How Brno Changed from an Industrial Hub to a Tech Hub  - DevConf.CZ 2022
Channel: DevConf
Date: 31/01/2022

Speaker: Don Sparling 

Since we can't meet in Brno we're doing the next best thing - talking about Brno with our friends from Brno Expat Centre. Join us together with Don Sparling on a virtual walk through Brno's history.

In the 1980s, Brno was a grey industrial city with crumbling buildings and decaying infrastructure. Following the collapse of the Communist system at the end of 1989, things only got worse: within three or four years many of the city's factories had gone bankrupt, and others were operating at only a fraction of their capacity. Thirty years later, Brno is a colourful, dynamic city with a reputation as the tech hub of the Czech Republic and one of the leading tech hubs in the wider Central European region.

How did this happen? After a brief introduction to the story of Brno's growth as an industrial city, this informal talk will cover the transformation of the city in the last three decades, from the city's first tentative steps to agree on a new identity, through the very slow emergence of a new economy in the beginning of the millenium, and finally to the take-off in the last decade or so, with an exponential increase in the numbers of major international firms and the presence of tens of thousands of foreigners in Brno.