The regional capital city of Zlin hosted the second edition of the ZLINTECH conference on 13 September 2022 with the subtitle People, Technology and Creativity – Czechia in Europe. The aim was to acquaint visitors with the activities that the Zlin region implements for the benefit of development, higher competitiveness and quality of life. The organizer was the Technological Innovation Center Zlin.
The conference was opened by the Governor of the Zlin Region Radim Holiš, the Mayor of the Statutory City of Zlin Jiří Korec, the Rector of Tomas Bata University Vladimír Sedlařík and the Zlin Region Councilor for Digitization, Youth and Sports Jiří Jaroš. All of them declared their determination to contribute from their level to the development of the Zlin region and support activities that will lead to its prosperity and the quality of life of its inhabitants. Minister for Science, Research and Innovation Helena Langšádlová greeted auditorium at least from the video, in which she emphasized the role of transferring research results into practice.
Rut Bízková, a member of the Government Council for Research, Development and Innovation, impressed audience by her presentation with the vision "Zlin as Barcelona of Central Moravia". Closest to it is the Tomas Bata Street, which is home to design, IT, new materials, shared workplaces and cooperation between small companies and individuals with large companies. She emphasized the motto of the region's development: "We will invent at home, we will manufacture at home, we will sell to the world - an opportunity for progressive design and IT solutions".
Four discussion blocks followed, in which representatives of design studios, the film industry, owners and managers o
f production companies, visionaries and politicians took turns. The first block was devoted to creative applications in everyday work, the second was focused on industrial applications, the third on ICT applications, and the conclusion belonged to the topic of Czech competences in Europe. Individual panels were moderated by experts from the respective fields, including Lukáš Trčka, director of the Technological Innovation Center Zlín and expert guarantor of the National Innovation Platform Cultural and Creative Industries of the National RIS3 Strategy.
The complete recording of the stream of the entire conference is available on the TIC Zlín YouTube channel. Individual presentations can be downloaded here. Photos from the event can be found in the photo gallery on the zlin.tech website.
The conference also included the announcement of the winners and the presentation of the Created in Zlin initiative award, which was presented by the director of the Zlin Creative Cluster, Čestmír Vančura. Award-winning creators were Veronika Zelezníková (jewellery), Kateřina Vavroušková (meeting place) and Stanislav Martinec (modular construction).
A big thank was addressed to the implementation team of the Technological Innovation Center Zlín, which is behind many successful projects implemented as part of the Smart Accelerator project and which is the main protagonist of the implementation of the regional RIS3 strategy.
