Weekend Session
Due to an overwhelming interest in expanding the Weekend Media Festival, region's largest communications industry's festival, the organizers have decided to launch the Weekend Sessions. During a number of one-day happenings all over the region the Weekenders are going to organize a number of interesting lectures and panel discussions throughout the year. The first such Weekend Session will take place on December 3, 2009 in Zagreb, when the Weekenders are going to bring U.S. President Barack Obama's PR strategist David Plouffe to Croatia.
The "unsung hero" behind the largest presidential campaign in the history of the United States will share his experiences with the participants of the Weekend Session and shed some light on the background of the most important event of the 21st century – Barack Obama's presidential election. Plouffe's work for Obama has shown his ability for effective leadership and firm management of a presidential campaign, which is an attribute only a few political experts can claim. In early 2007, when a handful of people agreed that Obama had a shot at becoming the next president of the United States, David Plouffe and his team developed a remarkable presidential strategy that led to the final victory and restoration of faith in the United States of America. Along with David Plouffe's lecture, the first Weekend Session will feature a number of interesting panel discussions with the chief protagonists of the Croatian presidential elections.
The second Weekend Media Festival, which took place on September 17-19 in Rovinj, gathered over 2,000 media, PR and marketing experts and professionals. This year's Festival was covered by 275 accredited journalists from Croatia and other SEE countries. Moreover, the organizers once again provided free participation and accommodation for over 200 students of the region's faculties of political science, journalism, PR and marketing. Rovinj was also visited by a number of international and domestic speakers who talked about the future of advertising and print media, music and production, Twitter, reality shows and viral phenomena. Furthermore, participants of the rather interesting panel discussions talked about, among other things, the boundaries of privacy in the media, future of business media, branding of destinations and public relations' influence on the creation of the media content. Finally, for the first time the Weekend Media Festival brought together the leaders of the region's business community who spoke about their view of the media's influence in times of crisis – T-HT CEO Ivica Mudrinić, CROATIA osiguranje CEO Hrvoje Vojković, TDR CEO Davor Tomašković and chairman of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce Nadan Vidošević.
