Events

As a speaker, moderator, workshop educator and judge, I’ve had the pleasure to take part in some really outstanding events from exclusive workshops to 1000+ conferences, as well as organize some of my own conferences and workshops.

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How To Organize An Educational Press Conference: Tele2 & Google Play

When Tele2 and Google decided to announce they were rolling out carrier billing for the Google Play store in Croatia, the two successful brands decided that insights would work better than a standard press conference. Which is why I was so humbled when Tele2 asked me to create a talk about the best premium apps in the Google Play store for their announcement.

Remember You’re Talking To Journalists

Contrary to what you might have learnt from Apple announcements, journalists don’t clap at press conferences because it’s not considered professional. You could have the best gadget in the world, but the journalist’s job is to stay objective, even if they are the world’s biggest technology lover.

A tough audience.

How To Include Education in Your Press Conference

If you want to the educational part of your announcement work like it did for Tele2 and Google:

  • Understand your audience and their challenges: The challenge for most journalists is how to cover stories better and more effectively. Most of the apps and use cases were examples of writing or productivity apps that could make my fellow journalist’s lives easier. if you ever wondered why so many journalists cover Apple, a big part if definitely that they write on Macs, making the company a personal interest;
  • Help them write a better story: While most of the journalists in the audience covered technology, some of them were more interested in business or fashion. Parts of the presentation included raw data on the usage of premium apps, as well as examples of premium apps in a specific category, to give them material to think about when writing their stories;
  • Have a presented that’s part of your audience: While I might be the last person to say that Tele2 was right in choosing the speaker, having a journalists talk to his colleagues about the challenges they all fact just gives you as a company more credibility.
  • Include In-jokes for colleagues: To lighten the mood for the more experienced members of the audience who might be skeptical of the format, have the speaker include a few sarcastic jokes about himself and the industry. Again, having a speaker that is a member of the audience is key!

The presentation and announcement were a success, in the end, generating buzz for Tele2’s launch and showing just how good a job Marina Bolanča‘s team at Abeceda komunikacije, the agency responsible, did for the project.

You can read more about the announcement on Netokracija (in Croatian).

Za kupovinu u Google Play trgovini više ne trebate karticu, samo Tele2 broj!

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How We Sent STEMI To CES in Las Vegas (At Idea Knockout 2016)

STEMI

Before founding the technology blog Netokracija, it was Bug magazine where I started my technology journalism career; writing about the best blog platforms in Croatia as well as why social networks would take over the world (wide web). Yes, it was that long ago, when MySpace wasn’t dead and Kevin Rose’s Digg was the darling of the tech world.

But why is all this important? Two reasons.

First of all, now you can understand why I was excited to judge the 3rd Idea Knockout startup competition in a row. As Bug’s executive editor and my friend Dragan Petric puts it: ‘Ivan is the one that asks the hard questions, which is why we have him in the judging panel! :)’

The second reason has to do with the competition, which sends the winner to CES in Las Vegas, one of the largest technology events in the world. As with journalism, you have to get breaks and support from your peers to succeed as a startup – and going to CES can be one of those breaks.

In the end, it was the STEM educational startup STEMI that came out on top, gathering the most points among all the teams.

 

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Message of the 320+ Developer Change Conference: Encourage Your Female Colleagues

Change konferencija u Zagrebu

Change konferencija u Zagrebu

With over 320 developers attending, the first Change conference to take place in Zagreb, was a huge success thanks to a focused technology agenda and interesting speakers such as Oracle’s Geertjan Wielenga and TVbeat’s Alan Pavičić.

Which is why I was more than happy to participate in the closing panel on how software is influencing society, alongside my friend, one of Croatia’s most  and Croatian Makers founder Nenad Bakić .

Joining us were KING ICT Java team lead and Rochester Institute of Technology professor Aleksander Radovan and Oracle’s developer advocate for open source projects Geertjan Wielenga.

Over 300 developer visited the Change conference!

Over 300 developer visited the Change conference!

