The event was hosted by CEED & Western Anatolian Information and Electronics Regional Innovation Centre Project (BATI-BINOM)

Turkey is a rising star in Europe and the fastest growing market in the region. ICT and Electronics represent one of the fastest growing sectors in Turkey and its getting stronger in global competition. The combination of high added value, innovation, creativity, and extensive research is helping Turkish firms to develop products, not only for local market, but abroad as well.

CEED brought together around 25 entrepreneurs from CEED centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia,  Macedonia and Montenegro to meet with around 25 Turkish entrepreneurs and begin to build long-term
cooperative business relationships. The afternoon session on Tuesday June 28th was set aside to conduct one-on-one business development meetings. Throughout the day there was informal opportunities to meet transnational peers.

Major trends & topics discussed:

- Approaching the Turkish market, short cuts on how and what to look for.
- Collaboration, finding and choosing a partner.
- Cloud computing, and the many new opportunities it’s creating to build and staff new companies, and strengthen existing businesses
- The ‘Mobile’ landscape, and how it will change everything. Examples of businesses incorporating mobile technologies.
- Social media, and how it could be leveraged to make connections and build your business.
-  Electronics, and new trends from even smarter TVs, to smartphones controlling more, to ‘Apps’ everywhere (in cars, appliances, eReaders, stereo receivers, cameras, printers, etc.)

Representatives of the Bulgarian companies: Smartcom – Bulgaria AD, Elexim and Antipodes Ltd , and a representative from Kardzhaly Municipality took part in the event, supported by Bulgarian ICT Cluster
Тhe conference and B2B meetings gave to Bulgarian companies the opportunity for future business collaboration with Turkish partners :
- Some Turkish companies were interested in the last project of Antipodes for Google, realized on Google App Engine with access for all mobile devices. It is expected the started contacts to lead to implementing future projects in Turkey.
- The speed networking gave the opportunity for Elexim to start dialog for future business collaboration with 3 Turkish companies.
- Smartcom -Bulgaria has found potential partners during the event and continues negotiations with them. There was discussed also a partnership with Izmir polytechnics for common R&D projects.

International Power Supply (IPS), member of Bulgarian Cluster “Telecommunications”, took part in the world exhibition Intersolar Europe 2011, which took place on 8-10 June 2011 in Munich.

On June 3, 2011 on a meeting of founders of Bulgarian Cluster “Telecommunications” a new member of the cluster was unanimously adopted - STI Networks.

Conference „I3E Hightech days” took place in Vienna on 23rd and 24th May 2011 within the project „I3E – Promoting Innovation in the Industrial Informatics and Embedded Systems Sector through Networking". The event was organized by Ecoplus, The Business Agency of Lower Austria Ltd – project partner.
The conference is a part from work package 3 of the Project I3E. Representatives of all project partners participated in the event. Experts in the field of microelectronics from USA and Brasil made presentations.

On 17th May, 2011 In Triaditsa hall in Grand Hotel Sofia, on the World Telecommunications and Information Society Day, a discussion forum devoted on the present and future of the national telecommunications infrastructure was held. The forum was organized by ACIS, ASTEL and ICT Cluster.

Mr. Parvan Rousinov, Deputy Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTITC), Mr. Evgeni Angelov, deputy minister of economy, energy and tourism, General Hristo Tihinov, Director of Communications and Information Systems, Ministry of Defense ( MO), Ivan Dimitrov, Director of Communications and Information Systems at the Ministry of Interior (MoI), Yordan Georgiev, Executive Director, Bulgarian Energy Holding, Vladimir Pulkov, Dean of the Faculty of Telecommunications, TU – Sofia took part in the round table discussion. The position of the organizers was presented by Mr. Peter Statev, Chairman of ICT Cluster,  Mr. Antoni Slavinski, Chairman of the board of ASTEL and Boyko Simitchiev, Vice – Chairman of the Board of ACIS.
Suggestions from the business were done by Mr. Tzvetan Mutafchiev, CEO of Telelink, Mr. Peter Belev, executive director of Multiplex, Stoil Trifonov, President  of International Power Supply (IPS) , Mirela Georgieva, Nokia Siemens Networks, Vesselin Kalchev, Director  Business development, Smartcom - Bulgaria.

According to the European directive "Digital Agenda for Europe" Bulgarian ICT business is ready to actively participate in the unification of the Bulgarian telecommunications infrastructure and to offer economic model for maintaining and managing an operating broadband.
In the forum were exposed the positions about the state of telecommunications infrastructure, managed by different ministries, agencies and other government agencies.

The proposals of the Business were: creation of a public council for management and coordination of the national telecommunications infrastructure; implementation of public private partnership in order to make national telecommunication infrastructure more effective and accessible.

Four Bulgarian New Entrepreneurs, working in the field of tourism, information technologies and fashion design participate in the second phase of the programme “Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs”.

The event was organized by Bulgarian ICT Cluster with the support of ARC fund and Foundation for New Bulgarian University in the framework of the project I3E- Promoting Innovation in the Industrial Informatics and Embedded Systems Sector through Networking, financed by South - East Europe Programme.

The aims of the workshop are: 

• to provoke dialog between SEE countries  for the  development of innovations in ICT field;                                                                                                                                                                               
•to receive information from Balkan countries about  the recent development of ICT and particularly microelectronics and embedded systems;
• to inform ICT SME for the business opportunities  in SEE area countries;
• to inform and train the representatives of SME and  ICT associations;
• to create basis for future cooperation between SME  and NGOs from different countries in the SEE area; 
• to wider the I3E project network;
• to disseminate the achieved I3E project milestones so far;

Representatives of SEE countries , not presented in the project consortium were invited and made presentations and overview about ICT sector and recent development in respective countries. There were representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYROM , Croatia, Albania and Turkey.

Фондация ИКТ Клъстер участва в Комисията за оценка на частния иновативен софтуер, която е част от Министерството на транспорта, информационните технологии и комуникации.

Information, volume of knowledge and professional relationships are very important  to achieve business success.

Telecommunications Cluster was founded under the initiative of Foundation “ICT Cluster” in the beginning of 2008 under the project  “Establishment of Telecommunications Cluster and Development of Sustainable Cluster Strategy” (Project BG 2005/017-586.04.02/ESC/G/CDI-II-003), funded by PHARE Programme and the Ministry of Economy and Energy.

Mr. Georgi Nikolaev has successfully completed his training in Luxembourg within the program “Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs”.

The Bylaws of Cluster “Microelectronics and Embedded Systems” was unanimously adopted on a meeting of the founders, held on 16.12.2009 at City University’s hall, Business park Sofia.