A Rise of a Polish Silicon Valley?
It may seem strange, that in my first post I am writing about a place that is unknown for the majority of the Masters of Media bloggers and the blog’s readers. I am writing about it, because this place and a project has a personal significance to me. Firstly, it is located in my hometown, which I love and where I want to spend my life. Secondly, the project, I want to bring closer to you, is amongst others, a reason why I am here and can be a part of this Blog. It all began in 2006, when I was about to choose a direction of my further education and career. Being fascinated and interested in media and the newest technologies I followed numerous websites devoted to those fields, and I found out about the project. This has lead me through the paths I’ve came through and has brought me to the place I am at the moment. Moreover, I want to introduce to you this place, because I believe that it will be crucial center of innovation working in the field of multimedia and informative systems.
WSB-NLU is well-known as a university which provides unique and innovate concepts. Recently, it has unveiled the idea of Multimedia City. The idea of the Multimedia City is based on the concept of The Nowy Sącz Network of Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, a project co-financed by the ESF funds.
Multimedia City main building vizualization
The project, titled “Multimedia City,” began operations in the Nowy Sącz national center of innovation and focused on multimedia and information systems. The project will be based on the resources of the Nowy Sącz School of Business – National-Louis University. In The Multimedia City, a unique set of competencies and state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities will be collected, which will enable it to run any project in the field of multimedia and high-technologies. The Multimedia City will consist of state-of-the-art movie, graphic and sound studios cooperating with information, architecture and application development sections. These coexist on the basis of the most modern servers and solutions in field of data transfer. Searching for new ways of using multimedia and information systems, as well as implementing existing solutions into new fields, this project can be crucial for Polish economic development at different levels.
The Multimedia City’s strategic goal is to become one of the tenth most innovative centers in the world, which are working on the application of multimedia in education, business and entertainment. The individual elements of Multimedia City are enabling to implement innovation to economy in accordance with the following stages of innovation chain: fresh ideas and innovative know-how, testing ideas through research and development phase, and implementation and adaptation of the innovative solutions in enterprises.
Multimedia City experts identified fields of multimedia application, which possess the largest developmental potential:
1. Mobile Technologies such as creation of localization service system based on the integrated technology of internet services, GIS platform, combined with GSM and GPS networks; mobile banking; authorizations based on mobile technologies.
2. Computer animation, creation of the studio that will help to produce computer animation used in Park’s products (computer games, special effects in films, visualization of data, simulation, advertisement, architecture)
3. Movie post-production, creation of a studio dealing with postproduction (montage, special effects incorporation, formatting, sound/making a soundtrack)
4. Computer games used in education (computer support to traditional training), business (simulating decision games) and entertainment
5. Internet, development of technologies such as Web 2.0, ASP, CSS, PHP, CGI, Java to be used in education, entertainment and business use.
6. E-marketing, e-advertising, use of multimedia in marketing and advertisement
7. E-Learning, increasing multimedia technology usage in education (creation of learning environment based on multimedia educational content)
Multimedia City will offer complex infrastructure solution (10 thousand square meters of Technological Park) which will enable to run innovative activities in the field of multimedia.
Recently, I had a great pleasure to personally meet Krzysztof Pawłowski, the business school’s rector and one of fathers of the idea, who even being on holidays was working for the project. He also assured me that 11th September 2012 is the date when Multimedia City will be fully opened and working.
I am sure that this project is made to succeed. Hard work, stubbornness and never-ending pursuit of their goals are the features of project’s leaders (Krzysztof Pawlowski on the left, Krzysztof Wnek on the right) that will effect that literarly in two years Multimedia City may be the centre of new media and technology innovation.
“Who said new technologies have to develop in capital cities or metropolises! After all, the people are the most important. And their competence and enthusiasm,” says Krzysztof Pawlowski.
For more information visit Multimedia City’s website.