Launch of Macedonia SharePoint User Group and Balkan User Groups on Fire!

Very excited to say this last trip was extremely productive. Not only did we speak at MS Days Bulgaria and have an incredible #SharePint #ShareDinner with my new Bulgarian SharePoint friends, but with the superb help of Darko Milevski SharePoint MVP in Macedonia and the incredible community in Skopje Macedonia. Key people including Dejan Dimitrovski (MS DPE), Fitim Durmishi, Rusul Ibrahimi, and Ahmed Abdullai.

When we met Darko over email, we thought it was going to be great to meet up with some SharePoint people out of the .NET or SQL usergroups in Macedonia. He incredibly surpassed our most wild thoughts… with Macedonia SharePoint Conference when we showed up and over 100 people show up and over 150 people registered for the newly created SharePoint User Group. Fantastic!!

There’s a facebook page for the Macedonia SharePoint User Group. Definitely get involved. Read more about our travels in Macedonia and the mysterious gypsy city.

 

There are many great communities in the Balkans:

Croatia:
Toni Frankola SharePoint MVP in Croatia #CROSUG & the SharePoint User Group in Croatia – Hrvatska SharePoint Grupa. I hear there was an event coming up. I’d suggest pinging Toni.

Slovenia: Branka Slinkar and Slovenian SharePoint Users Group SloSPUG on Facebook. Don’t miss the upcoming Konferencia SharePoint dnevi – I was there last year with Toni, Michael, Paul, Zlatan, and it was great! Planning on 2012!

Bosnia & Herzegovina:
Dragan Panjkov – User Group leader SharePoint User Group 1sug.com in Bosnia and Herzegovina (9 months ago) Zlatan was one of the first speakers in Bosnia & Herz. I hear there is an upcoming SharePoint event.

Hungary: Agnes Molnar – SharePoint MVP Community lead in Hungary #HUNSUG @hunsug

Macedonia: Darko Milevski – SharePoint MVP Macedonia in Skopje #MKSUG Macedonia SharePoint User Group

Bulgaria: Radi & Tihomir – The ones who run the SharePoint User Group in Bulgaria are Radi SharePoint MVP and MCM and Tihomir from Microsoft. Facebook страницата ни
SUGBG в LinkedIn

Picture above of our SharePint/ SharePoint Pre MSDays Show Dinner below: Milen Dimov, Radi Atanassov, Tihomir Ignatov, Paul J. Swider, Ивайло Хинов and Rossen Zhivkov. (Yeah, Michael, Paul and myself are in there as well.) You can read more about my travels in Bulgaria

Albania & Kosovo: Betim Drenica
leads the MS Developer .NET technical community in Kosovo.
While there isn’t yet a full on SharePoint User Group in Kosovo, there is a great group of smart guys that we got together with in Pristina, Kosovo. You can read about our travels in Albania and Kosovo on my travel blog. Betim is well connected in Albania as well. He could likely line up technical folks in Tirana as well.

Am I missing anything? Let me know…

Check out the SharePoint Romania Experts that get together to talk SharePoint in Romania.