, so hopefully I can still get a spot. Attendance is limited to 200, and judging by its Facebook page, the event will be well attended. Wish me luck, and if I make it in I’ll post my impressions in a follow up post.

A cluster is a tool for fostering innovation and a vehicle for boosting regional economic development. At least that is the theory. The reality has been somewhat different in Hungary. My organization, Pannon Business Network (PBN), aims to play a role in cleaning up the mess that is our current situation. But first, let me offer you some background on how we got here.

Clusters were first established in our region in 2001, following American and Western European examples. With four strategic branch focuses, typically top-down methods, fully publicly sponsored. The first two to three years were promising, then everything slowed down. The feeling of ’getting together’, the willingness to do something was very strong and stirring but real, business-oriented actions were missing. Than came the period of smaller, local-territorial clusters. However, this just meant an increase in quantity, rather than quality. The economy policy was very laissez-faire, resulting in dilution.

Continue reading ‘Clusters: Engines for innovation or money cemeteries?’

An important part of the work of cluster´s and networks is to gather feedback from their partners and to react accordingly to their needs and wishes. So let me tell you about two events that VITE and VITE members had recently been part of. I’m talking about two digital media events that showed that the interest of companies for the topic is very high at the moment. Furthermore, the EU has just confirmed that the digital economy has the potential to lead Europe out of the crisis.
Continue reading ‘Back to the future with King Content?’

We have already discussed various aspects of forming a cluster in several posts. Now I’d like to share my experiences gained on a transnational seminar on logistic clusters in Venice, last year. There we had an interesting discussion about the legal status of clusters.

In Hungary almost all of our clusters have a dedicated management organisation in different legal forms. Most of these organisations face financial problems after the initial public funding ends, as I pointed out in a previous post.

In Venice it was interesting to meet the Venetian Logistic Cluster. They have impressive figures: 263 companies with more than 30,000 employees, €1.3 billion of turnover, 11 million square metres of fully equipped warehousing space and 85 million tons of freight moved each year.

This is a real working cluster without a dedicated management organisation and without a legal form. Certainly there are common activities, but these are coordinated by the members itself.

Do you think, that a management organisation in a legal form is indispensable for a cluster?

These few days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve might be a relaxing time to catch up with friends and family. If you’ve already had enough of that, however, you can always apply your time toward learning about social media.

If that’s the case, you’re in luck because Mashable has just released its Guide Book to Facebook. This is your chance to learn the difference between a group and a page, and how to publish an event. There’s also a section on using Facebook for your business. (One notable omission is a guide to Facebook’s privacy settings.)

Mashable’s Twitter Guide Book is more comprehensive. Possibly that’s because Twitter is even more confusing than Facebook. Possibly that’s because this guide was published earlier (Mashable promises to continue adding updates). The Twitter guide includes video tutorials, as well as a glossary of Twitter terms (many of them quite silly, but nonetheless frequently used). Also included is a large section on doing business with Twitter.

If you’re a social media newbie, you might want to consult About’s social media primer. For a common sense perspective on social media, I highly recommend 14 social media lessons we can all learn, from Ian Lurie at Conversationmarketing.com.