Today I want to share with you one of the best initiatives regarding european entrepreneurship that I’ve seen in a long time.

Stanford University has in fact developed an awesome seminar series about european entrepreneurship and innovation. The program, called “European Entrepreneurship & Innovation Thought Leaders Seminar” is directed by Burton Lee, a visionary professor and general vc and technology startups expert.

It is a weekly lecture series and is offered each Monday afternoon (4:15-5:30pm) in Skilling Auditorium on the Stanford Engineering campus. It’s open to the public at no charge and all the videos are online for everyone to watch. (Here is the info required to watch the video).

Some of this year’s topics included:”New Venture Funds in Europe”, “French and Irish Entrepreneurs in Software & Cleantech”, “Nordic Entrepreneurs and Venture Spinouts”, “Entrepreneurs & Venture Investors in Spanish Regions”, “Venture Capital and Technology Outsourcing in Eastern Europe” and “Europe in the Global Entrepreneurship Scene”.

I strongly suggest you watch the videos of some of these, there’s some inspiring stuff to take out from them. Also take some time tomorrow and join in to watch the “Venture Capital and Social Media Startups in Spain and Southeast Europe” lecture which will feature Nico Goulet – Managing Partner, Adara Venture Partners and Andrej Nabergoj – CEO & Co-Founder, Noovo. I surely will.

It’s well known that people working in a startup environment are usually very passionate about what they do, but Poken UK’s Country Director Renate Nyborg took it to a whole new level with this “Have faith in Poken” video posted on her Tumblr.

Too good not to post it.

Another round of investment for Newcaste-based startup Quick.tv which just raised another £335.000 to further develop its clickable video technology and market its product.
The company provides professional web video publishers the ability to inject interactivity into videos with a quick click, drag, and drop.

‘Online video has gone from being a consumer driven entertainment experience to a fundamental feature of any website. It’s now recognised by businesses across all sectors as an effective marketing tool.’ Nick Bell, founder and commercial director, says.

The fresh cash will mostly be used for a marketing campaign, in occasion of the new product launch.

The round was led by North Star Equity Investors which already backed Quick.tv in 2006 with proof of concept funding of £60,000 and again in 2007 with £500,000 from its Co-Investment Fund.

Update:We got information from Quick.tv that the round was closed on December 08.

Out of the many companies that launched at The Next Web, one that particularly got my attention is yellowBird.
They promise to “rock the movie industry world” and they may actually do it. They have a really cool technology, inspired by Google Streetview, that creates a complete 360° video that can be watched in any flash capable computer, and shared easily on the internet with their proprietary flash player.
“The viewer becomes the Director, who can choose what he wants to see from his position”, says co-founder Rafaël Redczus of yellowBird. He started working on this technology almost 10 years ago, but now all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place. “There are unbelievable opportunities for this new dimension in online experiences. Film producers can use it for their trailers on the Internet, city marketeers can use it to attract tourists, dance events become virtually
physically accessible for millions of visitors, documentaries and sports events become probing experiences, whilst this technology will bring about a
revolution in the world of advertising.” Redczus comments “Advertisers are looking more and more to the Internet. This offers them unrivalled opportunities
to present themselves.”

The Groningen-based startup may have actually created something that will change media distribution, not a minor funny technology.
Pictures, video, color video, live video, live internet streaming.. what’s next? This sounds like a good candidate. We will see how these guys do very soon.

According to Marc Groothelm, Managing Director of yellowBird, they are still the only company in the world that makes this concept accessible and available to
businesses. Keep in mind this is not intended at all to go mainstream for consumers, as the “stitching” process of the 6 video streams requires lengthy calculations by extremely powerful computers.

It is great to see such innovative startups in Europe reminding everyone that we aren’t just the artistic continent but we can have a major role in business and technology innovation.

Thanks to the guys of Creating Inspiration you can watch the video of their presentation at The Next Web: