I started my EVS project at the youth centre MCDD Patriot (Slovenske Konjice, Slovenia) the first of April 2008.

My tasks concerned mainly the following of the SamoReggaeStan music project.

The SamoReggaeStan project started in August 2006, with the first edition of the SamoReggaeStan festival in the old monastery of Zicka Kartuzjia, in the municipality of Slovenske Konjice.

The second edition of the festival took place on August 2007 on the mountain resort of Trije Kralji, whereas the realization of the third edition (planned for August 2008) was suspended few months before.

After the decision of suspending the upcoming edition of the festival, my project switched from the organization of the third edition of the festival to the elaboration of an all year long plan of activities and events aimed to keep a continuity between the last edition of the festival and the following one (which will take place on August 2009), to cultivate the relationship with festival's stakeholders (in particular festival's audience, sponsors and media), to organize different events promoted under the logo of the SamoReggaeStan project, to find new sponsors through a more elaborated fundraising campaign and to broader festival's partnerships and networks.

In order to reach those aims, I've outlined festival's identity and I've built around it several different features of the SamoReggaeStan project, which followed one after the other during

all the year elapsing from the last edition of the festival to the next one.

Those main features of the SamoReggaeStan project are:

• · SamoReggaeSnow festival, the winter edition of the SamoReggaeStan festival which will take place on March 2009 on the same beautiful location of the SamoReggaeStan festival, with the strategical partnership of the snowboard club, which will allow the SamoReggaeStan project to broader its audience toward new targets;
• · SamoReggaesound festival, the festival of only sound systems marketed as the son of the SamoReggaeStan festival, which will take place every two or three months in the municipality of Slovenske Konjice;
• · Reggae concerts and tours organized by the SamoReggaeStan team around Slovenia in order to exploit contacts with the music industry sector and to keep in touch with visitors from all Slovenian regions, not only Stajerska region;
• · The photo exhibition, which is travelling together with the reggae bands on tour with the aim of bringing the spirit of the festival around Slovenia;
• · Retro SamoReggaeStan, a series of projections of videos recorded at the SamoReggaeStan fstival organized in different venues around Slovenia with the support of local tv stations.

This campaign that I've ideated (which motto is 'Do you miss SamoReggaeStan?') has been very effective, because it allowed the SamoReggaeStan team to attract new targets of public and to start new relationships (or reinforce old ones) with useful stakeholders. This diversification of products has been also useful in order to show to the organizer of the festival (the youth centre MC Patriot) and to the festival team itself that there were cheaper solutions to get in touch with the audience than the very expensive  summer edition of the festival, and that –according to this reason- the drastic suspension of the project for reasons linked to the lack of financial funds would be a serious mistake.

At this point of the project, the SamoReggaeStan team is very satisfied because –even if the festival didn’t take place during the current year- part of promotional efforts made during past years have not been wasted thanks to the development of new –and less expensive- features of the project which allowed a constant promotion and an enlargement of the audience, both direct and indirect (through media). 

This outcome is even more significant considering that during the summer 2008 the Soca Riversplash festival (first reggae festival in Slovenia and only competitor of the SamoReggaeStan festival) went bankrupt, opening new rooms of competition for the next summer edition of the festival, competition which will be faced –from the SamoReggaeStan point of view- levering on what potential competitors won’t have: a past.

Yesterday I drop in Italy to drive Luisa to the airport in Trieste. She stops her EVS project 6 months before and she came back in Sardinia, so now I'm the only italian in the house. When one volunteer leaves, and the house (as the office) are a little bit more empty, and the slovenian wheater is so shitty, I feel so sad! :-(

But then I started cheer up thinking about what a great good bye party we had, organizing the slovenian tour for 1 italian dub band and 1 italian sound system, which came play here in the youth centre, they slept in our house and we really had good time all together!

The organization of the italian reggae night took me a lot of time, it has been my main task during the last month, together with the video of the SamoReggaesound festival, which I finished to edit right now and I hope I will upload on youtube soon (youtube is so slow!! uff).

The video of the festival is very cool, I edited it together with Antoine (last volunteer came from France) who was wishing to learn how to use the editing program 'cause he is involved in the environmental project of EVS volunteer from France of realizing a movie about waste management in Slovenske Konjice and in the surroundings.

