Good Neighbours creating a common future! Recap of the CHECK-IT Final Conference

The “CHECK-IT Day” was a one-day, virtual Final Conference of the CHECK-IT Project, which was held on December 22nd. As a part of Interreg-IPA CBC Hungary Serbia Programme, the objective of the Project was to establish a Cooperation-Communication Centre.

The centre launched an innovation-technology platform for the Checkpoint IT to support high-level cooperation between different actors of the community (business people, students, career changers, mentors, researchers, investors, founders, etc.), adapt the solutions in a broader circle and react to market demands in cooperation of Szeged-Subotica-Novi Sad.

Our line-up of speakers shared with more than 35 attendees from across Europe, their first-hand knowledge and experience gained from activities in building capacities and cross-border competitiveness.

The CHECK-IT Community ensured the participation of SMEs, integration of young people (especially women), career changers, and unemployed people from small settlements and rural areas in the region, in order to result in a high cross-border effect facilitating a flexible sharing of the labour force within the ICT community and between both sides of the border.

Supporting actions for building capacities and competitiveness of the ICT community in the cross-border region was:

the development of a complex market-based education program;
development of an innovation- technology platform for the community;
facilitating the joint prototype development in the PrototypeHub (using Agile IT management methodology);
technology trainings (Drupal, Java and front-end developer, Agile methodology), which will be based on demands of the IT sector and which could be delivered via e-learning and webinar solutions;
mentoring of the start-ups within the Checkpoint IT Community that would help participants learn how to operate/manage an IT company, taxation, legal issues, work on the external market, outsourcing, forming sister companies, etc.;
development of an IT competence database model for collecting, monitoring and validating the hard and soft skills of IT professionals;
establishing an incubator house in Subotica;
setting up an info-point in Novi Sad for Subotica IT branch;
procurement of thematic equipment;
organization of events (meetups, tech shows);
expansion.

The 2020 year, that is now behind us, shaped up to be the ultimate test of our endurance as project partners and individuals and the resilience of our Community. Like many other organizations, we had to make difficult decisions and scraped our plans related to building the final offline conference. We are grateful to CHECK-IT partners Porta Novum, Hungary and IT Cluster Subotica, Serbia, and for everyone who has believed and supported us during the Project and our mission to establishing innovation-technology platform “Checkpoint IT the Community”.