Reporting on technology innovation in Central Europe
Moving forward, nowEurope will be not only mapping our topics and bringing news through the posts. We have integrated several data feeds to other community driven (or web 2.0 if you like) services in the right column.
Continue reading ‘Let’s share useful links and relevant photos’
Steven’s post started a new period of NowEurope and this is to reveal more about CITT and our plans.
CITT is the acronym for the CENTROPE Information Technology Transfer project focused on ICT in the Central European region. No change for NowEurope, right? In 2004-2006 we were watching this region at NowEurope for the NETIES project and next two years we will be closely looking especially at four neighbouring countries - Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. One may see that as nostalgia for the monarchy, but I would rather take it as a return to the natural closeness in the Schengen time.
The 6th Framework Programme is practically over and so it is our NETIES project. In last two years we surveyed over 750 SMEs, organised 32 networking events, workshops or conferences attended by 1750 people in six countries. The consortium provided 84 individual consulting sessions and coached 31 companies in the area of finding foreign partners, improving and presenting their business plans or FP6 applications.
22 contributors from 11 countries published more than 300 posts here sharing their experience, views and comments on the topics of technology innovation, R&D funding, venture capital and Central and Eastern Europe. NowEurope attracted totally 30,000 unique visitors over the period. Thank you all.
Brno-based company ZONER software is renowned especially among digital photography audiences and companies that need to Internet domain registration and web hosting. Its successes abroad are less known. The latter was the subject of my interview with Robert Sobola, director of Zoner’s software division.
In 1993, Milan Behro and Roman Slavinsk founded a company focused on developing a graphics editor named Zebra. Three years later, Zoner expanded its scope of activities and started to provide Internet domain registration and web hosting. Czechia.com was the very first Czech server in the .com domain.
Continue reading ‘Zoner Software: Digital Photography as a Lifestyle’
Surprisingly few Czechs are aware of the existence of a Czech company having its head office in Brno and running successfully business on European, American and Asian markets. Such leading companies like Microsoft, Oracle and Autodesk belong to its clients. At the time being, it ranks among the four most important companies in the field of software localisation and among the first fifteen companies in the language industry worldwide.
In 1990 doing business was made possible again in Czechoslovakia. It was the period when Rudolf and Eva Forstinger established a translation company called Moravia Translations that became a workplace also for their daughters Katerina and Anna. It was also the period when Arturo Quintero, current Chief Corporate Strategist and co-owner, came from Mexico to Poland. This article is based on an interview with him.
Continue reading ‘Moravia IT: on the top of the global localisation’
Thursday, Apr 6, is the last day that interested parties may submit applications for .eu domain names under the Sunrise Rules. During the Sunrise periods (starting 7 December 2005), domains were made available only to the holders of prior rights (state institutions, registered trade marks holders etc.) backing up their claim with documentary evidence.
The current results (updated every 15 minutes) show the Dutchs and Czechs (taken into account their country size and populations) go crazy for registering the .EU domains. The most have come from Germany (29%), Netherlands (17%) and France (11%). The Czech organisations have submitted the ninth highest number of applications (almost 10,000 what represents about 3% of all). Other new member states can be found as 12th Poland (1.4%), 15th Hungary (0.7%), 19th Slovakia, 20th Slovenia and 22nd Estonia. The numbers of accepted applications are about six time smaller (so far) nevertheless the country shares do not differ much.
The Land Rush period is starting on the 7th April 2006 at 11:00 am and the free domain names will be available to registration for all. Have you already chosen your registrar?
No matter how naive we may consider a business intention on the part of a Czech company to teach foreigners English, that is what made LANGMaster International successful. At present, it belongs among the top ten companies worldwide in the area of language training software.
The company history starts in the Mechanical Machine Research Institute where the company founder, Pavel Zika, was experimenting in memory learning automatisation. Later on, the Prague based company was transformed from a private limited company to a join stock one. These days, it is owned by 4 individuals including the director Jan Prucha with whom we were sitting together for this interview.
Continue reading ‘LANGMaster International: when languages matter’
When an entrepreneur succeeds to build, grow and sell a globally successful company, it can be called an extraordinary achievement. There is not many cases like that in the Central and Eastern Europe. If he or she succeeds to do it again, it makes him a star exceeding the dimensions of the region.
Recently we discussed here with Tarmo the Estonian team behind Kazaa (peer-to-peer system for sharing MP3 files) and Skype (acquired by eBay) that did it under Niklas Zennström (Swedish) and Janus Friis (Danish) management. I’m glad there is another success story, this time having roots in the Czech Republic.
An international consortium headed by the German company Empirica is carrying out a survey on e-business use in ten European economy sectors. The a eBusiness Watch survey, which has been in progress since 2002 and will continue at least till the end of this year, focuses on small and medium enterprises.
In February 2005, 5200 phone calls were made with managers of companies from the following ten sectors (food processing industry, textile industry, printing, pharmaceutical industry, machine- building, automobile industry, aeronautics, tourism, information technologies and civil engineering). The results regard the following seven EU countries: Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and UK and were published in May 2005. Next to the survey, 110 case studies were elaborated in last two years.
Continue reading ‘Survey on e-business in ten European economy sectors’
We are still selecting promising biotechnology teams for free participation in the international coaching programme Bio Venture East. The goal is to enable biotech companies and research teams from the new members states a free participation in interactive workshops focused on business plan development and finding foreign partners and investors.
The third Venture Academy (after Warszaw and Budapest) will be held in Brno on the 2nd of November and you will have a chance to meet there experienced biotech entrepreneurs, consultants and investors. Next events are planned in Sofia (Bulgaria) and Zagreb (Croatia) early next year and nominations for biotech start-ups active in your country are certainly welcome.
Continue reading ‘Biotech sector in the Czech Republic, Brno, Nov 2′
This weblog and the CITT project
are co-financed within the 7th Framework programme
of the European Commission
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