Clúster Audiovisual de Catalunya, along with ACCIÓ and fifteen other Catalan clusters, has traveled to New York to attend a training week for cluster managers and to explain the Catalan audiovisual sector to American companies and institutions with great strategic value for the development of projects of our partners and our audiovisual cluster.

Within the agenda of individual meetings, we interviewed the start-up communication and advertising company BuzzFeed, with more than 1,700 employees and world’s 3th-ranked concerning content visualizations, only behind Google and Facebook. Within the academic field, the directors and deans of the New York Film Academy and the  NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the two most prestigious of the city, have been visited by the cluster manager Eduard Gil interested in our detection programs and recruitment of emerging talent. The producer and distributor AMC Networks, the telecommunications company AT&T Entertainment Group and the film commission Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting have also opened their doors to us attracted by the quality of the Catalan films and tv shows and by the services offered by our companies and audiovisual parks to international productions. The trip also allowed us to build linkages with the EFE agency delegation in New York, with the New Yorker law office Cuatrecases, and with David Moragas, a young talented Catalan film director based in the city.

In ​​media and innovation area, the main visits of the delegation of Catalan clusters to be highlighted are those to Google and to Company building. Google’s virtual and augmented reality department explained which products based on these two technologies are currently being developed. Company, the most powerful residence of urban tech startups in the USA, (the minimum turnover of hosted start-ups is $ 1 million per year), exposed the future prospects of this space supported by the city council: the expansion of the building with the construction of 25 new plants that will house companies of the media sector. Thanks to the promotion of initiatives like this, New York is considered the second startup hub in the country and represents one of the most important economic engines of creativity and innovation worldwide.

The Strategic Training Week, New York’s mission name led by ACCIÓ, counted with speakers and trainers of high prestige in the sectors of companies organization and dynamization.  Bryan Lozano, from the network of technology leaders Tech:NYC, inaugurated the training program with the presentation of the ecosystem of start-up companies in the city. Eric Rolf Hansen, importer of the cluster methodology in Catalonia and throughout the world, gave a lesson on strategy and cluster development; Rita Gunther McGrath, from the Columbia Business School, gives a presentation on competitiveness management, and, Samuel Bacharach from Cornell University, talked about leadership in organizations. Apart from exploring the commercial possibilities between Catalonia and the US, the sessions have been an excellent opportunity to establish synergies with the Catalan clusters from other economic sectors in the country.