As part of the activities of its Rockaway Ventures Fund, the Rockaway Capital Group held an exceptional event during this year’s film festival in Karlovy Vary – the Creative Czechia conference. Its goal was to connect talented filmmakers with the digital economy and business community. During the conference, projects that were born as part of the new KVIFF Talents programme were also presented.
Since 2021, Rockaway Capital, which is a strategic investor in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) has put on this event together with two partners – the Czech Founders community platform and the KVIFF Talents initiative. During the course of the afternoon, important figures from the Czech digital economy alternated on the podium. In the introductory interactive keynote speech, the MC of the conference, Yemi A.D., familiarized conference guests with the topics of the day, followed by a panel discussion entitled “Go Forth Creatively!” The discussion was moderated Vít Horký, founder of Czech Founders, who welcomed to the stage Rockaway Capital founder and CEO Jakub Havrlant, founder of the ShipMonk logistics company Jan Bednář, and co-founder of the successful Beat Saber game, Jaroslav Beck. The panelists then discussed how they forged their personal creativity and imagination into successful global companies.
The next discussion, entitled “Creative Technology!”, featured Rockaway Ventures General Partner Dušan Zábrodský, Prusa Research founder and CEO Josef Průša, Hapennee CEO and co-founder Zdeněk Hesoun, and CEO a co-founder of the popular Live Penalty game, Pavel Kacerle. They discussed technologies, the important role played by creativity in their development, and how the current economic crisis can impact this area. “It’s obvious that after the ”gold rush” of the last two years marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the world of start-ups and e-commerce is starting to sober up significantly. Even so, I still believe in a brighter future. There are still unconsolidated markets still waiting for digitalization. If you want to know which ones these are, have a look at the sectors in which Rockaway Ventures has most recently invested,” said Dušan Zábrodský during the discussion.
The most technologically-oriented afternoon discussion featured William Lobkowitz, Daniel Fekete, and Rockaway Blockchain Fund head Viktor Fischer about Web 3.0 and how technologies can awaken individual creativity.
“We thought about how we could link our activities with the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in order to create something truly unique. The result is the Creative Czechia conference, which we’d like to make a regular part of the festival. It’s a unique opportunity to interconnect the artistic, technological, and business communities. And in our view, creativity is something that art and business have in common,” said Rockaway investment partner Jan Jírovec in describing the vision of the entire conference.
Conference guests then had a singular opportunity to take a look at a selection of projects from the new KVIFF Talents initiative, which aims to support courageous and dynamic approaches in cinematography and other areas of audio-visual art in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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