Maybe I’m biased when it comes to the Serbian community. I don’t know. I know these people for quite some time now and I know the amount of work they put into organizing events and eventually – annual WordCamp. WordCamp Belgrade 2016 is the second WordCamp in Belgrade and this year it was even bigger with more attendees and more talks in two tracks. Last year I was only attending but this year I prepared a talk.
It is always inspiring to see communities grow. While writing community article series for WordCamp Europe blog, I got a unique opportunity to peak into communities from all over Europe. Being one of the community organizers in Croatia, I am well aware of the amount of work you have to put into preparing meetups and eventually a WordCamp. And I have to say that the Serbian community did an amazing job this year.
The thing is that I witnessed more people than the year before and there were 2 tracks instead of one like last year. Having 2 tracks allowed for easier going schedule – although presentations were 25 minutes, there was usually at least 15 minute to the next one.
Speakers you shouldn’t miss on WordPress.tv
Luca Sartoni
Luca talked about Growth methodologies in a distributed environment. It was an interesting talk but I didn’t expect anything less from Luca. Automattic is a distributed company and Luca shared insights on working with a team that is spanned across couple timezones and can almost never work together.
On Contributor day he did a workshop on Public speaking.I can say that if you have time you should definitely attend Luca’s Public speaking workshop. Later on, Luca introduced us to communities and what it means to be a part of the Chapter with a lot of facts about organizing a meetup or a WordCamp.
Nevena Tomović
Nevena works as a Growth Enginner for Devana Technologies and ManageWP. She did a talk on How to grow your business by producing quality blog posts. Nevena’s talk was the one with most questions on which she answered without hassle. She also explained some rules on writing quality content and how to make some ground rules for visiting bloggers. Although this is her first talk on WordCamp, I predict her a bright future.
Ivana Ćirković
I didn’t know Ivana personally before WordCamp Belgrade. As with everything in this online world, later I realized I actually knew her work and respect that. Ivana did an introductory or even better – inspirational talk on how and why she decided to go with WordPress. Although it is not a kind of talk aimed for advanced developers, we should all remember that WordCamps are not only for advanced people – they are open for everyone and I look forward to seeing her talk on our WordPress Meetup Zagreb (Ivana, hope you’re coming in September).
Davor Altman
Davor’s story was an interesting one since only three years ago he worked in a call centre for an Italian company. Myself, being professionally in web business for more than 13 years find that extremely interesting since in those 3 years Davor showed us what can be done if you are persistent and have a desire to learn. His talk is titled From Call Centre to Automattic and you should watch it once it become available on WordPress.tv.
How WordPress changed the face of Croatian politics?
This is not the first time I held this talk but I’ve seen progress in me presenting it. Also, this time I was speaking to an audience that knows exactly what I’m talking about – the problems in both Croatia and Serbia are pretty much the same – with a high unemployment, economic recession, poverty and corruption. What is my final goal with this talk is not to give you solutions to problems but to show you that we as individuals can do a lot more if we’re open for change.
In 2003. WordPress revolutionized publishing and now, 13 years later, city of Rijeka in Croatia want to build a platform on top of WordPress, a platform that every other city and county in Croatia (and in region) can use free of charge. Since everything from design to HTML templates and WordPress theme will be available under GPL license, I can only tell that WordPress will help transparency as well. Coming from a country that still struggles with its democratic principles – it is a huge step forward.
If you were on this talk I would appreciate your feedback.
—
Thank you Belgrade and see you next year.
Intro photo by Ivan Gatić
Leave a Reply