Archive for the 'Slovakia' Category

Diving into Vienna’s startup scene: Afterworx PitchDrinks

The Vienna-based startup cluster InitialFactor employs a relaxed approach to bringing startups together with startups and investors: Each month the office invites up to 100 people to join in for 30 minutes of pitches, followed up by a small office party with drinks, snacks and music.

The event is very international – usually at least one pitch is presented by a team from abroad, especially from close-by: Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

InitialFactor Afterworx always takes place on the second Thursday of each month, starting at 6.00 p.m. at Spengergasse 37, 1050 Vienna.

If you’d like to be invited, write a short mail containing your full name, your organization as well as a 1-sentence-statement about why you are interested in startups to afterworx@initialfactor.com .

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Raffael … who?

This is my first blog post to you on nowEurope – thank you for your interest! Let me first introduce to you what I do and how I intent to write for you here.

I’m a German biz graduate, 26, living in Bratislava, almost daily commuting to Vienna and thus connecting the startup communities of Austria and Slovakia. And that’s what I want to write about because I believe there are very attractive opportunities in transnational entrepreneurial action and more people should know about them.

When publishing, I’m dedicated to the KISSS principle – Keeping It Short, Simple, Sexy. That’s why I want to only cover one thought at a time and try to keep each post between 100 and 200 words. Hope you like it and I’m always happy about straight feedback :-)

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The view from ICT Centrope in Vienna: wrapping up the CITT project

All good things must come to an end. I was in Vienna last week with Vlastimil Vesely and our CITT partners to present our results at “ICT Centrope”, the project’s final conference. The event was well attended. I’m pleased to say we ended the project on a high note.

Featured in the photo from left to right are me, Zuzana Lettner and Katharina, and Vlastimil Vesely. Zuzana (VITE) was our original project coordinator, but roughly halfway through she project she left for her maternity leave. Christoph Henrichs took her place and did an excellent job of finishing up the project. Thanks also to Bernhard Schmid, who took the photo.

My colleagues did a good job of summing up the conference and so for that, I will refer you to the ICT Centrope web site.

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What Jeremie means to nowEurope & CITT

It’s one thing to dream about changing the world with your revolutionary business idea. It’s quite another thing to convince an investor to put up the money. Your supporters might praise your idea, but they won’t provide you 40 hours of labor each week until you offer them a paycheck.

Money has a way of making things real.

Part of our job, with CITT, has been to share a dream. Centrope designates the border regions of four countries (AT, HU, CZ & SK). The distances are short, but the cultural differences are big. This region has great potential for innovation, but most of this knowledge is locked away in research labs, divided by increasingly abstract national borders.

CITT’s dream is to knock down those borders. Fortunately, we are not the only ones at work on this vision. If CITT and similar projects are successful, the results will be measured in new products, new companies, new jobs and new opportunities.

This is a big dream, and big dreams need money.

Continue reading ‘What Jeremie means to nowEurope & CITT’

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Guide to the successful use & dissemination of research results

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!

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ICT Centrope: Conference on the “Digital Heart” of Europe

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!

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How to locate R&D institutions in Centrope

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!

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World Bank names Hungary as CEE’s least welcoming place to do business

How odd that I came across this story on China’s People Daily Online, the erstwhile propaganda organ of the Chinese Communist Party.

According to the World Bank, Hungary’s neighbors now provide a more competitive business environment, while the Slovaks lead the region in providing a cozy home to global capitalism:

Hungary is the second most expensive place in terms of gross national product percent capitation to start up a new company in the region after Poland. Almost every country in the Central Europe Estate region beats Hungary, according to the World Bank survey. Slovakia is well ahead in 36th place due to its business-friendly reputation and flat tax.

But wait, there’s more bad news. (Are the Chinese actually mocking Hungary?)

Continue reading ‘World Bank names Hungary as CEE’s least welcoming place to do business’

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How can we encourage Gypsies to blog?

I realized only very recently that Gypsy (Rroma) community leaders are not in the habit of blogging. I want to better understand how blogging can be used to organize a grassroots community on the web and also how we can introduce people to Rromani culture, traditions, values and identity (Rromanipe). I also want to grow and deepen the international Rroma community we are building at  Kaskosan.com, the web’s first and the largest global Gypsy social network.

Before you start bashing out your ideas, here is some brief background on the Rroma movement.

In the past two decades, Rroma community leaders, local governments and NGOs have attempted to address a number of urgent issues, including institutionalized discrimination against Rroma, poverty, illiteracy, as well as racism in local media and anti-Rroma violence. This communication has mostly taken place within EU and local governments, and involved national and trans-national non-Rroma politicians and political organs.

Unfortunately, most of the tremendous work and money invested has had or no little impact on local Rroma communities.

Continue reading ‘How can we encourage Gypsies to blog?’

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Centrope_tt voucher – interregional innovation voucher

In his post, Vlastimil Vesely introduced the innovation voucher system of South Moravia. We at Pannon Business Network are working on a project called centrope_tt, where we are responsible for the development of a system for supporting innovation and cross border technology transfer between SMEs and R&D institutions in the Centrope region.

The main characteristics of the centrope_tt voucher:

  • while national programmes support innovation on national and regional level, centrope_tt supports technology transfer on interregional level
  • Any SME in Centrope can apply for one of the 50 pilot vouchers and use the voucher for services of one of the universities located in a foreign Centrope country
  • In 2010, 50 pilot vouchers are available: 20 in Austria, 10 in the Czech Republic, 10 in Hungary and 10 in Slovakia.
  • The maximum value of one voucher is € 5,000.
  • The financed activities are similar to other innovation voucher systems.

Currently the consortium is working on the preparation of the voucher system. (public call, implementation manual, trilateral contracts etc.)

When the official call is ready we will publish it on this site, too. Until then please collect your ideas and find your international partners for your project!

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