WESTERN BALKANS

SMART RESTART

The motto of this year's Smart City Festival in Belgrade, which will take place from 19-20 October 2021 as a one-and-a-half-day online event, will be “Smart Re:Start – Mentality. Mobility. Market. Media. Medical.”

As the leading smart city event in the Western Balkans, it will bring together international experts from business, science and politics as well as regional actors and decision-makers.

The covid pandemic is not yet over and continues to keep the world on tenterhooks. But how should things proceed now, as societies gradually return to “normality”? What are the necessary steps to be better prepared for the future, to bring the economies back on a sustainable growth path, and to protect and preserve civil freedoms? What is the importance of research and development, digitization and innovations? Have the media sufficiently fulfilled their information and control function during the crisis?

These are just some of the questions that will be discussed at the festival and answered by international experts from the Western Balkans region as well as Canada, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Turkey, and Austria.

However, we can already say: What we need is a “Smart Restart”! This means that new thinking and creativity are just as much in demand as innovative political strategies and a renaissance of free-market competition.