Open Way 2015 in Novo Mesto, Slovenia

I was happy to be invited this year at Open Way in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. Open Way is a barcamp style event about everything open source, held in the small town of Novo Mesto in Slovenia, on the 24th of April. It was my first time in Slovenia and I must say: wow, it’s so freaking green.

Tourism aside,  the event was organized by the local Startup scene and Mozilla Slovenia with the aim to promote open source and open culture locally. Quite a few speakers from Croatia attended and I was humbled to receive “special treatment” as a non Slovenian speaker. Also, did I tell you how green Slovenia is?

The event was relatively small but quite intensive, which was quite refreshing, as most attendees knew about open source or were genuinely interested to learn more about it.
It was also the first time in months I gave a talk again, making me a bit nervous again, however I received highly positive feedback afterwards, which is the fuel motivating every speaker I suppose. As part of the Community Design team at Mozilla, I talked about overcoming your ego as a designer in an open source community.

While this is a quite exotic topic, the audience understood the importance of open design as a way to express the values of an open organization in visual ways. The experience to discuss such topic with likeminded was very rewarding. I am currently polishing the slides for future talk opportunities, so there will be more coming up regarding this.

I also had the chance to meet up with local Mozillians and check out their small but cozy community space. I must say, although I mostly grew up in Germany, the Balkan culture and hospitality is irreplaceable. Lots of beer and good food with fellow geeks at the open office made a perfect aftermath for the event too. The atmosphere was pretty inspiring, indeed.

Thanks to the local Mozilla community, especially to Nino Vranesic and Brian King for the great hospitality, I will definitely come back next year!
Check out the photos on Flickr. They are licensed under CC-BY-SA-NC