Just got back from Zaragoza in Spain, which was hosting Innovate!Europe 2005. This was the first in hopefully a long line of conferences - more hopefully, a short line of conferences - that will attempt to help Europe catch up with the US and Asia in creating new, profitable technology companies.
As a first stab, it was pretty good, although the number of attendees was far smaller than might have been hoped for at a pan-European event. And unfortunately, a number of the companies presenting there did have a touch of the "dot com" about them in terms of their business models.
But rather than be typically European and criticise, an unhelpful trait highlighted on the third day of the conference in an excellent keynote by the CEO of MySQL, I'll just say for now that the conference was a good way to break the ice in Europe and get VCs, entrepreneurs, et al thinking about the obstacles that need to be overcome. I'm sure that the 2006 conference will give everyone a chance to delve deeper into the mechanisms Europe needs to put in place to stimulate investment. Maybe some government types might even visit. Wouldn't that be surprising?
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