Today was packed full of activities, the first of which being a visit to the Stredoceske inovacni centrum. This organization’s main function is to serve as a mentor like figure (product funding and research) to entrepreneurs and their start ups. They serve as an excellent step in the right direction for people who are confident in their ideas and trying to start their company/build their product, but may not know how to connect with consumers or have the money to fund/test prototypes. For example, one company they helped was two guys who built a shoe ski, and you could actually walk up the mountain instead of waiting in line for the chair lift if you desired. The innovation center kind of reminded me a little bit of the makerspace at Pitt, at least the emphasis on entrepreneurship and the help towards getting innovators on the right path.
After the innovation center talk, we went back to Charles University for a first day lecture on the Czech language. I will say, this language is significantly harder to get down compared to my first day classes in Spanish or Italian. If I remember correctly, almost every number we learned how to say was not pronounced the way I expected based on the spelling. This class really made me realize how difficult language barriers can be, especially for people working together in any setting, especially in an engineering environment where mistakes made lost in translation could be critical.
Swanson School of Engineering 