The event took place over the weekend in Rovinj.
With a concert by Neno Belan and Fiumens, the jubilee edition of the Weekend Media Festival, which was held under the patronage of the Adris Group, ended on Sunday evening. This year, the old tobacco factory in Rovinj hosted more than 160 speakers who participated in more than 60 separate discussions and events. In the past three days, the largest festival in the media and communications industry in southeast Europe has attracted record 5,000 visitors, reports ictbusiness.info on September 25, 2017.
“We have celebrated the 10th anniversary just like we planned – with a number of interesting discussions, attractive presentations, a lot of accompanying events and an excellent musical programme. I am sure this tenth Weekend has not left anyone indifferent. We are looking forward to planning the first edition of the second decade of the festival which brings together people from across the region,” concluded Tomo Ricov, director of the festival.
In the three intense days, this year’s Weekend Media Festival defined the key trends and challenges faced by the communications industry, as well as the topics of mindfulness, changes in the concept of transportation, a start-up which changes global education, the arrival of artificial intelligence, and how Google and Facebook dominate the advertising market.
“The event has been marked by a partnership with the Nordic countries, we had panels about ten years of the PR and digital industry, and we also spoke about the STEM revolution. Also, there was an interesting discussion on the subject of the 21st-century journalism, and we concluded that the quality of content is a priority for readers regardless of which platform they use,” said Nikola Vrdoljak, the programme director.
The first day of the festival was marked by a lecture by an award-winning journalist of The Sunday Times Jonathan Calvert, who described how it was to be part of the investigation that led to the fall of the most powerful people at the FIFA. The hall was full during the presentation “From Ramones to Rozga”, where scientist Boris Jokić talked about the importance of contemporary music in education.
A fierce discussion developed the next day during the “Our everyday Agrokor” panel event, which covered Agrokor’s crisis communication practices. The conclusion was that they did everything wrong. The event “Everything you have always wanted to know about your neighbours but did not dare ask” was one of the most entertaining at this year’s Weekend Festival. The participants turned the event into a stand-up comedy show where everybody made fun of everybody else, focusing on the current situation in the Balkans, with examples of the good and the bad sides of neighbours.
Awards were also given for the best digital works in the nine SoMo Borac categories, which this year had record 145 entries. As many as 55 advertising agencies from the region competed in the BalCannes competition. The best agency in 2017 is Gray Ljubljana, while the title of the best project was taken by “Dear Mr President” by the Imago Ogilvy agency.
Translated from ictbusiness.info.
