Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Mirjana Kolac
From September 21st to 24th, another edition of the Weekend Media Festival will be held at a well-known location, in the Old Tobacco Factory in Rovinj. Looking forward to the 10th year of the Weekend, we talked with director of the festival Tomo Ricov and its program director Nikola Vrdoljak, who reveal what lies behind the jubilee edition of the largest communication festival in Southeast Europe.
This year the Weekend Media Festival marks its tenth birthday. What novelties can we expect?
Tomo Ricov: This is our tenth year and we have set an ambitious goal, which is to celebrate the jubilee anniversary in style when it comes to program and entertainment. We’ve introduced a lot of new things, from the look of the festival to the program itself. Every year, through lectures and other content, we try to offer and do something new, and what will exactly happen at the tenth anniversary remains to be seen.
What will this year’s program bring, and how do you actually choose topics to talk about?
Nikola Vrdoljak: We have a plan according to which we want to cover the key topics of the industries we cover. The key people from the region participate in the Weekend, we talk about global trends with speakers from major and more developed markets, and then we organize workshops where we want people to gain some new knowledge. Weekend is thus trying to stimulate new trends and remain positive. We don’t want to dwell only the current situation, but we are trying to participate in creating new trends. Of course, every year we have several panels and lectures that introduce us into completely new things that we believe will seriously influence the world, such as for example the digitization of the media, which we will analyze this year through panels titled Living in the time of Duopoly, Death of American TV content and Baby you can ride my car.
Each year you bring to Rovinj numerous interesting speakers from around the world. Whom have you invited this time?
Nikola Vrdoljak: Part of the program for the jubilee Weekend will be devoted to Nordic countries, which are considered to be a model of development, new technologies and regional cooperation. We are building a brand new hall for partners from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. We are proud of this cooperation because we believe that we will offer our visitors a series of lecturers from the most developed region of the world. We hope that our region will one day be more similar to them.
How do you plan to mark the tenth anniversary in the entertainment part of the program?
Tomo Ricov: The music program has always been one of the strongest features of the Weekend Media Festival, and this year visitors can expect surprises befitting the great jubilee. We still can’t mention any names, but one thing is certain – Weekend parties will again this year be the topic that will be discussed for months after the festival ends.
What’s the most interesting part of the program in your opinion?
Tomo Ricov: We expect about 4500 visitors, which is the maximum that can fit into the festival space. We are proud that we are seeing more and more guests from the region every year. This is the best confirmation that the program we offer is interesting and important for the business sector. This year we have prepared over 60 presentations that will be held simultaneously in six halls. I would like to point out Jon Laurence, the best digital editor in the UK, from Channel 4.
How much has the communication industry changed over the last ten years, since the first edition of Weekend?
Nikola Vrdoljak: Weekend has survived this long because we live in times when new trends are constantly occurring. As much as we are often concerned about defining the program or the new topics we will be discussing, when we take a step back, we see that incredible things are happening. For example, at the first Weekend, in 2008, one of the visiting lecturers was Blake Chandlee, the commercial director of Facebook. At that time Weekend didn’t even have its own Facebook page. Ten years later, Google has become larger than the entire global print industry, while Facebook has almost overtook all the radio media in the world.