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A few weeks ago, the 2nd European Consulting Committee of EUREKATourism
has been organized in Nice, France. Amazing, it was just amazing…
The
first evening, we were invited to a gala dinner organized by
“Rendez-vous en France”. This year, the biggest trade fair in France
counted on more than 800 tour-operators from all around the world. The
cocktail and dinner at the Acropolis were impressive from the beginning
to the end, with two huge articulated dragons at the entrance door,
dancers, tambours and musicians everywhere. Arriving in front of the
Acropolis was as astonishing as being suddenly in a Carnival.
Then
we got in and managed (I don’t really know how) to find all the Members
of the Committee in this big crowd. Cocktail, classy dinner, animations,
dancing, everything was ready for more than 1000 attendants.
And then the next day we had the Committee. We had the opportunity to
listen to presentations from Team Côte d’Azur (they help people invest
in the region) – Amadeus (did you know that originally Amadeus is a
EUREKA project? Impressive, no?), and many potential Projects Looking
for Partners. All decisions taken regarding the Committee will be
published at a later stage.
We also went to Sophia Antipolis
(exactly to SKEMA Business School ), for the Bilateral Meetings (we’ve
established more than 40 meetings involving French companies and the
Members of our Committee)… Again, next Post will provide official
information regarding this.
But what really impressed me was the
infrastructure of Sophia-Antipolis. I really did not expect the place
to be like this. I thought it would look like a typical business city,
but not at all… Did you know that from one building to the other you can
hardly see anything but trees. It’s literally full of trees, hills,
woods, people jogging at lunch time. The main problems I can see here,
is the traffic jam at rush hours; and above all the real challenge is
not to get lost: it can take you ages to find where to go with no GPS.
And I’ve been told that there’s a website called whereinsophia.com . It’s
a search and localization engine of the 1450 companies located in
Sophia-Antipolis, this site is obviously very useful. And do you know
who launched the website? Our French Member of the Consulting Committee
from Dev-Help… it’s a small world…
Now that I’m talking about
Dev-Help , I have to admit that Jean-Bernard Titz kindly arranged
everything during these 3 days in Nice. I would like to personally thank
him very much for all the efforts and for the fantastic organization.
Apart from the Committee itself which is always very interesting and
productive to me professionally, everything around the Committee has
been very remarkable. In terms of economic and touristic impact of the
region, I feel that my experience in Nice has been very fruitful and I
went back to Madrid with an image of Nice much more dynamic and
technologically at the top than I could imagine.
Hopefully I will soon be able to tell you more about a new EUREKATourism project involving France!
This information has been posted on EUREKA Tourism Web site on Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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