On 30 - 31 March 2005 the Golębiewski Hotel (Bialystok, Poland) was the venue of the IV East-West Innovation Forum. This year the meeting was held within the general framework of the Project “International Innovation Centre of East”.
The Forum was held under the auspices of the Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology of Poland, Governor of Podlaska Wojewodstwo, President of Bialystok.
The organizers of the event are:
· National Contact Point for Research Programmes of the EU (www.6pr.pl),
· International Innovation Centre of East,
· North-East Poland Innovation Relay Centre (www.nepirc.pl),
· Lviv Center for Scientific Technical and Economic Information (www.cstei.lviv.ua)
with the assistance from Project partners:
· Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Markets,
· Technology Transfer Centre of East (with the University of Bialystok),
· Scientific and Technological Park Poland-East, Ltd, (Suwalki),
· Lithuanian Innovation Centre (Vilnius),
· Republican Centre for Technology Transfer (Minsk).
The international innovation event has brought together more than 120 delegates from Armenia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Uzbekistan, Ukraine.
The main objective of the meeting was to enhance the ongoing extensive cooperation and technology transfer partnership of Poland and Eastern Europe within the framework of the current initiatives and European programmes:
· INTAS,
· INCO,
· “Human Resources and Mobility”.
The fourth Forum was dedicated to projects poised at intensified international technology transfer and development of technological solutions for renewable energy sources. Thus, when addressing the renewable energy domain, the meeting participants focused specifically on biomass, eco-building, wind power engineering, hydropower engineering, photovoltaics, geothermal energy, power cells.
Alexander Uspenskiy, Director of the Republican Centre for Technology Transfer, delivered the report "Problems in Creation and Updating Web Databases Designed to Service Innovation Activity Agents. The Experience of Belarus". Besides, he presented the project "Building an Information Infrastructure of Technology Transfer to Make for Meeting Higher Living Standards" and seven projects by RCTT's clients in concern with renewable energy sources.
During the Forum the participants considered RCTT's initiatives regarding formation and maintenance of database facilities for the International Innovation Centre of East. Of all the Project partners, RCTT is by now the most experienced in development and updating of innovation-related databases, so the Project stakeholders conferred on prospective entitlement of RCTT for coordination of the net activity of the International Innovation Centre of East, as far as the database formation and maintenance are concerned.
The final decision on assignment of the network database activity coordinator is expected to be made during the meeting of the Project partners at the National Exhibition of Belarus in Poland (Warszawa) on 27 - 30 April 2005.