Honestly, when I got the (high level) questions such as when super computers and big data will bring the 2nd cognitive revolution or a post-human era, I knew I had to do my research. Other topics that we tackled included:

  • What educational models can relate to the fast changing software landscape, a topic that Nenad started the conference in his opening talk;
  • What are the next industries that the business model shift that comes along with software will disrupt? Guess my pic – yep, it’s my own, beloved media industry that I believe will be completely reinvented in the next 5 years thanks to agile players such as Rafat Ali’s Skift as well as my own Netokracija, ‘The Techcrunch of the Balkans’.

Speaking of agile: Programme director and panel moderator Roko Roić wasn’t going to let us out easy and wanted us to dive deep into the central question in the panel’s title. Having in mind that Roko is the author of Croatia’s first book on the Agile methodology, moving fast and learning on our initial answers actually led to a pretty ‘agile’ discussion. Punny, I know! 😜

Nenad Bakić held the opening keynote.

Nenad Bakić held the opening keynote.

How Can We Get Encourage More Female Developers in Croatia

My personal favorite part of the discussion was about women in technology since Roko thought that recently celebrating Ada Lovelace Day was the perfect ’trigger’ to talk about the fact that women make up less than 30 percent of the technology industry! What we discussed was how we could attract more women into STEM and is positive discrimination the way.

Nenad took us back to middle school, arguing that based on both data as well as practical experience from Croatian Makers’ STEM education projects, girls were quite interested into learning about technology. At least a 3rd of all the kids attending Croatian Makers classes on building STEM robots were girls, proving that the problem doesn’t stem (ouch) from early childhood.

Aleksandar agreed, saying that the problem is more visible in university such as RIT, Algebra and the Polytechnic of Zagreb where he teaches Java. Women, unfortunately, didn’t make up nearly a 3rd or his students, showing that we need to encourage young girls that technology truly is an interesting and viable career choice.

change_panel_01

My own answer was preceded by a simple question: Why was a panel that tackled this topic as well as 100% of the speaker list made up entirely of men? Roko agreed, saying how difficult it was to find female speakers, which is why he wanted to include the question in the panel.

Netokracija's Ladies of New Business with more than 150 geekettes!

Netokracija’s Ladies of New Business with more than 150 geekettes! (Photo by Luka Travas)

Moving on, and based on comments and talks by the lovely ladies of Netokracija’s Ladies of New Business women in tech conference, I argued that a lot of women just weren’t sure of themselves to ask for a raise, or pitch to talk at a conference such as Change. It’s not that they weren’t truly ready, they just didn’t feel ‘100% sure’ that it was the right time or that they had enough experience. A comment from the audience, which Geertjan agree with, is that the technology industry and development aren’t the most friendly of environments for women.

While women are aware of all these issues, I argued (and will continue to do so) that it’s the job of us guys to also stand up, participate and encourage our female colleagues and friends in the industry to pounce on opportunities.

Just as Ada Lovelace did, as a mathematician and writer in the early 19th century, becoming the world’s first programmer.

P.S. I love the fact that alongside the custom craft edition of Zmajsko (that I ♥️) beer, Roko used a well known ‘agile’ technique to open them when we couldn’t find a bottle opener!

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SAP Forum 2016: Startups, Corporates and Awards For Netokracija

Being involved with both corporates and startups in Southeastern Europe, I had the pleasure of talking about how the two could work together as part of a panel at the SAP Forum 2016 in Zagreb, alongside experts from Podravka and Agrokor’s mStart.

What is the SAP Forum?

The SAP Forum which takes place annually in Zagreb and is one of the largest tech conferences in Croatia. For those not familiar with SAP, it’s a German multinational software company present in over 130 countries with almost 300,000 customers around the world.

You Need ‘Startup Types’

Along with Coworking Croatia’s founder Matija Raos, STEMI’s co-founder Pavao Pahljina, mStart’s innovation manager Marina Meštrović and Podravka’s Open Innovation manager Emir Džanić, I talked about how corporates such as the ones present at the SAP Forum could and should work with startups to improve the rate of innovation.

The conversation was moderated by my long-term colleague and friend Luka Sučić, currently manager of the Croatian coworking space Hub385 where our own Netokracija offices are headed. Luka’s experience with the question of startup-corporate cooperation stems from his work at Deutsche Telekom, including working as an investment manager at DT’s Hub:raum accelerator in Krakow.