We had some difficulties at the beginning because the material shooted was very few (less than 10 minutes, fuck!!), but we managed it very good and we put also many interviews to visitors of the festival and musicians (uff...it's so boring to put subtitles from slovene to english!! a very long work!!); I'm very proud of our video! And now I will take some days to spread it around, on facebook and on the myspace of the festival as well as sending it to all festival's friends!

last weekend 3 people left the house... it's very strange to be so few now, winter is coming and the atmosphere is always more boring... hopefully, I have a lot of work to do, so time flyes making flyers for the concers of this weekend and organizing the coming inna Slovenia of one italian band and one italian sound system. today I will go postering around, hopefully until Celje -'cause we still have to take back some speakers left there during Dubians' tour.

then some misunderstandings (...strange!) arose for the festival of snowboard and reggae, now I will think some possible strategies and write back to the guy who is working with me in this project...

but I trust in myself, after 7 months I sort of starting to understand the strange slovenian behaviours...

last week we finally had the famous tour of Dubians, a very good band from France. I caught them at 3 in the night in Celje, on my way back from Italy (rome sweet home!) to Slovenia. the band played here in Konjice on friday night, I was so tired that I went sleep after the tasty dinner that I cooked for them (tortillas! gnam!) and I was back in Patriot for the last part of the concert. anyway, eveybody said that they have been very good, I think it was the best concert ever in Patriot, for sure better than drunken slovenian band pretending to play an instrument and screaming all around or than boring rappers from konjice of which everybody has enough!!!!

I've been happy to meet this french band again, because they are also very good people, funny and very adaptable (they slept 2 days in our cold cold house without heating...).

during this week, I worked of the organization of a reggae party (which would be also Luisa's good bye party :-( puuuuu! ) for the 8th of november, which then magically became the 7th of november.. here in Patriot we will host one live band from Italy and one sound system from Italy, the same sound which played already in Konjice for the party on the 20th of June (and which made dance slovenian people!!! can you imagine it??). so I'm making a flyer to publish on facebook and myspace, I'm putting the event in some forums and blogs and I'm trying to collect all what we need (we still didn't find drums... someone has drums to borrow us for free??). luckily, I found a second gig for saturday night in a place near Ptuj, so the budget issue should be ok, and this time I hope I will not loose money for this music organization stuff...

ah! very important news! my ex-housemate Authman open a facebook group for evs in Slovenia, or who had been in Slovenia or who will come in Slovenia, so... if you know what does "ali lahko dobim original racun" mean.....join us!!!

after almost 2 months, this morning I decided to write something more on this evs blog, and I discovered that the upcoming volunteer from Uk (Liam) is already log in, so... WELCOME IN OUR WORLD!

As I wrote  on his blog, part of my evs project is the realization of videos of the life in our big and crowded house, which you can find on youtube or on our "evs in slovenia" group on facebook... enjoy!

today I was supposed to work on the 4th video of the house (that it's coming out very funny!), but the camera it's broken, and the video that we made on saturday (during our girls day in Zagreb!) is still on Luisa's camera which is in Maribor now, together with Luisa...

te pa nic (I hope this is the correct spelling..) 

of course during those 2 months that we didn't write anymore on this blog, lots of things happened in our house...

Authman left and a new volunteer arrived: his name is Antoine and he is from......let's guess.....LILLE!

I'm still working on reggae concerts in Patriot (drot next: 24th of October DUBIANS -from France- and 8th of Novembre DUBBi and BASSI GRADASSI -from Italy-) and now also on a reggae festival (SamoReggaeSnow) which will take place during the winter (february or march) together with a competition of snowboard...

I stopped teaching spanish, but I'm helping Luisa in italian classes (every wednesday from 5 pm to 6 pm)

and I'm managing so many myspaces & facebook groups for the festival to almost go crazy ;-)

...to je to...

Dear Diary,

last week most of my housemates got the password to open their blogs on this website, so now it’s possible to read about our crazy life in Slovenske Konjice from (almost) 11 different points of view! And –of course- it’s also possible to watch us on youtube! (…after 1 month of –let’s say- “technical” problems we are starting again to upload some videos of the house on the net…)

Last week I worked in promoting the Rock Otocec Festival – which took place during the weekend- spreading around the press release in Italian, together with some pictures.

I’ve also opened a myspace in order to improve the promotion for the events I’m organizing here in Konjice. The address of this website is: http://www.myspace.com/drot_events

Up to now, I’ve only uploaded some pictures and I’m using it also to get in touch with some sound systems I would like to invite playing for the next reggae party I’m working on – which will take place the 20th of July in the swimming pool of Slovenske Konjice!!!

Then I’m still working on the e2058 movie, even if I’m realizing that it’s so fucking difficult to involve the youngsters of Konjice in whatever activity (besides drinking alcohol, of course!) and I’m also helping Luisa in collecting and editing some pictures for our next photo exhibition, which will be about our workshops and activities on the 20th of June and it will inaugurate in few days.

