The festival that brought changes to Lithuania, thanks to which the legend about the country spread throughout the world

Almost two decades ago, the event was introduced to Lithuania by its founder, Arnoldas Rogoznyj. According to S. Meškauskaitė-Stepšienė, at the beginning it got the name of the bloggers’ conference, which only a small group of people knew then. She did not join the team right away, but everything was still in its infancy, when the first steps of the festival began in the company of friends.

“I had a friend who was a friend of the founder, Arnold, and that’s just how I came. Everything was built around friends – Arnold gathered his people, his friends, like-minded people, and did not even “LOGIN”, but the first blogger conference. Those friends brought other friends, and I was already the second generation of friends who came,” she laughs.

All these friends had one thought in mind – how to turn Lithuania into a country of innovation? How do we tell the world that we are ready to move forward?

“Let’s remember that the Internet was not yet so popular, everything was not yet available. We invited local and foreign media, organized interviews, held many press conferences. Communication was my strong point, so I always worked on this part. It was necessary to figure out how to give journalists bread, something to write about, to create knowledge, because information was not so easily available. It was also necessary to think about how to invite speakers. It sounds funny now, because you can just meet any presenter during a remote interview, but it wasn’t like that back then.

Let’s not forget, at that time there was also very bad communication, even then “flyLAL” was operating, which was followed by bankruptcies, crises prevailed in the country, in other words, we could neither leave nor come to us, so our event was like a breath of fresh air for anyone. In general, there were no such events in the Lithuanian market – it was really something new and unique”, she notes.

The long-time head of the conference remembers that then Lithuania tried with all its might to reach out to the Western countries, from which it took examples and to which it emulated. According to the interlocutor, friendly countries then extended a helping hand in the same way they do to Ukraine today: “We were a post-Soviet country and all other countries saw us as victims and wanted to help us. This is how we are helping Ukraine now, and I believe we will help Ukraine even more in the future when it wins the war.”

This is what helped the innovation festival to develop as well – A. Rogoznyj’s team told the world: by coming to Lithuania, you will help take bigger steps and inspire people, you will inspire change.

“We have really heard a lot of stories about how many things this festival has created. Our unicorns also said that last year on the stage of the festival, that if it wasn’t for this conference, we probably wouldn’t even exist, because we came up with the idea here, we met our like-minded people here and we continued to develop it here. There was no such thing at that time networking, we didn’t even use that word. It was fascinating to me that people would go, not be afraid, ask questions, try to catch every speaker. There were no startups back then of pitchesbut they were able to test their ideas with the speakers.

There was a kind of rebirth here, a movement that happened and helped businesses grow. It’s like state support in a different form. We didn’t need the Restorative Seimas for this to happen, it was enough for people who organized an event that created changes. That’s how everything developed. It was a period where we were kind of in a complete hole and we were climbing all the time. And then, when a turning point occurred in Lithuania, when communication began to improve, the economic situation began to improve, the European Union began to bear fruit for us, we began to feel the change, for about eight years now we really feel the turning point, which happened not only in Lithuania, but also in the conference.

When you said – come to Lithuania and Vilnius, everyone asked: what is Lithuania? And then you went with that legend that we need help. It is no longer needed because society has changed – conference culture, participation in events, search and all other things are now a very organic part. All businesses, let’s not be afraid to say everyone, it doesn’t matter who you are – the medical sector, whether you make lasers or butter, everyone has their own market events where they participate, drive and people share their know-how namely in the format of events and conferences”, says S. Meškauskaitė-Stepšienė.

According to the long-time manager of the conference, 18 years ago there were no professional speakers either – in general, such a profession was not yet on the lists of possible future jobs. Now each speaker has his own price, it remains to invite the speaker and coordinate the details. Then I had to think about who could get on the stage and share their thoughts and experiences: “Now this is a profession – people quit their jobs and become just professional speakers.”

As she says, there have been a lot of changes that no longer surprise us, but one thing has definitely not changed – the conference still has a mission to change Lithuania and the world, to be a leading incubator of ideas.

“For where is our goodness?” We have 300 speakers. We have a lot of content and we can change – we don’t have to talk about computers, phones, robots anymore. We can now talk about emotional health, about aging, about what hurts people today. For example, this year we’re going to talk a lot about inclusion, because we can afford to raise topics that are very, very important in society, and we’re looking for inspiration for that.

In general, today we need to talk about the change of organizations, how they need to be sustainable, how they need to change internally, about people, how the Internet has made us distant, but at the same time brought us closer at some point, and everything else. These are completely different issues and topics than they were 18 years ago. And it’s the same with these topics – you have to communicate to the world and say that you are not a country of the ignorant,” she says.

The head of the conference, Tomas Stasiukevičius, says that when this festival came about, he was nine years old. However, he remembers that every year in the spring, when the conference took place, he would see various outdoor advertisements in the city that caught his attention. T. Stasiukevičius was most impressed by the advertisement he saw in his high school diploma while sitting in a taxi.

“I had no idea [kad dirbsiu konferencijos organizatorių komandoje – aut. past.]. If someone had said that to me while I was sitting in a taxi, my brain would have exploded and I would not have reached my destination, because I already realized at that time what a huge movement this is, what a big thing it is. Even then, it was very felt,” he says.

Although, in contrast to S. Meškauskaitė-Stepšienė, T. Stasiukevičius did not end up in the team of conference organizers thanks to the friends gathered by A. Rogoznyj, he says that he immediately felt that the community working here is different.

“I really think that fate very naturally somehow brought me here, the stars aligned, because my work here started at the beginning of 2019, in January, thanks to a complete coincidence – at that time I was just finishing my bachelor’s studies and looking for a job. I had received a couple of offers, but at the time, a student of mine, a good friend, just in our mutual student chat, which I never read because everyone posts all kinds of nonsense, sent a job offer that the founder was looking for a content assistant. I was very interested in this offer.

I remember writing to Arnold and we met. His energy was very good, some kind of chemistry happened, because we even involuntarily discussed work at the end of the conversation. I already knew then that I would definitely accept the offer. In the first years of my work, there was a lot of learning, I understood the spirit and soul of the festival, which is a unique event in every sense. If you have been here at least once, you know that there are none, maybe there are similar ones, but there is no other event that evokes such emotions. Although I can’t speak impartially, but on the other hand, he causes such positive emotions and he has a completely different soul. This is a live event and that’s when my reincarnation happened and my life split into pre-LOGIN and postlogical period,” he recalls.

Although T. Stasiukevičius joined the team after the festival had already changed a lot, he seconded S. Meškauskaitei-Stepšienei that the event still has an important mission, but, just like it was back then, it is just as much about friends and communities. In other words, the human connection that is created here is still one of the core values ​​of the event.