The NetWork conference has become one of the most important regional IT and business events. What do you think is the key to its success and longevity?
The key to the success of the NetWork conference lies primarily in the carefully designed program and the value that we bring to the participants every year. Our goal is for each conference to be of higher quality than the previous one, while constantly raising the level and scope of content, enriching it with new topics and speakers. We pay special attention to the topicality of the topics, introduce soft skills lectures, open up space for experts from various technological fields and improve the platform for registration and monitoring the program. We also pay additional attention to the entertainment segment, which has been contributing to the special atmosphere of NetWork for years. Thanks to this approach, NetWork has earned the title of the most important and most relevant business and technology conference in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one of the most significant in the region. The participants of the Network conference have long been not only people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also from the wider region, which we are particularly proud of.
The choice of location also makes an important contribution to the success. We organize NetWork in Neum precisely so that the conference fully justifies its name. There, we are all dedicated to each other, the participants are at least physically distant from regular daily obligations, which allows them to truly connect, exchange experiences and establish new partnerships. Although the organization in Sarajevo would have been incomparably easier, simpler and cheaper for us, we consciously choose Neum because it is precisely this atmosphere of togetherness and focus that creates special value for the entire event.
That is why I believe that NetWork owes its longevity to the combination of quality content, reliable organization and authentic atmosphere. Every year, we provide participants with knowledge, contacts and experiences that help them in their work and professional development. This year's slogan TEChTONIC CHANGES best reflects our mission to follow key changes in the industry and inspire the community to actively participate in shaping the digital present. I believe that everyone will agree that we are currently experiencing a tectonic technological change, in the form of the mass use of artificial intelligence, and we will deal with it intensively at this year's conference.
All this makes the conference valuable and gives many reasons why people are happy to return to it.
Organizing such a large event certainly brings many challenges. What is the biggest challenge for you as the Communis agency in this process?
Organizing the NetWork conference is a very complex project, primarily due to the volume of content and the variety of activities that take place over three days. We prepare each conference for practically ten months, and immediately after the previous one is completed and the administrative tasks are completed, our team starts working on the next one. Although at first glance it seems that there would be many challenges in this process, thanks to the well-coordinated team that has been working together on this project for many years, everything works very well. I would especially like to highlight our content team, which is extremely dedicated to each individual lecture and makes sure that the program is high-quality, diverse and in line with the expectations of the participants. Every year we receive many more lecture applications than we have available dates, so selecting the best content is very important.
As I have already mentioned, a certain complexity is brought by the fact that the conference is held in Neum, which requires additional logistics and organization, but it is precisely this choice of location that contributes to the special atmosphere and value of NetWork. In the end, all these challenges are worth it when we see how satisfied the participants are and how many new business opportunities and collaborations are being created at NetWork.
How do you see the future of the NetWork conference and where do you see it in five years?
We see our future primarily in further improving the quality of the content, because our strategy is based on that, and not necessarily on increasing the number of participants. We are very focused on raising the qualitative level of the conference every year, and that is something that is sincerely important to us. We want NetWork to remain an event that stands out precisely for the quality of the program and for the fact that it brings together the best experts and the most current topics, both from the domestic IT community and from abroad. An excessive increase in the number of participants would even diminish the overall experience of the conference in these logistical conditions, so we have to think very carefully about that too.
We would like to include even more young people in the coming years, especially as lecturers, in order to give them the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience and to develop together with the conference. In the world of information technology, young people are the ones who bring new directions and we want to give them the opportunity to be heard by a wider circle of people. I also believe that we will further strengthen the business part of the conference, because technology today cannot be separated from the business context. And what is certain - NetWork will continue to be a conference with a unique atmosphere, where openness, cooperation and knowledge exchange are nurtured, just as we have been doing all these years.