 

Win For Netokracija: Mia Wins Journalistic Award

What made me smile most at SAP’s event was the moment we knew that Mia Biberović, Netokracija executive editor, won the yearly ‘Božo Težak’ award for journalistic excellence for her work on writing about technology in the previous year. Panel’s come and go, but having Mia’s work honored was truly the highlight of the SAP Forum 2016!

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Webiz Edukacije Zlatibor: Ecommerce’s Heights In The Serbian ‘Alps’

Webiz is probably the most consistently well-attended event around internet business in Serbia and we’ve been supporting it at Netokracija for years now. Which is why when Webiz’s Vladimir Kovač asked me to moderate the Ecommerce track as well as do a talk on the topic, I couldn’t say no. After all, only weeks had passed since Netokracija’s own OMGcommerce conference and I had a lot to say about what needed to change about ecommerce in Southeastern Europe.

What Does E-commerce Have To Do With The Serbian ‘Alps’?

Webiz Edukacije or ‘Webiz Education’ series is a – you guessed it – series of educational presentations that took place in Zlatibor, an important tourist area of Serbia, honestly, I’ve not heard about before. Not well known in Croatia which was made obvious by our car’s plates being the only non-Serbian ones, Zlatibor is actually known for its hiking trails and has a cool alpine climate. If you like hills, you’ll love Zlatibor, although keep in mind that the town is a couple of hours drive from either the Croatian border or Belgrade.

The module on E-commerce featured three speakers: TakoLakoShop’s Marko Ilić, Planeta Sport’s Zoran Bošković and myself. While Zoran Bošković talked about his company’s experience in switching from a regular retail to a multichannel approach in selling sport’s gear, Ilić defined the landscape of e-commerce in Serbia based on his vast experience. Ilić, for all intens purposes, is one of Serbia’s e-commerce experts, having established Serbia’s first ‘click and mortar’ web shop E-Dućan, while later launching the NonStopShop e-commerce brand for publishing giant RingierAxelSpringer.

It was down to me to give a regional perspective on what has changed in the regional e-commerce scene. Thankfully, the great sessions of OMGcommerce gave me lots of material, including: the move from pure players to enter the ‘offline’ retail space, launch of Agrokor’s Abrakadabra brand as an Amazon-like regional webshop as well as using drones in the delivery of goods. In the end, it gave a good overview for participants before both Marko and Zoran’s detailed talks, as well as a discussion with participants on what was most important in their shift to selling online.

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ENTG Launches Emily, An Innovative Visual Data Analysis System

Ida Pandur, Sven Marusic, Tomislav Tipurić and Nikola Dujmović comment Emily!
Ida Pandur, Sven Marusic, Tomislav Tipurić and Nikola Dujmović comment Emily!

Ida Pandur, Sven Marusic, Tomislav Tipurić and Nikola Dujmović comment Emily!

Croatian technology and digital marketing companies ENTG, Span and Infocumulus today revealed their innovative IoT solution, Emily, a smart system for data collection and analysis. Emily is a system that uses advanced image analysis and synthesizes obtained data in specific conclusions which allows you to plan a successful campaign and increase sales.

The exclusive presentation took place in Zagreb’s Hub385 innovation center, with over 50 participants from Croatia’s largest companies – and Ivan as the moderator and MC. ENTG chose Ivan to moderate because of his expertise with the topic and familiarity with a large number of the targeted audience.

As Ida Pandur – CEO and founder of ENTG, points out:

Ivan is a person who makes your event not just a well hosted one, but no matter how many people you have, when he takes the stage, he makes everyone feel at home and relaxed. That way, he manages to set up a right mood for information sharing and participation. You get well contextual jokes as a bonus.

Emily analyzes, learns and recognizes patterns in pictures, recognizes a person’s gender, age and emotional state: Their happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, concempt, disgust or neutral state. Emily can be used inside stores, for shop windows as well as digital signage. Read more about Emily in Croatian at Netokracija or visit their website at Emily.zone!

Emily in Zagreb