Vesna Charknajev, director of PC Press, a media and publishing house that publishes the most influential IT magazine in Serbia and the region, was our guest.
When you go on a professional or private visit to someone who is one of the biggest authorities in a branch, you will probably have at least a little trepidation, ie. only those who lie well will not have it. From the moment the interview was arranged with Vesnom Charknaev, there was some trepidation, but the kind that athletes call positive.
PC Press is, literally, the "cradle of civilization" - of course, the IT civilization, the media civilization, since the time of the former Yugoslavia. More than 30 years. And Vesna is a person, a professional, who has been at the helm of this great organization for 21 years. Although ladies don't like to talk about age, we can't help but mention it!
Vesna Charknaev, exclusively for the portal Recipes and Cookbook online, professionally and privately...
PC Press has existed for more than twenty years as the publisher of the most influential IT magazine in Serbia and the region. How do you assess and evaluate this rather long period of existence and survival on this market?
PC Press has been around since April 1995, when the first issue came out, however, the history of what we do dates back to the early 80s. Then it is within the magazine Computers, today's team PC Press: Dejan Ristanović, Zoran Životić, Jovan Regasek and several other collaborators, started the magazine Computers in your home, from which a serious magazine was born, in the former Yugoslavia, which very quickly gained a great reputation and was the most important source of information for all those for whom IT was a choice and a professional commitment.
By 1995, Computers existed within the publishing house BIGZ, but we all know how unpleasant that decade was in our country and then we decided that, in 1995, we would continue to do the same thing only independently, under the name PC Press.
PC Press is the first private computer magazine, then in Yugoslavia, now in Serbia, which has a tradition of 21 years, to which should be added those ten or twelve years under the name Computers.
I can say with certainty that the team of people, headed by: Dejan Ristanović, Zoran Životić, who, unfortunately, left us too early last year, Voja Gašić, another Voja - Antonić, is very important for the history of development computers in Serbia. Together with the academic community, and certain state bodies headed by Nikola Marković, we realized that the information society is something that should be dealt with. We all built an IT story together and got to today, to this moment, when the world looks completely different than when we started. And what it will look like in the next 10 years, it seems to me, no one is able to forecast anymore.
Apart from publishing, you are also very active in the organization of IT conferences. You stood out on the IT market with BizIT, a conference that is not vendor-oriented, but rather a project and process themed gathering. What are your experiences so far, after the two held BizIT conferences?
BizIT is our business conference, which we will hold in November this year for the third time, in Club of MPs, November 2 and 3, under the slogan: Business transformation.
We are in an unusual moment, in which models and ways of functioning are completely changing. The entire business environment is changing so strongly and fundamentally that it is very difficult to keep up. At the moment, these changes mainly concern business digitization and the transition to the cloud. Of course, all services will never be in the cloud, that's not realistic, but everything important and important for each of us, whether we are individual IT users or use it for business purposes, everything we know and everything we have, I think to data, whether business or personal - will be in the cloud.
Conferences BizIT this year, it will have four thematic units, packed in a logical sequence, during two working days. Apart from the main topics: infrastructure, connectivity, networking, collaboration of systems and solutions, business solutions, security, telecommunications - which will experience extremely big changes in the coming period, there will be many other interesting ones.
We will pay a lot of attention to the transformation of the media, because we think that in the next two years there will be fundamental changes in that area. First of all, I mean television, but also print and media. We will talk about all this in detail on BizIT-u.
A special emphasis will be, as we do in every issue of the magazine, on education. This is the key to the development of the IT sector in Serbia, because without good personnel we cannot progress or keep up with the world. We witness and every day we face essential problems: there are not enough personnel, they are not well trained, they are not qualified for the jobs that await them. The education they receive in accredited educational institutions is often of little use in practice.
Except BizIT-a, which we are successfully preparing for the third time, PC Press has, in its earlier history, already organized several important thematic events. These were internet seminars. The first internet seminar in Serbia, which explained to the visitors what the internet is in general and hinted at how much it will change our lives, was held on Kopaonik, back in 1996. And in 2001, when we as a country came to a situation where we were thinking about legalizing software, PC Press was the first media and the first company to understand the importance of this and we immediately reacted and created a great seminar on software legalization. With this, we supported software producers on their first step of software legalization in this area.
Perhaps we should mention your activities regarding the nomination and selection of the best websites in Serbia, which last even longer than, say, BizIT?
Every year in February, within Web TOP 50, which is no longer called that anymore TOP 50 - the best online things, we announce the best online things in Serbia, and this year was the 19th time we did it. We started in 1996, when there were only a few hundred websites in Serbia. We tried to point out the best ones and to motivate the internet community that way. Simply, to encourage people to create websites for their businesses and their companies.
We very actively follow events on the domestic web, i.e. on the domestic Internet. We work closely with RNDIS, the National Internet Domain Registry of Serbia, which regulates this area in our country. We think that the Internet community in Serbia is at a high level and I would not say that we are lagging behind the world in any respect.
Let's just follow up on one of the topics of the upcoming BizIT, which is the digital transformation of business. I'm primarily referring to the digital transformation of PC Press as a medium. What are your plans, where do you see PC Press going in the future and how do you respond to those challenges?
The digital transformation of the entire business is already underway. We are already in digital transformation. We may not be aware of it yet, but everything will be on the web, everything will be in the cloud, everything will be online. Media is the segment that will change the most in the future. When it comes to print editions, the future of publishing, as well as books in general, is absolutely on the Internet.
Digital magazines have existed in the world for several years and they are slowly but surely taking precedence over printed editions. Of course, digital "printing" (it's a bit of a strange term) first came to life in America, since that large expanse needs to be covered with a printed edition, and that was always a problem for them. Press distribution in America was never as simple as in Europe, because Europe had a well-developed sales network. It is still there today. That was the main reason why digital magazines took off from America, as well as everything else related to IT. And they are spreading uncontrollably.