But last week has been mainly Rock Otocec oriented - and here the story of the nightmare can start…

We arrived at the festival on Friday afternoon and we got V.I.P. tickets, which had been immediately re-named Voglio Immediatamente Partire tickets, which in Italian means “I want to go away immediately”. In fact, after just few hours of Rock Otocec, it started raining very hard and our tend –which had been set up without the second, waterproof, roof by the expert men of our group- was so full of water that we had to sleep somewhere else for two nights… and we went sleep on the little stage in the stands’ area, a location very exposed to bad (and cold!) weather, drunken people (and in Rock Otocec there are a lot!) and savage animals! Of course we didn’t have dry clothes, ‘cause the flood in the tend destroyed all our equipment, and we kept wearing the same stuff for two days!!! Fortunately we didn’t have problems with the most important thing we have on the brain during all day: the food! In fact, close to the muddy camping area, there was an hotel with a big breakfast self-service buffet (and a very clean and comfortable bathroom, by the way…). What else? Besides the bad news at the bus station (where we went to try to find a way to escape from that muddy nightmare and to come back home, in Konjice) we really like the trip to Novo Mesto on Saturday morning, the town in very pretty, even if all restaurants were closed L

Strictly speaking about the festival, I think that the Rock Otocec Festival is one of the worse festival on the world: the artistic program sucks (almost all bands are Slovene, or anyway from Balcan – while the point of a music festival must be the uniqueness of the combination of bands who share the same stage), but anyway people there don’t care about music, they only want to get drunken, have sex and roll in the mud like pigs…and they have courage to call it music festival!

Dear Diary, the trip in Bohjmi (still our arrival training) has been cancelled, so this week we remained in Konjice. I was quite pissed off, ‘cause I really wanted to go there, but in one way it has been better, so I had more time to work on the 20th of June – and also because on Monday a new volunteer arrived in our house, so we had time to starting to know each other, such as when we organized a walk around Konjice to show him the town and its mysterious inhabitants (the little crocodile, for example…).  

Given that I had 4 more days to work on the 20th of June, on Monday I started to realize stickers and posters for the free hugs team. It has been a very good idea, I’m sure young people will appreciate it! Still on Monday, I finished the second video of the house: now it’s Authman’s turn, he will put some effects and then upload it on youtube…FINALLY!

On Torek, after more than 1 month, we started again our Slovene classes!!! ‘cause it’s a lot of time that I didn’t practise the grammar, I found it very difficult…I guess now I have to enter in the mood again :-/

Then, exactly when we were going to eat something for lunch, Tadej call us back to clean the office: it was a very deep cleaning, we throw out a lot of not-working stuff and we moved some computers to organize better our working space (now we are 11 people working in the same room, and this can be very problematic sometimes…). During this deep cleaning activity, we also found lots of things we didn’t know to have, something which reveals itself very useful for the house and something that we used for our workshops in the park.  

After lunch, I came back to the office to finish the organization of the 20th of June: I’m trying to collecting what sound systems need and I start thinking about decoration, general settlement of the tend and so on…

On Wednesday we had a meeting with Barbara, she sounds quite mad with us, ‘cause we are lots of people creating lots of problems, such as the other night, when the waitress closed 4 of us inside the office and then –when they try to go out- police arrive because of the alarm system… then on Wednesday I went postering twice, I work on the 20th of June (by now, only two days far) and I helped Taissia cooking for her Estonian food night.

On Thursday we had a meeting for the 20th of June, to recall all our ideas and share the work of settling stands and stuff in the park. I’m so excited, it’s just one day left, I can’t wait!!!

After the meeting we all went to the blue room to make decorations for the park: me, Taissia and Elena worked on the poster for the free hugs (we made one for each stand), then I made two posters for the Reggae Sound Park and –with the help of Benoit and Anja- I cut old posters of the SamoReggaeStan Festival in order to use those decorations for the “hlod” and the stage.

At 7 pm, me, Luisa and Elena took part in a meeting for a project called “Up to You” – the frame that I would like to use to organize the young talent art festival; the meeting was in Slovene language, so I didn’t understand very well, but Laura promised to explain me everything next week…

After this, I had another meeting for the reggae in the park with Tadej, my boyfriend e another guy willing to help us: we talk about mixer, speakers and the rest of the equipment for the party in the park, and then we also talk about organizing 2 days of sound systems in august – at the old castle in Slovenske Konjice... J

…and suddenly… IT WAS FRIDAY! THE BIG DAY ARRIVED!!!

…it has been a super wonderful party, lots of people came, workshops were very interesting (I’ve been in the workshop of renovating clothes and I made a very trendy pair of jeans!), the free hugs activity was a real success and sound systems were super, we rolled music until midnight and lots of youngsters were dancing there, they also went to musicians to offer them something to drink and hug them!!! I think the Italian sound system was the best, they gave us lots of energy during the dance and then – when they came sleep at our place- we discovered they are also very cool people ;-)