The Fourth international professional conference “Business on Heels” was held on 25 June 25 2020 in the “Master Center” in Novi Sad. This year’s conference was organized as part of the “Women’s Business HUB” project, which is co-financed by the Intereg IPA cross-border cooperation programme Croatia-Serbia 2014-2020.
Through five blocks of lectures and one panel discussion, the event presented ideas for entrepreneurship, finance, marketing and sales, health, and most of all, business challenges during and after the pandemic.
This dynamic gathering, for the fourth time in a row, gathered around 500 women. Unfortunately, due to circumstances related to COVID 19, there were no participants from the region, but some of them addressed the audience via online streaming, thanks to which it was possible to follow this event outside Serbia.
The president of the Association Healthy Life Promotion and the founder of the conference, Sofija Bajić, addressed to participants. The conference was then officially opened by Mr Zoran Djordjevic, Minister of Labor, Employment, Veterans’ Affairs and Social Affairs, who welcomed the participants and emphasized the efforts of the Ministry to facilitate the position of women in Serbia. Danijela Maletić spoke about the importance of social entrepreneurship, and Joland Korora spoke about the efforts made by NURDOR to make life easier for families with children with cancer.
Different topics necessary for starting and successful business development were discussed, so those present had the opportunity to hear how to get from idea to business, which was presented by Nikolina Josipović, owner of Paradox Consulting, Milana Ceković, owner of Agile Management and Dina Vukičević from Plant my Tree Association. How to finance your business idea, presented the Director of the Guarantee Fund of AP Vojvodina Djordje Rakovic, Branislav Bandic from the Secretariat for Economy and Tourism, as well as Bojana Orsic, Director of the Entrepreneurship – Development Center Erdut. As the representative of the Lead Partner she mentioned the importance of cross – border cooperation in the regard of regional development.
Dragiša Ristovski from D.R. Gilbert Center, spoke very inspiringly about how marketing is important as a sales tool. About the importance of facial expressions and body language in successful business negotiations, spoke Darko Todorović, Director of the Partner team center for microexpression. Dubravka Bjekić, owner of PaySpot, well-known food blogger Katica Vujanović – Baka Kaja, spoke about the need for digitalization of business and the importance of promotion on social networks, and Lidija Arsenin, owner of Content Studio, was especially inspiring with the story of social networks promotion. Finally, Vukasin Bajic, director of Vitalon, Maja Samokovlija from Gentle Day and Dr. Mirjana Zivkovic Sulovic presented how to preserve our health.
Besides presentations and speeches, very important part of the Conference were B2B meetings, where all present women entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs were actively involved, and had the opportunity to present and promote their businesses.
