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A Java connection to Macedonia

Posted by felipegaucho on September 24, 2006 at 11:47 PM PDT

Despite all marketing about Java communities, the world is big and sometimes the spotlights
loose some interesting groups. Last week I had the privilege to visit
Macedonia, a small country
on the Balkan peninsula. My destiny was Ohrid,
a city on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Ohrid.
If you know that game Age of Empires you will feel yourself a character of the game
walking through the narrowed alleys of Ohrid. The city is sorrounded by the Tsar Samuel's Fortress -
and from the top of this fortress you get a fantastic view of the lake and the city
down there. A good place to shot enemies two thousand years ago, and a nice place to test your
photo gadgets nowadays :)
Other interesting novelty about Macedonia is about its Java community - I confess
I had no much information about that before visiting Ohrid, so I decided to share with you
some hints about what is happening over there.

This trip opportunity happened when I started working for
Netcetera AG - a business group
established at Zurich with a brother office at
Skopje,
the capital of Macedonia. Despite using
a portable technology and all communication facilities of the Internet, these two offices are
located in very different countries, and the company promote this annual meetings to integrate
people - two days of a friendly cultural mix.

Macedonian Java

After some business presentations, I had the opportunity to talk with my new colleagues of Skopje,
and then the Macedonian working environment started getting unveiled for me. At first sight,
macedonian technicians are easy to identify: they are young, high skilled developers with a lot
of energy and dreams about pushing Macedonia to a higher level into Europe. Recent political and
social transformations provided freedom to macedonian people and the software technicians reflect
their beliefs about a better future. Technology at Macedonia is growing up and the market is
establishing its values and goals. Macedonian workforce is not strong labeled, and it is
common to find people skilled in several different technologies.

About Java, the keyword is outsourcing. Macedonians are first class Java developers, with profile
based on creativity. Salaries are a pending issue that appears sometimes in their discourse, but the
most strong feeling is about the desire to set Macedonia as a good option of business in the East Europe,
a Java provider based on the excellence of their technicians.

stvrdina.JPG

For some reason there is no JUG at Macedonia, and even asking dozen of macedonians about that, none of them could
give me an acceptable reason to that. Here a special requirement to macedonians: just create your JUG,
no excuses :)

That's all I know about Macedonia, it is not much but I returned from Ohrid with a very nice feeling
about that Java community, I believe we will start listening more and more about their Java. If you are
looking for business partners, or just thinking about a nice place to your next vacation, think about
Macedonia.

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