PC Press recognized this and two years ago we launched our electronic edition. For someone to read electronic (digital) PC Press, should go to Google Play or App Store and there look for an app called, of course, PC Press. After downloading the application, one part of the content is available for reading immediately, and if the reader wants to follow the current issues and events, he should buy that electronic issue or subscribe to electronic editions, the same as he subscribes to printed ones. That product has its own price, which is, of course, lower than for the printed edition, i.e. magazine on the newsstand. There is a certain amount of content that can be read for free. I suggest that everyone check out the app and see how magazines will look in the future.
Which of the digital editions is the most popular, i.e. which digital edition do readers subscribe to the most?
PC Press has, according to its content, long ago decided to be intended for business users. We are read by people for whom IT is a business commitment, a source of income, and what supports their families. In this sense, we have a constant readership that is slowly growing, but there are no explosive jumps, as it would be in some "light" press where some "bombastic" topic could cause a significant shift in readership and increase sales. We don't have that here. We are a serious newspaper, we write about serious topics and address serious people. When things are set up like that, then continuity and slight growth, which we have when it comes to the electronic edition, is important.
The electronic edition is, at the moment, to a large extent a copy of the printed edition, with the fact that it also brings multimedia content, which is not possible in the printed edition. The electronic edition is richer in additional multimedia content.
Until we get to the point where people recognize what is paid for and what is free, and until they see the difference between what is available for free and what requires some kind of monetization, it will take some time. So we still have more readers of the printed edition than the digital one, but we are not giving up on the digital one, because we are completely clear about where the world is going and what will happen in a few years, which is a relatively short time.
If you had the opportunity, either personally or as a company, to start dealing with something in the food segment, what would it be?
Now I'm going to surprise you, that's why I agreed to this interview. My other job is farming.
Two years ago, my family, headed by my eldest son, decided to engage in agriculture and we planted a blueberry plantation in the vicinity of Kragujevac. This year we had another growing season. The crop was very small, modest, which is expected for that stage of plant development, and from next year we could be serious producers of this great fruit.
If you ask me why we decided to get into any food business, it's because our impression is that the future will only be IT and food. Nothing else.
Cars, houses, roads will be built by robots. We will be driven by robots. The planes will be piloted by robots.
Of course, IT will also be present in food production.
What is your favorite food, favorite treat? With family or in a restaurant?
I am not a person who should talk about healthy food and everyone who knows me knows that. My problem is primarily an improper diet, not an unhealthy one. It is not a large amount or a food that should not be eaten. It is an improper diet. This means eating once or twice a day. To eat the first time only around noon, to eat the second time only when the daily duties are finished, and they can be finished at seven, eight or nine in the evening.
That's enough to understand how unhealthy we live - me and most of the people I know. And that, of course, is not good. That it should be changed - it should definitely be changed. What prevents us from doing so? Insufficient determination and insufficient awareness of how important it is. If we say that we don't have time or that we are distracted by obligations, worries about work, children, home - these are all excuses. We have absolutely no idea how significant it is. We will become aware, all of us who live improperly, one day when it starts seriously bothering us. I just hope I become aware before then.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how we eat. I am very unhappy to notice that my children are also eating very irregularly. I can still influence myself, but I can't influence them. Unfortunately, that is a fact. We are under the pressure of "fast food" that we buy in bakeries, kiosks, it is simple for everyone, the fastest... We have all succumbed to that and it is not good for anything! We should change that, if we can.
What do I like the most? Mediterranean cuisine, everything that comes from the sea, but I would still single out fish as something I prefer to eat. I mostly eat it in restaurants, considering that I'm not exactly a specialist who knows how to prepare it well at home. If I go to a restaurant, I usually choose a fish dish, and there are very good ones in Belgrade. Yes, they are uncomfortably expensive and you rarely go there, but when you want real pleasure, there is a way to find a place where it can be experienced.
At home, I recently discovered a device called an oven. It seems that I finally chose a good stove, which has an excellent oven and that I bought good dishes. Everything that I used to cook from above - on the stovetop, I cook more and more in the oven. Because modern ovens and cookware allow almost everything to be done in the oven. Apart from soup, I don't cook anything on the stove anymore. And that's great! Not only is it tasty, not only is it healthier, because less oil is used, but it's great because you put it in the oven, turn it on to a certain temperature and you're done. Let's say, yesterday I made something that would be called bećar stew, but - in the oven. And it turned out great!
From sweets? Yes, unfortunately, I love sweets... My favorite is cheesecake and it's one of the few desserts that I can make really well. I admit that I am not a skilled housewife and the list of what I make is relatively short, but what I make - I do it well. But I'm not a person who researches, uses exotic spices, reaches for unusual recipes... No. I try to cook simple, tasty and, if at all possible, healthy. I pay attention to it as much as possible. I make cheesecake really well. It is excellent, although I make it without mascarpone cheese, which is too expensive for me, but there are enough other ingredients that can be substituted. And if the topping is made from blueberries, even from local ones that are organic, then that's the real deal.
One last question, actually this is information I heard last night from a mutual friend: were you the owner of an exclusive fish shop?
It was not an exclusive fish market. It was an attempt, during the period when the family, that is, my husband was thinking about what he would do and made an experiment, which did not make us famous. It was a small fish market that sold expensive fish, in a place where there were no buyers for such goods. As a joke, I like to say that, apart from me, no one shopped at that fish store. We gave up on that and here we are now in the open field, growing blueberries and we are very happy about it!
Thank you very much for your time! We'll try to keep up with what PC Press is doing and promote the quality digital and online content you create!
Belgrade, July 2016.
Interview led by: Miodrag Ilić
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