Building the Salesforce Community in Macedonia
In the dawn of the third decade of the 21st century, the IT industry in Macedonia proves to be growing and blossoming faster than ever before, with more international opportunities arising to boost local careers and expertise. This proves to be especially true for cloud-based technologies that have been steadily adopted by the industry, professional services companies, and, most importantly, by the universities.
As the community group leader for Macedonia, it brings me amazing pride to say the Salesforce Community in Macedonia has shown an amazing growth to more than 300 members in the first year since its foundation. When you consider the size of Macedonia’s population is just above two million citizens, you can start to see the significance of this number and to get also a good indication about the future community enlargement potential. It is also helpful to understand the current state of the IT industry in Macedonia along with its expansion potential.
In the past months, the Salesforce Community organized a number of meetups for Admins and Developers, one of them a collaboration with WomenInTech Macedonia where we had Desanka Ichitrajkova telling her Success story: Journey to Salesforce, plus organized the first workshop in a series called “Salesforce 4 Students.” This was done under the umbrella of the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), the largest faculty of its kind in South-East Europe. The interest of the students has been beyond any initial expectations and driven primarily (as they tell us) by the fact that they have quickly seen the immense potential of the Salesforce platform. This is something that, personally, makes me so proud as a community leader; that, as a result of sharing expert knowledge on the Salesforce Platform and advocating its economical and social value, more members are joining the community.
I am especially grateful to FCSE for the strong sponsorship that they are providing to the community and personally to me as a community leader. Each year, 300+ freshmen are entering through the door of FCSE. Though the sponsorship, the opportunity to join the Salesforce Community is structurally exposed to them. This is proving of crucial importance to the students, as many — even after they graduate — are still struggling about how to build their career path, further expand their knowledge, and reach full potential. For the Salesforce Community, this means a unique opportunity to get actively engaged in supporting the new IT generations in discovering the potential of the Salesforce Platform and larger Salesforce economy.
In addition to FCSE, I am particularly thankful for my employer codeSTREETS, who stands behind me, providing full support to me in developing and building the Salesforce Community. codeSTREETS is the first and currently the only official Salesforce Partner in Macedonia. The leadership of codeSTREETS shares the vigorous views on the larger social values that the community is bringing to Macedonia, and as such, encourages all employees to be active in promoting the community.
The ambitions are to further grow the Salesforce Community Macedonia through meet-ups, additional types of events, blog sharing, and other social activities. We are striving to help students have access to valued international knowledge and career path opportunities.
