KreNI is the first and most influential festival of creativity in southeastern Serbia, which brings together innovative creative professionals and experts from around the world with the idea of creating space for creative young people to develop the kind of society they want to live in.
KRENI7 conference was opened by H.E. Annika Ben David, Ambassador of Sweden in Serbia, H.E. Virginia Pina, Ambassador Portugal in Serbia, H.E. Yahel Vilan, Ambassador of Israel in Serbia, Mr. Dejan Vladic, Minister – Counsellor at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia, Mr. Adrian Faix, Attaché for the culture of the Austrian Embassy, Mr. Roberto Cincotta, Director of the Italian Institute in Serbia, Ms. Monika Damnjanovic, Director of the French Institute in Nis and Snezana Andric, President of the Young Ambassadors.
#KreNI7 participants worked with more than 30 experts from Italy, Sweden, Austria, France, Portugal, Israel, Slovenia and Serbia, gained new knowledge and experience, shared their ideas with experienced mentors and developed solutions for creative development of the tourism sector in our city. Workshops took place during the 2 days of the conference on Smart city transformation and Branding and communication. On the third day they worked with mentors on developing their ideas. And on the last day of the conference, teams presented ideas to the jury and we have chosen the winning idea of the conference.
In the programs KreNI talks we had masterclasses on the topic of “Smart Tourism” and we found out what are the best practices in smart tourism development in Italy, Sweden, Austria, Portugal and France. Our speakers were: Paolo Verri, Director of the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation, Italy, Maria Mansson, Senior lecturer at the Department of Strategic communication at Lund University, Sweden, Itshe Petz and Io Tondolo, CEOs of SelfSightSeeing Company, Austria, Roberto Antunes, Executive Director of NEST – Tourism Innovation Center Portugal and Thomas Silvie, Founder of “Back of the house”, France.
On the 27 November panel discussion “Smart City” was held where we talked about smart innovative city solutions for a sustainable world and what we could learn from Sweden, Slovenia, and Austria. Our participants were: Urska Strac Peceny, CEO and Lead of Tourism 4.0 Department, Slovenia, Ljubica Knezevic Cvelbar , full professor at the School of Business and Economics, University of Ljubljana, Ann Louise Larson, project leader for Smart City Sweden and Milan Randjelovic, director of Science Technology Park Nis.
We had an interesting presentation “Open Innovation in Travel” on 28 November and our speaker was Itai Green, founder and CEO Innovate Israel.
Panel discussion „Future of Tourism“ was held on the 29 November. What is the future of tourism and where do we see the touristic sector in a couple of years was an interesting discussion in which participated Milica Raskovic, Head of Program Development at Novi Sad 2022, Serbia, Annalisa Contini, Social economy expert at COSV and CO-Profit Benefit company, Italy, Igor Kovacevic, Pavilion Director, the Republic of Serbia Pavilion at EXPO 2020 Dubai, UAE, and Assistant professor, Faculty of Economics, Belgrade. The Moderator of the panel was Nenad Rokvic, President of the Association of Tourist Guides Nis, Serbia.
KreNI7 teams have developed ideas that will contribute to the development of tourism potential in Nis in a more smart and innovative way. Winning idea of #KreNI7 is “Inside the box” which presents available smart lockers in the city for tourists. Those would have wi- fi, phone chargers, map displays, and other tourist information.
At KreNI7, we wanted to show the power that innovation and creativity have in improving the tourism potential, and the host country was Italy, in whose economy tourism and culture play the most important role. The Italian corner, made up of interactive settings and a VR exhibition, was open for all interested public to get acquainted with the development of the concept of smart tourism in Italy and best practices.
This was another step in encouraging greater use of creative industries in the development of society, and in the coming period, together with partners, we will work on further development and implementation of KreNI7 ideas.