The jubilee edition of the Weekend Media Festival, which was held under the auspices of the Adris Group, ended with a big concert by Neno Belan and Fiumens. The old tobacco factory in Rovinj hosted more than 160 speakers at more than 60 panels this year, and in the past three days the largest event of the media and communications industry in Southeast Europe attracted record-breaking 5000 visitors.
“We celebrated the big tenth anniversary in a jubilee tone as it befits the occasion, with many interesting panels, attractive lectures, accompanying content and excellent music program. I’m sure that this jubilee Weekend has left no one indifferent and we already look forward to planning the first year of the second decade of the festival that gathers visitors from across the region,” commented Tomo Ricov, Director of the Festival.
During the three intense days, this year’s Weekend Media Festival defined the key trends and challenges that await us in the communications industry. Among other things, there was talk about mindfulness, changes in the transportation concept, a start-up that is changing education globally, the advent of artificial intelligence, and how Google and Facebook are dominating the advertising market.
“The jubilee edition was marked by the partnership with the Nordic countries, we had panels about the ten years of PR and digital, and we talked about the STEM revolution. Also, an interesting discussion developed on the subject of 21st century journalism, from which the conclusion is that the quality content is a priority for the readers’, regardless of which platform they use,” said Nikola Vrdoljak, program director.
The first day of the Weekend was marked by a lecture by the award-winning journalist of The Sunday Times, Jonathan Calvert, who talked about how it was to be part of an investigation that led to the fall of the most powerful people in FIFA, and the hall was also crowded on the panel titled “From Ramones to Rozga” where scientist Boris Jokić talked about the importance of contemporary music in education.
The awards for the best digital works from among 145 entries in nine SoMo Borac categories were presented. Also, 55 advertising agencies from the region competed at the BalCannes contest, where the Agency of the Year in 2017 was Grey Ljubljana, and the title of the Project of the Year went to Dear Mr. President, from the agency Imago Ogilvy.
