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Hungarian attendees seemed more pessimistic than I did about what we saw this week at BarCamp Budapest, at least according to my random sample of conversation. I enjoyed thoroughly being one of the only foreigners at hand, along with TechCrunch Europe editor, Mike Butcher and a handful of presenters. The best English-language tweet of the day came from Julia Krysztofiak-Szopa (AdTaily).

with all due respect for the #barcamp #budapest speakers – powerpoint presentation suicide & u don’t have to speak magyarul to notice it.

The truth is I hardly watched any of the presentations, except to occasionally poke my head in the door. I had been lead to believe that at BarCamp, the audience is the content, and so I used this as my excuse to largely ignore the prepared program and talk with people about what’s currently happening in the Hungarian online market.

Everybody’s heard about Jeremie, and several people I met had a business idea in their back pocket. The ad recession hit hard last year, and revenues are down across the board. One local media agency, Arcus, recently imploded. I have the impression that a good number of talented people are knocking around for opportunities.

Continue reading ‘What I learned by ignoring the presentations at BarCamp Budapest and talking to the audience’

This week is ground zero for Hungary’s nascent startup market. Eight new Jeremie VC funds are still in startup mode, and literally any day now they will be flush with EU cash – roughly €160M all told – with four years to invest this money. What better timing for a startup competition?

The BarCamp concept isn’t new, nor is it new to Budapest. What is new is that this fifth edition of the Web 2.0 Symposium / Bar Camp Budapest features a startup competition sponsored by Budapest Bank. Each of six finalists will be given 10 minutes to present their business ambitions to a jury of professional investors. The first three finalists will win undisclosed ‘valuable prizes’.

However, that’s not why I’m going. I go to these kinds of events to meet the other attendees.

A cursory glance through this event’s attendee list suggests that I’ll be one of the oldest people in the room. I know most of the older generation of entrepreneurs and investors, but we are clearly the minority.

The one constant in Budapest is change. I played a small part in Hungary’s last startup boom (1999-2001) but I have very few preconceptions about what and who I’ll discover this Wednesday at BarCamp Budapest. This is a new generation.

I do find one thing remarkable, though. The conference materials are available only in Hungarian, but the two keynote speakers are English-speakers.

Continue reading ‘BarCamp Budapest is ground zero for Hungarian startups’

CEE Chips bills itself as an online investment network that connects businesses from Central and Eastern Europe seek funding with investors from all over the world. I came across CEE Chips, when founder Alexandar Petkov sent me a contact request at LinkedIn. He offered me free access to his site, and so I had a look around.

The concept of online investment brokerage isn’t new, but to the best of my knowledge this model has never been applied specifically in this region. The US market leader appears to be Funding Universe, but I’m more familiar with Angelsoft. The logic behind such sites is obvious: entrepreneurs want money, and investors want dealflow. Success mean building a critical mass of investors and deals, and providing both parties the means to evaluate each other and build trust.

So the question is, will CEE Chips be able to build that critical mass in Central Europe?

Continue reading ‘Bulgaria embraces entrepreneurial spirit with CEE Chips, but is Central Europe ready?’

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!

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 Austrian startup company, ASH DEC Umwelt, won third prize at the Eurocan European Venture Contest 2009, held this weekend in Barcelona. ASH DEC Umwelt is a clean tech company that recycle nutrients and metals from incineration residues.

The top prize of €90,000 went a Danish biotech company, Biomodics, while the second runner up was Liquavista, a Dutch ICT startup.

Organized by Europe Unlimited, the EEVC examined 376 European companies (out of 776 applicants) in a series of local and regional competitions. 313 investor experts took part in vetting the competitors. I also spent a day as an expert evaluator in the Budapest semi-final.

It’s also worth noting that one other CENTROPE company, the Hungarian ICT startup, Gravity R&D, made it to the EEVC Top 25.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has always seemed to me like voodoo. Webmasters (and businesses) obsess over their position on the search page, while the search engines regularly adjust their algorithms to weed out cheaters – those who use technical tricks to inflate their ranking. In the middle of all these are a legion of dodgy SEO consultants promising the moon for a monthly retainer.

You still don’t see too many of these types in Central Europe. I know a handful of local SEO consultants, but the bigger web agencies avoid the whole topic. (Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on that.) My view has always been that as long as your website follows best practices (relevant title tags, URL slugs, etc) it’s best to focus on creating quality content which is relevant to your target audience and forget SEO altogether.

Now, according to US blogger and tech evangelist, Robert Scoble, SEO is about to become irrelevant:

Continue reading ‘Good news: Central Europe can skip SEO (according to Scoble)’

In 2006, I asked the question “Is Hungary ready for web analytics?”. The web analytics market was booming in the US, and Google had only just launched its free Google Analytics service. I was the marketing director at Indextools (later acquired by Yahoo!). Based in Budapest, we were competing in North America with the likes of Omniture, Coremetrics, HBX and WebTrends. At that time, Indextools only had one Hungarian customer – a personal friend of the CEO.

Three years later, that time has arrived. Last week, I attended the Budapest chapter of Web Analytics Wednesday. Hosted by local online marketing maven and blogger, Anna Sebestyén, the meeting was well attended. The meeting was held in English, and featured presentations by András Rung (web ergonomy), Zoltán Balázs (usability & analytics) and Tamás Ács (Gemius for competitive insights). We had about 20 attendees, mostly 20-somethings, nearly all of them active, professional analytics users (I asked).

Continue reading ‘Web Analytics Wednesday – Hungary is ready’

European ministers say they have agreed on a plan to introduce a common EU-wide patent system that could save companies millions of euros.

Sweden’s foreign ministry says industry ministers reached a deal on the main elements of the EU patent and setting up a single European Patent Court.

via BBC News – EU moves towards common patent system.