Ljubljana, 31 August – The Young Bled Strategic Forum (Young BSF), the preface to Slovenia’s pre-eminent foreign event, the BSF, will focus on the quickly changing world as it takes place for the seventh time in Ljubljana over the weekend.
The organisers have built the concept on Slovenian author Vladimir Bartol’s premise from his novel Alamut: Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Young BSF programme director Iza Tršar picked the premise as a dramatic exaggeration about the world of today.
“But, the more I explored the virtual and digital world, especially in their more negative forms, the more I came to believe that the situation in society is rather serious,” Tršar said in an interview for the STA. Another segment in blueprinting the event were the findings of World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab about the fourth industrial revolution, which changes the way of life and at the same time blurs the line between physical, digital and biologic sphere, Young BSF deputy programme director Sandra Palamar added.
Meanwhile, Tršar believes that not all is black-and-white and negative, but society must start paying more attention to finding comprehensive solutions to managing the “new reality”, which has already become part of everyday life. To overcome the partial addressing of these new phenomena and to design a more comprehensive strategy to tackle them, Young BSF will this year focus on the fusion of virtual, digital and real in three key fields, the three Es: electronics, environment and economy.
“Before I started exploring these fields in connection to digitalisation in greater detail, I had not had much knowledge about the topic. I knew of the impact of digitalisation on the issues I dealt with at work…In these contexts, digitalisation almost always played a negative role.”
“This is one of the reasons why I wanted Young BSF to address the topic: selfishly, I wanted to prove to myself that there is a positive side to digitalisation,” Tršar said. In addition, Palamar stressed that in addition to investment in technology and digitalisation, development of human resources is also important.
“To empower a person through developing key competences and at the same time find ways for the marginalised and those who adjusted to globalisation the least to be included in society and make active participation available to them.”
Tršar and Palamar believe that this year’s Young BSF, in which more than 30 “exceptional individuals working in electronics, environment and economy” from across the globe will take part, will provide a comprehensive view on the topics that are key for “our future and the future of our planet”. It will move beyond the fourth industrial revolution, “especially in the field of environment, both social and natural”, Tršar added.
Participants, who will tackle the topics in three panels, will at first discuss them with Prime Minister Miro Cerar. In addition they will try to define the greatest challenges and find solutions to them in workshops. Their findings and proposals will be summarised in a manifesto that will be presented on Tuesday as part of Business BSF.
“I believe that Young BSF’s yield, which will be designed by all the participants in the forum, will be a good starting point for seeking responses to questions with regards to quick changes for all societies and countries, not only for Slovenia,” Tršar concluded.
Running under the motto “(Dis)connected Reality” this year, Young BSF has become a recognised generator of ideas and solutions that contribute to the implementation of new strategies and tackling of serious challenges.
Source: Slovenian Press Agency