The award giving ceremony of the 8th International “Festival of Mind” was held in the Great Hall of the Assembly of AP Vojvodina, on May 16, 2018. The project called "Festival of Mind" was developed under the auspices of the Provincial Secretariat for Education, Regulations, Administration and National Minorities - National Communities, in cooperation with Mensa - Serbia and the Faculty of Economics and Engineering Management in Novi Sad - FIMEK.

The 8th International “Festival of Mind” gathered around 1000 students from 6 European countries, namely, from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Italy and Slovakia, and the best of them were invited to the take part in the finals of the Festival, the slogan of which is: "Be creative - secure your future". Student finalists and their professors, as well as numerous guests- representatives from the region and officials from embassies attended the official announcement of the winners.

The ceremony was opened by Milan Kovačević, Deputy Provincial Secretary for Education, Regulations, Governance and National Minorities - National Communities, emphasizing the importance of promoting knowledge and young intelligent people who are the future of the world. "Considering the fact that this is an international Festival which gathers young people from 6 countries, who establish new friendships, share experiences and create new experiences and memories together, we can see that Serbia is an open country which follows the prevailing European and global trends regardless of the fact that we are not yet members of the European Union", said Mr. Kovačević. Professor Dragan Soleša Ph.D. addressed the audience on behalf of the Faculty of Economics and Engineering Management in Novi Sad, as the partner of the "Festival of Mind". Dr. Soleša congratulated all participants who made it all the way to the finals and wished them a lot of luck and success in their future work. He also stressed that they should all continue to invest in themselves as they are expected to be the future leaders of society. "Our motive in supporting this competition is to promote the best young people. The imperative of the time we live in is that we all devote ourselves to life-long learning and acquiring new knowledge, because that is the only way to survive in the 21st century, both as a society and as a civilization", said Dr. Dragan Soleša.

The main goal of the Festival of Mind is to give participants a chance to show how creative they are and how capable they are for logical thinking and conclusion. Knowledge gained in schools is a good starting point, but this knowledge should be creatively applied in practice. For outstanding results, it is necessary to have confidence in your own values, i.e. self-confidence and a creative way of thinking, based on bold new ideas, combined with a lot of imagination and ingenuity. The Festival of Mind encourages participants to get out of the box, think boldly and creatively, without self-censorship, and to believe in themselves and their creative abilities. This is largely achieved by the creative puzzle “DORIS” by author Zdravko Živković.

For the eight years since this Festival was organized for the first time, we have witnessed many extraordinary new ideas of students participating in the competition. This puzzle (DORIS) has proven that it encourages creativity and inventiveness. By participating in the competition, students become more aware of their abilities and values, gain more confidence in themselves and learn to free themselves from that biggest obstacle to creativity, i.e. self-censorship, fear of bad review, change etc. Thus, they become capable of creating new ideas, not only those extraordinary and revolutionary ones, but also those that are applied in everyday life, which bring us a better quality of life on a daily basis. In the competition, besides the puzzle that “unlocks the DNA of creativity”, students also tackle and solve business problems, said Zdravko Živković, the creator of the DORIS puzzle. The creativeness of participants was evaluated by a jury consisting of 10 distinguished national and international experts who eventually selected the winners of the Festival by public voting. Matej Fijačko won the highest number of votes and the first place, together with the flattering title of the Festival of Mind Champion for 2018. Matej is a first year student of the Secondary School for Design and Photography from Ljubljana (Slovenia). The second prize went to Marlena Riger, a student of the fourth grade of the Ursulinen Gymnasium from Graz (Austria), while Emilija Spasojević, a second-year student of the Technical School "Sava Munćan" from Bela Crkva (Serbia), won the third prize. Besides the prizes for the three best ranked finalists, 15 other participants were awarded honorable mention prizes.