Regional Opportunities for Growth - Conference and B2B (SEE & Turkish Technology firms), was held on 28 June 2011 in Izmir, Turkey.

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.