The region of Fürstenfeld is losing every year hundreds of young, well-educated people due to emigration (brain drain). Despite the good, it is very dicult for them to nd appropriate jobs. Against the backdrop of this situation, the Start-up & Service Centre of Fürstenfeld invited student, inside teacher and entrepreneurs to an “open space event” on the 29th of April 2014,with the aim to develop solutions in order to strengthen the region for the long term. One day in Fürstenfeld, one general theme, no xed agenda, coee-house atmosphere. Under the working title “active contribution to our active future - the future, we create together”, several working groups discussed the central question: "What should we initiate in the region today to create better jobs for tomorrow?  

First concrete and sustainable action steps for common issues and future projects have been gathered in small groups and subsequently presented and discussed in a forum. To emphasize the working group “job / market / economy”, one particular question has been developed: What kind of incentives does the region oer to companies in order to settle or to increase their site? Anyway, integrative education and infrastructure play a decisive role n the region. The main developed idea in this context could be summarized as following: the establishment of new businesses from existing regional companies through outsourcing of know-how, patents or product ideas (e.g. unused patents of the company Secop). In a long term this could lead to a new clustering.

In the frame of this event, the Lifelong Learning Project GADGET (Good Practice Pilot Action for Innovative Industries) with a focus on training for SMEs also used this occasion to introduce the project (gaining an insight into the European project landscape) and the planned 3-days trainings for employees in the eld of energy and environment to the young participants. Ingrid Kienberger from RUN cared for the 4th GADGET Café and provided the participants with the latest news concerning the project. Therefore she could promote the rst thematic workshop on methods of customer loyalty and analysis of market maturity, which will take place on 4th of June 2014 at the FH JOANNEUM In the end, the German futurologist Erik Händeler closed the event with a lecture on the subject of “the future is ours”. He argues that a "culture of collaboration" will be a cornerstone for prosperity in the future.