Belgrade Home Conference: Let’s Look Up, over History and into the Waters
Most of my attention and time in the Balkans I try to focus on integrating into the local and international environmental context. However, for the sake of hosting a small informal gathering (“квартирник” in Russian) with short presentations (with slides by beamer), discussions, and… food, I joined the organization of the second Belgrade Home Conference.
My intention here is to bring to the agenda not only educational content with networking in a safe space with a good company but also to raise topics and questions that are not easy to look into and to talk about, to spark discussions that uncover what we tend to put away from our comfort zone.
I’ll start with the program. It formed “spontaneously” as the trio of organisers invited active acquaintances with complete freedom to choose what they wanted to share and discuss here and now (slides and videos are in Russian):
- “What is the «blue humanities» and how does it affect all of us?” Polina Shubina (LinkedIn, thematic Instagram account) shared why humanity should pay more attention to water in all its forms, from rivers and oceans to glaciers, rain, vapour and water within living beings. The element of water has been familiar to her since childhood, and in 2016, she crossed the North Atlantic Ocean onboard a Viking longship. (video to be published).
- “How is history useful for understanding modern global politics” (using the example of the question “Why does the Global South behave the way it does?”) was discussed by military historian and host of the thematic Telegram channel Stalag Null — Sofya Shirogorova.
- “Lifehacks for maintaining friendships at a distance” with memes and other jokes and anecdotes, but useful notes, was systematically explored by Daria Platonova (LinkedIn) — a consultant on legal issues in IT, a master’s student at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade, and a co-organizer of the Amp.Camp 2023.
- “Don’t look up. How not to repeat the fate of characters from the eponymous film” by Andrey Mima. Introduces a variety of reasoning to proactively involve into the discussions on social and political issues besides one’s area of expertise, and challenges the common notion that it’s enough to just do your job and let other issues to the domain experts.
- Igor Pavlovic’s “Un-natural experiment. Spain and Yugoslavia” is a story about tricks of perception and how easy it is to deceive even active and educated listeners into a compelling narrative. He is a lifelong unofficial student of historical trivia, with many versions of this very presentation previously discussed in Barcelona’s vermuterias and Belgarde’s kafanas. (slides).
Format
In our Serbian version, it was a Saturday evening event with 5 presentations (if you haven’t counted already) of 15 minutes each, with several minutes for questions and subsequent free time for speakers, organizers, and guests to mingle in the kitchen with food and drinks brought by all participants.
We had a total of 18 people. Since we organized the event for friends and ourselves, finances were not involved, and a guest provided the beamer.
Origins and Background
The “home conference” (“домашняя конференция”) format originated about 10 years ago in St. Petersburg at the “Cubometer” (“Кубометр”) space of Olya Polyakova and Olya Isaeva (Nomad Train). It was a hybrid of international coliving and event venues (see more in the Village’s and Bumaga’a articles). Before co-founding Cubometr Olya Polyakova brought from Finland to Russia the ‘restaurant day’ format (where every person or a group of friends could open their kitchen and cook and serve guests for one day) together with Alexander Kim (Sputnik8’s founder) and Alexandra Kurysheva. The home conference format has been initiated by Cubometer residents Kseniya Morozova (Afisha) and Asya Senicheva (Bumaga Media).
The first home conference in Belgrade was organized by Anton Voskobovich, a technical manager and software engineer from St. Petersburg. Anton came to the Serbian capital in October 2022 and the same month gathered friends and friends of friends in his cozy Airbnb-rented apartment. It was a sort of adaptation to emigration. You can get an impression of the atmosphere of that gathering from Anton’s Instagram story:
Organizers of the second Belgrade Home Conference:
- Anton Voskobovich — who made the first Belgrade Home Conference,
- Psychologist Olga Shmonina (who offered her apartment with spacious rooms and a kitchen in Belgrade’s downtown as a new venue),
- And myself as Sergey Dmitriev — an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner in high-tech, education, and eco-friendly lifestyles in rural areas (my telegram channel is ‘Проземление — Prozemlenie — EnEarthment’).
Montenegrin Trail
At the first Belgrade Home Conference, among the guests was Andrei Afanasiev (a science popularizer and a partner in a venture fund for biotech). He was so impressed by the atmosphere and format that a couple of weeks later, while in Montenegro (where he relaunched a rural unconference format — yCamp in the mountains as the first Amp.camp), Andrey wanted to organize a similar home conference on the coast in Budva, gathering friends of friends. At that time, he couldn’t find an apartment or house, but thanks to UX researcher Alexander Fenin, the Adriatic College provided the venue. Thus, a “school conference” came about (there was even one schoolgirl).
The Adriatic’s team was pleased with the level of presentations (there were nine of them) and participants, so a month later in December 2022, they hosted a two-day CRAFT conference with a similar open call for talks led by Ekaterina Shmeleva. I spoke at both events about ‘Sustainability/Regeneration Grassroots in Montenegro. Opportunities for: Kids Education University Research Citizen Science’ at the school conference and about ‘From IT to Ecovillages. Personal Path’ at the CRAFT’s.
What’s Next
As organizers, we’ve seen that there’s demand. So now we’re thinking about how and with what lineup to continue.
For example, I don’t like going to big cities and I’m thinking about a Forest Conference near the Fruška Gora National Park not far from the second city of Serbia — Novi Sad. I have Serbian friends there with their forest school and gradually growing forest university (and yes, there’s also a sauna in those surroundings).
As well for me, it feels strange just to continue gatherings in Russian, missing local people and expats from all over the world. I also think about diversity in terms of age and cultural/professional background to not be stuck in a particular bubble of creative class. What if we save a few places for high-school students and have kids-friendly space?
I like the topic and professional/amateur balances in the program we had and I suppose it’s good to continue having useful and fun stuff and deeply serious existential things touched and elaborated beyond everyday small talks. Another thing that I see now, is that a home conference’s informality is a nurturing atmosphere to incubate topics and talks that could be later brought to wider audiences.
One another event format that I do in slow-mode preparation together with Varvara Koneva (teacher, interpreter, writer, environmental and human rights educator) and Timofey Chernov (PhD, soil scientist, ecologist, science popularizer) is ‘Ecology, Education, and Art Unconference’, in 2023 we presented it (text, slides) at SlovoNovo’s social accelerator at Lustica Bay in Montenegro. The idea is to map the realities and contexts of scientists, grassroots ecological initiatives, and environmental NGOs into the personal experiences of educators, artists, journalists, and media producers. We believe that such cross-disciplinary collaborations are crucial to address pressing environmental challenges.
Regarding other mainly international events in the Balkans where I was a participant, I have these notes:
- Politics is made in cities. Nature is out of focus by design. How to overcome it? Reflections on Terrestrial Forum 2023 in Western Serbia.
- Reflections on Tivat Tourism Think Tank 2022 — Regeneration for Montenegro and the Western Balkans. 2022 Montenegro.
- Unaware (Unconscious) Violence and Seeds of In-action. Deep Live Gathering 2022 in Montenegro.
- Reflections on Summer School on Environmental Activism and Climate Change. 2022 Novi Sad, Serbia
