Recently we celebrated the fifth anniversary of founding Netcamp. It is a natural opportunity to reflect and review your progress and development. What changes have been made in the IT sector in Szczecin?

Over the past five years the IT sector in Szczecin has significantly grown, which we are very happy about. Companies producing software and outsourcing IT services are dominant, but they are confronted with a significant problem of finding the appropriate number of competent employees in the region, especially programmers. Unfortunately, our universities are not able to satisfy such a high demand for specialists.

For that reason Netcamp Foundation takes efforts to help in this area by conducting, in cooperation with West Pomeranian University of Technology, cyclic examination of programming competencies of students. It allows the university to track the development of students’ competencies and search out talents that have a chance  to receive interesting offers from IT companies in Szczecin.

Several years ago you spoke very enthusiastically about new companies and the future of IT in Szczecin, you said that it would become the pillar of the city’s economic development. Have your hopes come true or maybe not quite?

As they say, Silicon Valley was not built in a day. Netcamp hopes for speeding up the IT sector development in the region, considering that Pomerania Technopart will open 3 new modern buildings and server rooms in the fourth quarter of 2012. I believe it will be a good spot for innovative companies in the region and it will draw other IT companies to Szczecin.

What are your views on local government support?

In my view, if Szczecin Strategy 2020 or Regional Innovative Strategy are to produce beneficial results, local governments should devote significantly more funds to projects that support development of technological enterprise. The return on investment in the area is very fast and in the times of economic slowdown such actions should be perceived as a priority.

Special tax incentive programmes could attract the interest of IT firms. For instance, the authorities in Ireland have long ago understood that it is beneficial to draw IT companies and offer advantageous tax terms in respect of the intellectual values they produce. That is why companies such as Google or Facebook have their European headquarters in that country.

It should be mentioned that according to Boston Consulting Group, in 2009 the Polish internet industry was worth PLN 35.7 billion (2.7% GDP), which was more than the mining industry. The sector of new technologies is growing so dynamically that by the year 2015 its value will double and equal PLN 77 billion, i.e. as much as 4.1% GDP. Despite that, we believe that it is still too poorly supported at the central level, because IT specialists do not organize protest actions in front of the Seym building and do not burn tyres in the streets.  

How about new companies? Is there room for IT start-ups in Szczecin?

There will be no problems with infrastructure for the investment projects undertaken in our town. However, I believe that if we want to have successful start-ups in Szczecin, we should concentrate on promoting technological enterprise among young people. The Polish system of education generally creates employees rather than employers. For the past 5 years Netcamp has been supporting the development of the start-up society in Szczecin. As a result of our meetings many new projects have been launched. This is quite a success - if young people, when still at the university, are faced with a choice between working for one of the large IT companies located in Szczecin - which compete against one another to recruit them – and making a start-up, as a rule they prefer not to take risk.

In addition, the authors of many interesting projects leave Szczecin for other towns, because they cannot find investors here that would provide them with smart money or mentors able to assist them in entering the global market. The winner of Startup Weekend Szczecin which Netcamp Foundation arranged in November 2011 received over PLN 700 thousand from HackFwd after half a year and moved to Berlin, and the author of a project rewarded during the Startup Weekend was employed by Huge Thing in Poznań where she is currently developing her new e-commerce project.

What will Netcamp meetings look like in five years from now?

Current trends and the future of Internet were the leitmotif of Netcamp’s fifth anniversary. I think that in five years solutions such as Google Glass or Internet of things, i.e. home devices connected to the internet and communicating with one another by themselves, will become our everyday reality. I also expect that humanoid robots will already be around in 2020. The Internet and new technologies are developing so fast that we are sure to come up with many more interesting topics to inspire the Netcamp meetings’ participants with.

ŁP