I was in Moldova last week (Feb 8-13) to investigate an opportunity to leverage framework and experience from Microsoft Innovation Center’s in Croatia and Slovenia in similar Center of Excellence/Innovation Center in Moldova.
I was stroke by the great enthusiasm of Moldavian people and their willingness to change things and create better life, not just for those people working in IT but to nation as a whole.As an USAID RCI Senior Advisor, I was working with my colleagues in USAID CEED Project and with great support from Microsoft and HP branch office in Moldova to acquire enough data to prepare Feasibility Study and Concept Paper that will be presented at Moldavian ICT Summit Feb 30-31.
My visit was very well accepted by all the institutions and business that I had opportunity to talk with, including representatives from Moldavian Government, donor organizations (beside USAID) like Word Bank, telecom providers like ModTelecom and ModCell, Moldavian ICT Association of private ICT companies, representatives of Academic institutions, Business and Technology incubators as well as with CISCO, as one of the potential private partners (beside Microsoft and HP), etc.
I think that there is enough willingness to be optimistic about this initiative!