A. “Lithuania: Heart of Baltics” logo and brand concept recently created by photographer and advertiser Marius Jovaiša.
B. “Lithuania: Sense of challenge” official logo and brand concept by UAB “Protingi Sprendimai” recently approved by the government.
I found out recently that Forbes magazine (Forbes.com) announced the list of best countries for business in 2009 after in-depth analysis of 127 economies. That’s interesting to know and take into consideration for future start-ups.
Second year in a row Denmark takes over top position, while there is as well two more scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway) and UK representing Europe in Top 10. Baltic countries follow such order: Estonia -17, Lithuania-42, Latvia-45.
While rating methodology is not fully disclosed, it includes such variables as GDP growth, unemployment rate, economic dynamics, personal freedoms, investment legislation, corruption, etc.
That just proves that we still have a way to go to attract business to Lithuania, it looks like current government is going the right way reducing bureaucracy & granting support (www.skatinimoplanas.lt). Initial capital requirement for new start-up’s will be reduced 10x to 1000 LTL only, that enables entrepreneurs develop idea into a successful business with much less constrains.
We’ll see & feel economic stimulus created by current policy in a while, let’s be optimistic.
As I’m living quite close to Odense Port (it takes around 5 minutes to walk), I feel that it is my duty to promote the upcoming gorgeous events through my networks 
So if you are not too busy and not too far away this weekend (29-31th of May, 2009) please don’t hesitate to come by. At least what I remember from the last year’s festival, it was a really pleasant danish cultural experience. Otherwise, we will meet in even larger Lithuania’s Millennium celebration in Vilnius, this year 6th of July.
Check out the best moments of last year’s festival in the video below.
Official website http://www.havnekulturfestival.dk/ provides detailed event schedule.
This thursday we spent evening at our place with several Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Slovakian, Irish, Italian & Japanese friends (mostly girls) watching Eurovision semi-final. We had a really great relaxed time all together, however I had to notice that quality standard for european songs decreases year after year. To my eyes it was much more of a colorful showoff event, than a song contest.
While it was declared among us that this kind of contests are not popular and nobody cares about the outcome… I have still noticed some of our guests voting & expecting their country make it up to the final, when the the finalist were announced. And that is natural! It is obvious, not the particular song, but our own country we care about and how it will be positioned among others in Europe. That is an obvious conclusion, but quite interesting when you come to it through social observation in multicultural environment.
It will be a challenging battle today & its hard if not impossible to forecast the winner. Due to some analysis I made using Google Trends, I think that Norway (Alexander – Rybak) will not be among the winners, as it is only supported by Baltic countries and Scandinavia. The most interaction among inquiries in the search engines comes to Turkey, Greece & Russia, while Lithuania is only in 15th place. Search requests for different songs is probably not the best indicator as public votes counts only for 50% of official country votes, the rest is the opinion of professional commission.
What is your guess?
