Felipe Gaucho's Blog: September 2006 Archive

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.

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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