Ladies and gentlemen, please make yourself comfortable. We are about to start a story about Tourism forum of Istria, organized by the Tourist Board of Istria and retelled from Istra Inspirit’s perspective.
The congress hall of Lone hotel is filled with numerous representatives of tourist institutions, local tourist boards, the winners of „Zlatna koza – Capra d’oro“ award, and reporters ready with their cameras to catch the most important moments of this annual reunion of employees in tourism.

Minister of Tourism Darko Lorencin and president of The Region of Istria Valter Flego held the introductory speech – a look back to the tourist season behind us. They emphasized the challenge this season represented due to the fact that we had 40 rainy days (I believe this is a sufficient reason to stop relaying on the famous 3S concept – sea, sun and sand – of tourism development; isn’t it?). After, Mr. Milo Sršen greeted everybody and the „Zlatna koza – Capra d’oro“ award was handed over to this year’s winners. That little golden goat took us back to the end of 2012, when Istra Inspirit was awarded with the same prize just after the very first season of our experiences.  The official part was done but but many interesting presentations were yet to come. The first one was one of Želimir Kramarić, the assistant of Minister of Tourism, who presented possibilities of achieving co-financing from EU funds. Intoxicated with all those euros he talked about, we were relaxed during the next presentation, the one about diffuse hotels, which was presented by Klara Trošt Lesić and Marinela Dropulić Ružić from the Institute of Agriculture and Tourism in Poreč. This interesting and innovative approach in creating an tourist offer can be very well applied in some places in Istria, such as Svetvinčenat or Završje, who are already thinking about similar ideas. We can see a good practice example on Sicily where diffuse hotels are already very much developed. But, there is something that we do not have an example for, something that is unique and impossible to copy… Guess what? Istra Inspirit, of course.

And there was Manuela, proudly walking up to the podium, still not sure if the presentation will turn out to be just oral – you know, the way peopel used to give presentations centuries ago. After all, historical stagings are one of the key elements of Istra Inspirit and Manuela would probably find a connection which would explain it all with much sense :-). Our journey began. We started our time machine with „Travel through time“ video and Istrian history was once again revived. An then… double-clicking the mouse to open Prezi…To be or no to be?

To be!!!

Using the most imaginative way, we  introduced the audience with all the achievements in the Istra Inspirit project since the beggining until today. We ended the presentation the same way we started it – with a video. This time it was Petra Blašković, out art director, who presented what Istra Inspirit means to her and what is the difference between these and other theatrical performances.

You can watch the video here.

Listening to Manuela and realising the affection with which she is talking about Inspirit, we realised – all the trouble with Prezi, and all the sleepless nights were worth it. If it would be necessary, we could do it all over again. (In Power point of course! :-)) But this highlight of the Frum (:-)) did not end here, because we stayed and listened to a number of presentation afterwards – one very interesting about candidating Pula and Istra for the European Capital of Culture of 2020. (Vlatka Kolarević) and also  the presentation about the effects of the visual content on the Internet we should always think about (Philippe Boutié).

After an interesting morning and afternoon, we continued to hang over lunch, and then … a surprise for all of us! Above our heads two heads have emerged – two actual giants came out of nowhere to invite us to the afterparty. I quickly realised these were not any giants but Istra Inspirit giants – Miro i Sedina Cerovac – not even I knew they were coming. The atmosphere in the nightclub was ‘the crazy seventies’ and I believe everybody pressed some kind of button in their head – a switch mood button. There was a lot of dancing, singing and an occasional cocktail :-). With a lot of fun we ended this year’s Forum and we congratulate again to the Tourist Board for the great organization.

I guess we’ll see each other next year!

Post Tourism forum of Istria – The Moment of Truth je prvi puta viđen na Istra Inspirit Blog.

“The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.” ― Alain de Botton

Surely you have experienced that because of the amount of your current commitments you get a feeling that you will not be able to get anything done. In these situations the clock somehow goes faster, deadlines are screaming out of every door at once, and all of a sudden there is the face of Mr Edward Aloysius Murphy with the evil smile, because his famous law says that ”Everything that can go wrong, probably will”. And again, it does. When you are getting ready for a number of things and you are wondering how in the world you will make it all, the usual thing that happens is – more tasks – and ofcourse they are new, unplanned and urgent.

Such moment are common in Istra Inspirit, and we have trully become doctors of science when it comes to dealing with stress or converting stress into motivation. When I think I will not be able to coordinate all of my obligations in college with those at work there is an image instantly creating in my head – the image of our boss Manuela at 3 after midnight, hitting her laptop keys and writing some project, because the inspiration catches her in the weirdest hours and, well, she has no time during the day for this. And the interesting part is, the more work she has, the faster and better she performs.

This time it was about preparing the presentation which Manuela will give on 12th of December on the Tourism forum of Istria to present all the achievements of Istra Inspirit since the beggining of the project to this date. Aware that Manu is not a person who will follow the boring structure of Power Point presentation and slides full of texts, we decided to make a presentation in a new programe called Prezi, which allows creating a more dynamic and attractive presentation. The fact that we have never used Prezi before – we thought – wouldn’t be problem. And then it all started. We put a sign ”Crazy with Prezi until Friday” and we started our adventure. Parallel to this, my own personal adventure started – creating a presentation for my next class in college – on the most interesting but highly controversial custom of decapitating oxes on the Island of Korčula.

Well, at least it was supposed to begin…

What did begin were our troubles with Prezi: when we put down all the topics Manu will talk about (and realised they already take almoust two A4 pages), we started designing the ”slides” shaped in circles, which will represent these topics. This limited area had to be filled with no less than 83 images that will show what we did in these last 3 years. Also, we experienced the problems with the diacritic characters and ‘saving’ the presentation according to the principle ”a piece on-line – a piece on-computer” (and as you imagine – the internet failed repeatedly), impossibility to adjust fonts or font size, working late hours and early mornings…..these were just some of the benefits of working with Prezi. Then Thursday arrived, the day before the ”D-Day”. We had the major rehearsal to see if Prezi presentation will work on Friday. As I feared – it did not work on any computer other than the one it was made one. Without any hope that I will find a solution by Friday morning, I moved my thoughts away from Prezi. The oxes of Korčula were still waiting for me at home. Of course, by this time, the thought of doing a presentation for my class tomorrow did not even have the courage to cross my mind. I sold my professor the story of how the Power Point presentations, or any presentations for that matter, were the thing of the past, and started explaining to the class, using my arms and legs, and what ever I could find to be useful, how these poor creatures used to be beheaded. Was this brave or crazy? I don’t know. In any case, I hope my professor will not be reading this and if he does – ”Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental”. The rest of my day, evening and night was again reserved for adjusting the Prezi that maybe would not even work the day after…

At 4:55 AM I was awakened by Ognjen’s e-mail. He managed to edit and finish the video of our art director Petra and the final preparation for Manu’s presentations could begin….

A few hours later we were standing at the Lone hotel , still uncertain whether this all will work and me trying to hide my panic. We listen to the opening remarks, the awards ceremony for the „Zlatna koza – Capra d’oro“ reward, speeches on EU Structural Funds,  on diffused hotels….

And then the moment of truth came…

„In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.“ – Bill Cosby

(to be continued…)

Post Tourism forum of Istria. Part 1: getting ready je prvi puta viđen na Istra Inspirit Blog.