Archive for the 'Useful resources' Category

Diving into Vienna’s startup scene: Afterworx PitchDrinks

Published on June 14, 2011 in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Useful resources and Venture capital. 1 Comment

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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Bulgaria embraces entrepreneurial spirit with CEE Chips, but is Central Europe ready?

Published on March 3, 2010 in Business innovation, Current events, Useful resources and Venture capital. 2 Comments Tags: Aleks, angel investors, angelsoft, archimedes, balkans, capital seekers, cee, central and eastern europe, central europe, critical mass, investment brokerage, investment network, linkedin, Petkov, vc, younger generation.

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?’

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How to locate R&D institutions in Centrope

Published on January 28, 2010 in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Innovation policy, Slovakia and Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: CENTRIS, Centrope, centrope_tt, innovation voucher, map of R&D institutes, sme, technology transfer, university.

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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Learn your way around Twitter and Facebook with Mashable

Published on December 29, 2009 in Useful resources. 2 Comments

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.

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New EC study underlines the importance of pursuing technological openness for the future Ubiquitous Information Society

Published on December 18, 2009 in Facts, figures & trends and Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: communications infrastructure, connectivity technologies, european commission, infrastructure evolution, intelligent web, knowledge society, ubiquitous utility.

I have just read a recent study of the European Union “Trends in connectivity technologies and their socioeconomic impacts”. The study explores especially the question “What does the future of a connected Information Society look like and how should we prepare our overall ICT strategy and related policies to become the globally leading knowledge society?”.

In particular I found the trends or actually trend clusters that are identified in this study interesting:

Development of a Common communications infrastructure
Evolution towards Computing as an ubiquitous utility
The convergence of humans and computers
The emergence of the Intelligent Web

If you are interested to read more, please find a press release with a link to download the complete study.

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Social media experiments, part three: Deli.cio.us

Published on December 2, 2009 in About CITT and Useful resources. 1 Comment Tags: bookmarking web, CITT project, email newsletters, exploring the web, information clutter, joshua schachter, nowEurope, relevant links, social bookmarking, tedious work, Tumblr, Twitter.

Delicious (originally spelled: Deli.cio.us) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. You might think of Delicious as an ancestor of micro-blogging services like Twitter or Tumblr.

The focus of Delicious is links, and you can further organize them with add text and tags. The site was the brainchild of a solitary coder, Joshua Schachter, who sold his service to Yahoo! in 2005. For most of the first two years he ran the service part time. Lucky guy!

nowEurope has had its own Delicious account for several years now, but I confess we’ve hardly used it. When Vlastimil and I relaunched nowEurope at the beginning of the CITT project, it was our intention to use Delicious. We even added a widget to the right-hand column of this blog that shows you our latest Delicious links. It’s still there.

I’m now getting into the swing of Delicious, but I have my reservations. Maybe you can change that.

Continue reading ‘Social media experiments, part three: Deli.cio.us’

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European Union eBusiness Guide helps enterprises find software, solutions and services

Published on November 10, 2009 in eCommerce and Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: ebusiness solutions, european union, information and communication technology, service providers, solutions guide.

I just found another interesting activity of the European Commission for our readers. On the IPR Helpdesk the following article has been published:

The European Commission has launched the new online service “eBusiness Guide for SMEs: eBusiness software and services in the European market”, which can be found on the European Commission’s Europa portal. This service gives enterprises an overview of the eBusiness and information and communication technology (ICT) market and helps them select the proper software products, solutions, and ICT service providers.

Providers need to register and provide overall information on their products and services in their national language. Then, users of the online service can find specific solutions by selecting a certain country and language. The service is free of charge. Currently, this tool features more than 1,000 eBusiness solutions providers and 1,500 products, including open-source software solutions.

You can find the eBusiness Guide at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/e-bsn/ebusiness-solutions-guide/.

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ICT for smarter use of energy

Published on November 9, 2009 in Facts, figures & trends and Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: co2 emmissions, energy efficiency, european commission, ICT.

I just read an article that the European Commission has adopted the “Recommendation on mobilising Information and Communications Technologies to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy”.

The EU has committed itself to expanding the use of renewable energies by 20%, achieving a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 20% increase in energy efficiency, all by 2020.

ICT products and services currently cause about 8% of the consumption of electric power of the European Union. By that they cause about 2% of all CO2 emmissions in Europe.

On the other hand ICT can act as an enabler to save electricity in energyintensive sectors like buildings, transport and logistics. EU estimates that ICT can reduce the CO2 emmissions in these sectors by 15% until 2020.

You can find more details at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/energy_efficiency/index_en.htm

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It’s good to have friends in the North: ArcticStartup.com

Published on November 2, 2009 in Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: aggregators, competitiveness, entrepreneurs, estonian company, ICT, internet, mobile, Prezi.

Checking with Google Analytics, I noticed an interesting website that has been sending a steady stream of visitors to nowEurope. ArcticStartup, founded in 2007, presents itself as the leading weblog reviewing and reporting on technology startups and growth entrepreneurship from the Nordic and Baltic countries.

I decided to return the favor by linking to the site and telling you all a little bit about it.

Continue reading ‘It’s good to have friends in the North: ArcticStartup.com’

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European Cluster Organisation Directory

Published on October 7, 2009 in Useful resources. 0 Comments Tags: Center for Strategy and Competitiveness (CSC), Cluster categorisation, Cluster mapping, European Cluster Observatory, European Cluster Organisation Directory.

Just recently a mail was forwarded to me, whose original author was Mr. Sergiy Protsiv from the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness (CSC) in Stockholm. The mail provided information on a document published four times a year with the title: “European Cluster Organisation Directory”. This database represents 1,100 clusters across 203 regions (NUTS II classification) and 142 industry indicators.

After trying out the database for a while, I found it to be a helpful source of contacts. It provides a rough picture of what is happening in cluster work around Europe and which areas are most active and advanced. It is definitely not just a tool for first glance information, but rather a detailed source of crucial information about many clusters in Europe. The European Cluster Organisation Directory presents itself as the first comprehensive compilation of cluster organisations in Europe.

Continue reading ‘European Cluster Organisation Directory’

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