PR Week Belgrade 2008

Leadership in Recession

The 3rd international conference PR Week Belgrade 2008, held from November 24-28 at Faculty for Media and Communications, was organised by a consulting agency Attache and it introduced about 200 participants to 23 renowned leadership experts, local and international


By ADRIJANA MILOSAVLJEVIĆ
from Belgrade, SERBIA


The 3rd international conference PR Week Belgrade 2008 held from November 24-28 at Faculty for Media and Communications was organised by a consulting agency Attache. Twenty-three renowned speakers shared their expertise and professional experience with around 200 participants. The conference, entitled "NEW LEADERSHIP - Leadership in Recession", was opened by Mr. Goran Obradovic, General Manager of Cisco Serbia.

Dragan Savic, the founder and the consulting agency Attache CEO, as well as the president of a newly- founded Southeast Europe PR Center presented Management performance academy, which is a company for development of management performances. Mirjana Stefanovic from Faculty for Media and Communications posed the question whether every manager is a leader, and every employee a follower. Ms Stefanović defined PR as a means to apply some make-up on a rather boring story and make it look appealing to media and newspaper readers. That is why merely obtaining information is not enough; we should present it in a way it conveys the best possible message.

Leonardo Peklar of the company Socius, addressed the increasing need for transparency in the world and Glass House concept, based on a claim that there is no such thing as a secret nowadays. To conclude, he played Steve Jobs' motivational speech 'Stay hungry, Stay foolish.' Richard Linning, one of the world's most prominent lobbyist in Brussels and London gave a lecture on the topic "Corruption - an insurmountable obstacle in Serbia's path to the European Union". He stressed the importance of stakeholder analysis, cooperative management ethics, transparency and benchmarketing.

Veronika Puncheva (METRO) was 'In search for the leadership soul'. The topic of her speech was the so-called 'blind spot' or 'shadow part', which stands for our flaws which we fail to notice but which have a bad impact on people around us. She suggests that, if you want to become a leader with a soul, you should meet someone whose world is different from yours (e.g. a homeless or a mentally challenged person). Spending some time with them will broaden your horizon. Watching films 'Forest Gump', 'Rain man' and 'Fisher king' was also recommended.

Nina Tomažin and Alenka Vidic of ProPiar, Slovenia presented a report' Responsibility and the third generation of Internal Communication'. In the course of the presentation, participants could hear that employees are 4.5 times more involved in the work in companies with good internal communication and the income is 19.4 times higher. On the other hand, in companies with bad internal communication about 14% of the work week is lost. The presenters also shared a McKinsey research from July 2007 which gives 3 biggest challenges of the 21st century under 3 Ws - Women, Weather and Web.

The conference was marked by variety of its participants - age was not an issue, and there were people of different occupations present, among them Vladinir Zamahajev, a priest. A lot of attention was paid to students, with a student competition where they presented and defended their views on 'Communication in Crises'. The first prize went to a group of students from Faculty of Organizational Sciences. In addition, student from many faculties were volunteers at the conference and had a chance to attend the lectures and receive certificates.


(Published: 10.12.2008.)