What is SME? (http://www.smeday.eu/2008/smeday/default.htm )EU SME Day is about understanding the challenges and the opportunities that entrepreneurs face across Europe while engaging with policymakers from the EU, Member States and local governments.
The day will offer a series of forums where businesses, policymakers, venture capitalists and academics will be able to engage, discuss and collaborate on the challenges facing them while exploring ideas on how to accelerate innovation to build a stronger knowledge-based economy across Europe.
Businesses and Entrepreneurs will also showcase their work at the EU SME Exhibition Area.
The objective of EU SME Day is to engage, to listen, to voice and to define clear objectives needed to support an action plan that will accelerate Europe’s role in the global market place.The aim of the Day is to drive a practical, results-oriented action plan for a successful high-growth entrepreneur model in Europe, and demonstrate a range of successful innovation and partnership models in action.

Background documents on SME-Day and others: http://www.smeday.eu/2008/press/docs.htm

When we first arrived in Belgium, we where exited to about going to meet other students from other countries. This excitement was soon to be replaced by a horror/thrilling trip in a taxi doing 140 through Brussels. Only to drop us off at the wrong location. Now this dropping off theme, seems to be very general to taxi drivers in BrusselsJ, for our next taxi, drove us to a wrong Hotel, in the opposite part of the city. But he at least didn’t drop us off, he then drove us to the right hotel so we could sign in, and start meeting people.

The other “students”

Finally we where there.. After we signed in ( even though we were told we looked too old to be students J ), our host Caroline Phillips came to great us, and after a briefing/introduction we were introduced to other likeminded students. Here we met the Swedish delegates, and we talked about the gaming industry and of course their gaming projects. We also met two other riveting persons, one named Miguel from Spain, and the other named Domen Grabec from Slovenia. Miguel from Spain told us about Channel 8, which is a place for students to keep track of what is moving in technology and discuss subjects on the forum. Besides that, it’s a place where you can watch interviews done by students on interesting subjects, and even upload your own (the latter part will though have to go through a quality check before being uploaded to the website).

http://channel8.msdn.com/ 

Go check it out! It’s pretty cool. 

Domen Grabec from Slovenia, was one of the Slovenian Imagine Cup winners, here was there representing his team Ogreeniazate, and they are going to the world Imagine Cup in Paris France one of the next days (I wish you all good luck and hope you do wellJ). He told us about his project, which I find very interesting. All in all (I don’t want to tell too much) it’s a project relying on consumer networking, in name of promoting the environment. We also met a lot of other cool guys, among them two from the Netherlands, whom we spend a lot of time talking to, exchanging university experiences. And when mentioning students and universities, our conversation also revolved around beer ;-).We ended the evening by joining forces with Swedish team, and went out for a beer and Greek food. And yes! We only drank one beer. Might say that it’s impossible for Danish and Swedish, to go out and only drink one beer, but that we did J

My traveling companion waiting for the shuttle, an hour to early

From the right: 1.Hugh Morgan-Williams - Vice-Chair of BUSINESSEUROPE’s SME Committee, 2.Peter Jungen - SME UNION Co-President, Angel Investor and Former President of Business Angels Network EBAN, 3.Jean-Philippe Courtois - President, Microsoft International, 4. Ján Figel' - Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth.

Plenary Session: From Start-up to Star
Accelerating Growth for European Entrepreneurs - Tomorrow’s global leaders should be coming from Europe.This session was a talk of how we in Europe could become better at exploiting the possibilities to get the young entrepreneurs up and running with a business of their own. And how could we make our educational system better, aimed at getting young students ready to compete at early stage. A session on how Europe needs to be more aggressive in the creation of high-growth entrepreneurs, in particular, the proliferation of innovation clusters and incubation zones attracting VC investment and pushing the region into a leadership role in the development of new breakthrough technology. Such breakthrough technology is on the top of the European Commission agenda to not only compete globally but try and solve tomorrow's most difficult issues such as health, transport and the environment.I found that this session fascinating. It was nice to get firsthand knowledge on how we in Europe could become better at achieving or goals, and how we should approach this.

Exhibition and Networking Lunch @ the Microsoft EBC

Investigate key stages in the lifecycle of a European entrepreneur. Walk in their footsteps from learning about risk taking in an education environment, to securing private capital when commercializing a new idea born from an R&D incubation center. See the challenges our entrepreneurs are facing and programs out there to help them be tomorrow’s global leaders. Come and speak to the entrepreneurs yourselves to understand how this process can be easier and Europe can take real leadership in boosting this community.

At Microsoft the different entrepreneurs got a chance of showcasing their project to companies, and the guys with the big bucks. We had a lot of talks, with the participants and found many interesting projects. In particular we found that the Playven ( http://www.playven.com/ )team had a very cool project. Using the Microsoft technology of XNA – they created a very cool game for PC, but which will also be available for xbox. What me and Jan got out of this session at Microsoft, was more on the networking side of it all. It was a great opportunity for us to get to talk to other likeminded developers, about how they approached projects, and how they solved their problems. 

Igniting the Entrepreneurial Spirit in the Next Generation - A critical look at Europe’s education system

This session was designed to be a lively debate that looked very critically at the European education systems and their contribution to a climate of entrepreneurship and risk-taking amongst youth. The moderator will challenge the kind of skills and attributes we are fostering in Europe through formal education and how this will enable or disable our competitiveness as a region. How could the transformation of education play a determining role in the ecosystem that fosters innovators and entrepreneurs?

In this session there were some really great talks of what is needed to be done ot ensure that young entrepreneurs would not be drowned in bureaucracy, even before they ever got started. A lot of good ideas came from the panel. But one really got my attention – An idea stating that we should give the newly started entrepreneur three years without interfering of any bureaucracy. Why? – Glad you asked that question – Every statistic show, that only a few percents of the started entrepreneurs survive the first three months. So why start drowning them in papers to fill, when only a few survive that short amount of time. I say hey save the paper – means money saved and its good for the environment J

 Realizing the potential from Ideas to Innovation - Entrepreneurship Forum

The practical focus of this session is intended to inspire an audience of selected students who are on the cusp of deciding if starting a business is the right career decision for them through debate with engaged stakeholders. The invited panelists will demonstrate the qualities, challenges and success factors that will pave the way from student to start up.This session was also an eye opener. The panel was eager to share ideas and experiences with us students. Among many things, we were told that, it isn´t enough that you have a product, that you want out on the market, you need a business strategy. And doing this the lone ranger way, is an absolute no no. You need a team, and that team has to be a really good team. At least one team member must be financial minded. And when going out looking for funding for your project, don’t go out there searching with nothing but an idea – you need to have something to show off to the investors. Last but not least, YOU MUST HAVE PASSION! When push comes to shove, your passion is what makes you drive it all the way into safe house.This ends my tell on the SME-DAY, I hope you enjoyed this little tour of mine, and I hope to see you back here soon. Please if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me, and I will try my best to answer them.

N.B. I have intentionally left out a lot of gory details of some sessions; this is due to the nature of the content being of only if one is really interested in these subjects. And of course that my fingers are about to fall off my hands. For more gory details I can recommend taking a look at the official web site: http://www.smeday.eu/2008/smeday/default.htm