ConPlusUltra attends second DanubePeerChains Partner Meeting
From 14-16 of September 2021, ConPlusUltra attended the second Danube Peer Chains Steering Committee meeting in Zagreb, Croatia. This was an opportunity to see the project partners from Germany, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Montenegro for the first time since the launch of the project in July of 2020.
Since most partners already arrived on the 13th, a joint dinner was organised at a traditional Croatian brewery in the centre of Zagreb on the evening prior to the start of the partner meeting. At this point, most partners had only seen each other online and were meeting in real life for the first time. Split into small groups, the partners spent the evening mingling and exchanging ideas.
The official programme began with presentations and discussions on work package 2 “Toolbox for capacity building of Labour Support Organisations (LSOs) and Business Support Organisations (BSOs) as well as specialistis/entrepreuneurs” led by Business Upper Austria. This also included a workshop for which the partners were split into three groups and invited to apply the Diamond Methodology on Wood/Furniture, Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics/Electronics & Automation. ConPlusUltra led the discussion on the strengthening of the wood/furniture value chain, collecting input from the different partners. Each moderator then presented the results to the consortium.
The second day began with the first year-review for which all work package leaders presented the key achievements of the first 12 months of the project. The day ended with a discussion on the training programme for SMEs including the capacity building method for SMEs, which was jointly developed by Business Upper Austria and ConPlusUltra. The day ended with a presentation by the University of Belgrade on the guidelines for the assessment of the trainings conducted in the framework of the project.
On the last day of the meeting, work package four “The Action Planning Process” and work package “Communication” were presented by ConPlusUltra and Tehnopolis respectively. The focus of the presentation by ConPlusUltra lay on the upcoming action plan development process including the planned peer review, which will start shortly. For this process, each region has to propose measures to strengthen cooperation between LSOs and BSOs as well as building the capacities of SMEs in the framework of an action plan. The next step of this process is that these draft action plans are to be shared with other partners during peer review sessions. In the work package presentation on communication, Tehnopolis focused on the upcoming communication activities including press releases and videos. The meeting ended with a farewell coffee and all participants expressed their gratitude to the project partner ZICER for having hosted the meeting.
Read more about the project: https://www.conplusultra.com/projects/danubepeerchains/
Official project site: http://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/danubepeerchains
