Last week I connected on Liknedin with Henk Procé. He was one of the members of the Dutch Consultancy team that developed the Strategic Development Plan for Iasi "Orizont 2020" in 2007.
At the time when this plan was intensely discussed in 2007 I was not aware of it. But now, one year after it was launched, it finally came to my attention.
I took the time to read some articles that were written in the last quarter of 2007 about this project:
Ziarul de Iasi - S-au ales cele 10 proiecte de dezvoltare a Iasului (Romanian)
Newsiasi - Brandul "Iasi, oras al inspiratiei", contestat inca de la aprobare (Romanian)
The opinions in the media were mainly critical, but I think that this had mainly to do with the politic factors. The war between the political parties before the local elections that were organized in 2008.
I also started reading the document. You can find it in English on the website of the City Hall: Iasi Regional Development Strategy 2020.
My personal opinion is that the plan is quite good and the suggested priorities are quite close to what I think that should be done for Iasi.
Unfortunately I didn't find a lot of information about the follow-up on this plan.
After I finish reading the whole document I will share some more information in future posts.
Dec 4, 2008
Iasi - is it known in Europe?
I think that Iasi is pretty well known by Romanian-speaking people. Most of the people from Romania and Moldova know Iasi and have a pretty good image about the city. But if one starts asking people from other countries about Iasi, only a few ever heard of Iasi and know something about it.
The main reason for this is that Iasi never had a strategy in promoting itself in other countries. There are some examples of cities from Eastern Europe that are very well known even if they are not the capital-city: Krakow, Brno, Wroklaw, Odessa. Even some cities in Romania, like Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Timisoara, are starting to be known in the whole Europe. Each one of them attracts a big number of tourist, are part of large infrastructure projects and are attract important foreign investments.
I think that the first step for being known outside the borders in Romania would be to have available information in English (or other European languages) about Iasi. At the begining of this year most of the websites about Iasi were only in Romanian. Now I see that there are already some important sites that have the English/French versions as well.
I will name only 2 examples now:
1. Iasi City Hall
http://www.primaria-iasi.ro/content.aspx?lang=EN&item=0
Of course, there are still some things that are not in place. For example on the website of the City Hall there are some pages: "Page not yet published in this language", as example the Public Relations page. Or there are pages that are in Romanian even on the Englis version, as example the Contact page
2. Iasi city tourism
http://www.turism-iasi.ro/index.php?id=101
Browsing this site I found out that Iasi is a city that had an important contribution to the feminist movement in Romania. I always knew that part of the charm of the city comes from the women that are there :)
The first surgeon woman in Romania Mara Trancu-Rainer (1875-1950) – was a member of the Romanian Academy of Medicine and honourary member of the Biology Society in Bucharest.
The first lady lawyer in Romania Ella Negruzzi (1876-1948). To her name is connected the manifestation for social-political rights to women and also the fight of the Romanian intellectuals against fascism and war, for freedom and the country’s independence.
I think that the first step for being known outside the borders in Romania would be to have available information in English (or other European languages) about Iasi. At the begining of this year most of the websites about Iasi were only in Romanian. Now I see that there are already some important sites that have the English/French versions as well.
I will name only 2 examples now:
1. Iasi City Hall
http://www.primaria-iasi.ro/content.aspx?lang=EN&item=0
Of course, there are still some things that are not in place. For example on the website of the City Hall there are some pages: "Page not yet published in this language", as example the Public Relations page. Or there are pages that are in Romanian even on the Englis version, as example the Contact page
2. Iasi city tourism
http://www.turism-iasi.ro/index.php?id=101
Browsing this site I found out that Iasi is a city that had an important contribution to the feminist movement in Romania. I always knew that part of the charm of the city comes from the women that are there :)
The first surgeon woman in Romania Mara Trancu-Rainer (1875-1950) – was a member of the Romanian Academy of Medicine and honourary member of the Biology Society in Bucharest.
The first lady lawyer in Romania Ella Negruzzi (1876-1948). To her name is connected the manifestation for social-political rights to women and also the fight of the Romanian intellectuals against fascism and war, for freedom and the country’s independence.
Dec 3, 2008
New start
Labels:
About,
Entrepreneurship,
International,
IT
After a long period of inactivity I decided to focus again on this project - Strategy for Iasi.
So expect new regular postings starting this week.
I also decided to try to use the new services from Google Friend Connect.
I am still researching about this tool, but if everything works out fine, I could add some social networking features to the site. And this could only be good.
Make sure you sign in. You can use your Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account.
Thank you!
Cezar
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