Vienna, Göteborg, Sofia Organizations and Entrepreneurs Introduce Ideas for Better Cities and Societies at Webit 2018 in Sofia
For the second year in a row Sofia Investment Agency hosted SOFIA’s PLACE in the exhibition area of Webit.Festival Europe 2018. SOFIA’s PLACE welcomed hundreds of guests with a prepared program, presentations and opportunities for business meetings with foreign and Bulgarian partners.
SOFIA’s PLACE agenda has been jointly implemented by Sofia Tourism Administration, Sofia Development Association, the Green Sofia project and the Municipal Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. We are extremely grateful to all participants in the presentations – to our colleagues from Vienna and Gothenburg, who shared their valuable business experience and ideas for management of urban environment, business and investments; to the organizations that presented ideas for working communication between institutions and citizens and practices that turn Sofia and its citizens into a smart city and society; and to all Sofia entrepreneurs who presented the vitality and ambition for growth of the business eco-system in Sofia, by introducing the products and services they develop with their teams in the capital.
You can learn more about the participants in the program of SOFIA’s PLACE, download some of their presentations from the links below and benefit from the ideas and contacts that the participants shared at Webit.Festival Europe 2018.
Vienna Business Agency, Austria
Vienna business agency is part of the general administration of the Austrian capital.
The agency offers a business program to attract investors and supports companies that want to open offices in Vienna. The presentation Vienna: A great place to live and do business is available for download here.
Business Region Göteborg – ICT and Connect Sverige, Sweden
Business Region Göteborg is an organization engaged in the development of the second largest city in Sweden as well as 13 municipalities in the region. The presentation Innovative Growth – Meeting the sustainability challenges with a diversified approach is available here. It also includes a presentation of Connect Sverige, a non-profit organization, funded by local government and industry, which connects growing companies with capital and key skills and contacts. The Connect Sverige network of more than 30 000 highly qualified specialists and over 500 angel investors covers all of Sweden. Connect works hard to develop its investment network at regional, national and international level.
Municipal Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium Enterprises
The Municipal Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises is a dedicated body of Sofia Municipal Council, which conducts Sofia Municipality’s policy to support small and medium-sized businesses in its territory by guaranteeing part of the credit risk on loans provided by financial institutions to small and medium- sized enterprises registered or operating in the territory of Sofia Municipality. Funding opportunities for innovative startups in Sofia are presented here.
“Citizens” (Grajdanite) is a mobile application that allows citizens to submit alerts to every municipality in Bulgaria and to Traffic Police. The team of the application presented solutions to the challenges resulting from rapid urbanization. The content of Citizens and Institutions – together for a smarter Sofia can be found here.
The Association works to provide continuous dialogue between civil society, business, state institutions and public administration. Its projects aim to build a social environment that contributes to the development of Sofia as a modern European city. The teams of the winners of # BG10xEU Hackathon 2017 were invited by the Association to present their winning projects on the occasion of the 10 year membership of Bulgaria in the EU:
- Prizma – with an application for direct translation of camera-shot text to sign language;
- BrainHub Lab – with a development of an application for real-time sign language translation, which also includes an educational platform for sign language learning;
- GuideAR – with an application that revives through Augmented Reality (AR) the millennial history of the capital and the country through interaction with cultural and historical sites and treasures;
- 1D – a web-based and mobile game with an added reality where players can plant and take care of virtual trees at actual places in Sofia where trees are missing, thus building a map for the institutions to see where the city needs more landscaping.
Digital Transition Partnership
Sofia is a coordinator city of the partnership on Digital Transition in the EU initiative Urban agenda for the EU. The project coordinators Veronika Manova and Mika Rantakoko presented the objectives of the program – to identify and implement new measures and solutions for improving the legislation in Europe, to finance urban policies and training programs to facilitate digital transition in Europe. Link to the presentation, as well as more information on the goals and local partnerships that the program is looking for can be found here.
The Gate Project
The Gate Project is developed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski “in cooperation with Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The project is focused on “big data” management in service of a “smart” society. The Big Data for Smart Society – GATE presentation is available here.
Rouster.eu introduced their innovative development on a PC in the cloud that can take any physical form. The presentation is available here.
Bulgarian-Finnish technology startup Appzio presented its revolutionary technology for building of mobile applications. The presentation is available here.
During the two days of the festival, our team also presented the investment profile of the capital to the guests of SOFIA’s PLACE. The presentation of Sofia is available here.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with our team at the contacts listed below for assistance with sectoral data or business establishment and development in the capital.
In addition to the presentation of Sofia at SOFIA’s PLACE, our team also participated in the discussions on urban policies at the Webit Cities Summit. For another year, this part of the program at the festival gathered mayors and municipal administrations across Europe to discuss the factors and challenges which urban administrations face with in today’s digital world. Vladimir Danailov, CEO of Sofia Investment Agency, was a moderator of the panel How Technologies is Changing Mobility and Transportation Health, Infrastructure, Energy and Finance.
