Conferences and events

A lunchtime seminar on "US Government Foundations: Making a Difference in Latin America and Africa", held by The SME Department and the Grassroots Business Initiative, will take place on March 27, 2007. The Seminar will provide further insight on the life-changing work of the Inter-American Foundation in frontier regions, programs delivered by the US African Development Foundation and why the IFC should partner with these.

Veneto Innovazione is organizing an international cluster conference in Venice in January 18th-19th 2007 under the theme: Patterns of clusters evolution - models, practices, technologies and policies.

The conference aims to discuss the future of clusters, dealing with the quetions, how to structure the suitable organisational models, how to foster networking and trans-national cooperation and which inputs can give technologies and policies for cluster development.

Portland, Oregon has been selected as the host site for the 2007 TCI Global Conference. This year's conference is jointly hosted by the states of Oregon and Washington, and the City of Portland. The theme for 2007 is "Collaboration, Innovation, and Sustainability".

The second Symposium on Evaluation in Washington was used to further discuss the plan to achieve a toolbox on evaluation methodologies.
What surprised in the Symposium was the breadth of point of views, while there have been productive discussions and potential for future progresses. Even if the plan for the toolbox could not be concretised, it has to be accepted that we are in front of a process rather than a product and that it takes time. Once realized the importance of the process we will have to take care that we do not loose too many members of the group from one symposium to the next.

Veneto Innovazione is organizing an international cluster conference in Venice in January 18th-19th 2007 under the title of "Patterns of clusters evolution - models, practices, technologies and policies"

In May 2006 we had the opportunity to participate in the regional TCI conference in Islamabad organized by the Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) under the auspices of TCI and the Ministry of Finance, the Government of Pakistan. Many experts of our global network went to Pakistan to share their views on competitiveness with the local participants.

Late April TCI organized a very successful two day symposium in Barcelona, gathering 25 actors from academia, government and development institutions and consultants to discuss cluster and competitiveness evaluation.

Wellington

The theme for the conference being held in Wellington over 23/24 May was "Driving Local Competitiveness". The conference offered to international participants the opportunity to meet with a wide range of New Zealand cluster development practitioners. 'TCI Oceania' had been formally launched during the conference. Within the next month we will prepare a TCI-O chapter on the website, offering more information on the region and possibilities for networking.

Islamabad did host a TCI Regional Conference on Competitiveness and Economic Growth for Asia on May 15 - 16, 2006: Benchmarking Pakistan's Global Competitiveness.

The third conference on Innovation Journalism is taking place at Stanford University (California) on April 5-7, 2006. The opening speaker is Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google. The event is organized by David Nordfors, Innovation Journalism Program Leader at Stanford and also Commissioner of TCI for Innovation Journalism.