What Does It Take to Bring the Right People Into the Same Room — and Make Them Speak Honestly?
Transparency is the starting point. When inviting people to take part in discussions of consequence, you must be open about your intentions — what you hope to achieve and why their presence matters. This clarity builds trust, and trust allows honesty to flourish. It also matters to make the conversation itself worthwhile. The people you want around the table are often among the busiest, and they will engage only if the topic and the approach promise something meaningful — not just for them, but for the international community at large. Finally, it is essential to engage with them well before the event, to make them feel that their contribution genuinely shapes the discussion.
What’s One Rule You’ve Had to Break to Make Your Event Truly Meaningful?
There are certain conventions every organiser tends to follow because they exist for good reason. Yet, to stand out and to make an event truly meaningful, you must innovate. The Bled Strategic Forum has always sought to do that — and one element that truly distinguishes us is our effort to weave art and culture into high-level geopolitical dialogue. Through art, you can move participants on a deeper, emotional level and prepare them to absorb complex debates with an open mind. It sets the tone for serious, sometimes difficult conversations, but it also reminds us that diplomacy is as much about human connection as it is about policy.
How Do You Balance Neutrality With the Urge to Drive Change?
Complete neutrality is, in truth, impossible. Of course, we aim to remain impartial, but every forum has its foundations — a set of values and a mission statement that guides its work. The Bled Strategic Forum is built on four pillars: Global Europe, technological transformation, climate change and the future of the global community.
Within these, we seek to encourage ideas and solutions that move things forward. Our role is not to dictate direction, but to create a space where diverse perspectives meet, challenge each other and, ultimately, shape progress.
What Moment Made You Realise That Convening Is Leadership?
It happens when discussions at the Forum produce ideas that begin to resonate far beyond Bled. A few years ago, we hosted a debate on water security — one of Slovenia’s foreign policy priorities. The conversation led to a BSF Declaration on Water Security, which was later taken up by the Netherlands and Tajikistan, then co-chairs of preparations for the UN Water Summit. The issue travelled from Bled to New York — a perfect example of how convening people and ideas can influence the global agenda. That, for me, is leadership in practice: turning dialogue into tangible outcomes.
If Dialogue Is Power, How Can Our Region Learn to Use It Better?
For far too long, our region has been trapped in a zero-sum mindset — a belief that one side must lose for another to gain. Too often, countries have spoken past one another instead of truly listening. This has created echo chambers that stifle understanding and make progress on crucial issues, from reconciliation to cooperation, painfully slow. The mission of forums such as Bled is to build trust and foster genuine understanding. Even when political leaders disagree, bringing them to the same table, where they at least listen and reflect, is a powerful first step. It is through such exchanges that the region can finally turn dialogue into an instrument of development, not division.
