Bruxelles

Brussels, Belgium

Europe

• Drupal Collaboration
• European Heritage Network

Open Source

Europe, as a whole, has a stake in improving the usage of F/OSS in all branches of IT and public life, in general. F/OSS communities throughout Europe can achieve better results through co-ordination of their research activities/programmes that reflect the current state-of-the-art.

The main objective of the tOSSad project is to start integrating and exploiting already formed methodologies, strategies, skills and technologies in F/OSS domain in order to help governmental bodies, educational institutions and SMEs to share research results, establish synergies, build partnerships and innovate in an enlarged Europe

More precisely, the tOSSad project aims at improving the outcomes of the F/OSS communities throughout Europe through supporting the coordination and networking of these communities by means of state-of-the-art studies, national program initiations, usability cases, curriculum development and implementation of collaborative information portal and web based groupware.

Geography

Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.

People

People are your greatest assets. Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?

You only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub:

• rich people and nerds
• they're the only ones present when startups get started

Women

Successful women business owners know the importance of continuous learning, peer support and networking among the movers and shakers.

• Learn new business strategies that can propel your business to the next level.

• Get valuable tips, resources and tools. Acquire the skills you need to grow your business.

• Discover contracting and procurement opportunities that are available to certified Women Business Enterprises (WBEs). Find out what Women Business Enterprise (WBE) certification is and whether it is right for your business.

• WBEs, meet and market to procurement officers from major corporations as well as government agencies (federal, state and local) that want to do business with certified WBEs.

• Stop feeling overwhelmed, burned-out and isolated. Meet women who share these issues and find out how they regained the enthusiasm and sense of satisfaction that prompted them to create their own businesses in the first place.

• Meet successful women business owners and learn from their successes. Tired of feeling that you are out there all alone? Successful women business owners share their secrets for what works – and what doesn't.

• Celebrate the success of women business owners. Meet and network with the movers and shakers – you just might find your next new customer, new partner or new idea.

• Discover new ideas for creating balance in your life and have fun. Everyone says, "If you're not having fun, don't do it." When is the last time you had fun? Or even laughed out loud? Hear how successful women maintain their balance, have fun and make money – at the same time.

Smart

What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are. And in particular, to great universities.

Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, not the buildings.

Silicon

If you want to reproduce Silicon Valley, what you need to reproduce is those two or three founders sitting around a kitchen table deciding to start a company. And to reproduce that you need those people.

Entrepreneurs

As a small business owner myself, I know how much hard work it takes to run a company. Women entrepreneurs represent the fastest growing segment of new and expanding businesses, and we want to nurture that bold spirit and do all we can to support this crucial segment of our economy.