Can you imagine seeing more than 350 cheerful faces gathered on a Saturday morning in one place for one particular reason?
Well, now we sure can!
On our way to attend the first WITCON Tech Conference in Hotel Marriott on May 20th 2023, we weren’t even aware that we would be part of such a monumental event for the IT industry in North Macedonia.
Here, we would like to share what was happening during the entire event.
WITCON officially started with Monika Rizovska Tanevska’s welcoming words (the Ambassador to Women in Tech Macedonia).
Following that, Maja Gogoska, representing our gold sponsor Halk Bank, presented their program for Women Entrepreneurs.
Then Nina Angelovska took the stage opening the first lightning talk on the 8Ps of Entrepreneurship.
Next, Marija Bogdanova, Keti Mitrovska and Kalina Trajanovska discussed on the topic The Heroine’s Journey and Aleksandra Sholdova, the Programs Director at WIT Macedonia, moderated the discussion.
We have also heard various wide-ranging and extremely entertaining lighting talks from Nikica Mojsoska Blazevski (Macedonia 2025’s ‘STEM it like a girl), Olgica Strezovska and Iskra Ristoska (How to build better products by improving your product discovery), Teuta Sahatgija, the Ambassador to Women in Tech Kosovo (Closing the gender gap in AI: Challenges and Opportunities for Women) and Stojancho Tudjarski (Al is your tool, not your rival).
What’s more, Ivo Paunovski, Sanja Pavlova and Simona Strizlovksa opened the second panel discussion on Cyber Security: More Than a Checkbox, which was moderated by Eva Georgieva.
After all this fresh and valuable information, everyone was ready to take a little lunch break which was organised by the Hotel Marriott. Additionally, the visitors could enjoy the exciting 3D videos of Macedonia’s most famous tourist attractions with the VR set provided by the Increasing Market Employability – IME in cooperation with the Tourism Promotion and Support Agency as well as the robot exhibit from the young enthusiast Dimitar Bezhanovski.
The second half of the conference carried on with more technology-oriented lightning talks such as The Challenges and Benefits of Modernizing Legacy Enterprise Applications by Dimitar Boshevski and How to Create Automation Framework in 20 min by Martin Andovski.
Tomorrow’s Web Today: A Front-End Developers Guide was the third panel discussion by Mitko Kochovski and Aneta Stankovska moderated by Darko Bozhinovski.
What followed was Eleonora Gigoska Milenkovska’s talk on Agile Methodologies in Electric Vehicles Projects/Industry.
Then, Angela Ivanovska discussed about Data Engineering Trends and Emilija Talevska Stojkovski brought us into the topic How to Have The Slowest Rails App.
Finally, Marijana Ilovska Zlatanovski, who is the Partnership Manager at WIT Macedonia, had the final word before the Networking Party.
Here, everyone could taste some nice wine from BylaZora as well as other beverages from Pivara Skopje, and to share their impressions and ideas and connect with like-minded individuals too.
Nothing of this could have happened if it wasn’t for Marija Iliovska Zlatanovski, Dina Damjanovikj, Monika Rizovska Tanevska and Aleksandra Sholdova.
These four women had one vision, one goal as well as strength to assemble experts from the IT industry to share their insights and experience, organize sponsorships, bring people with great innovation in IT, gather volunteers, create opportunities to meet new people and a lot more in two months’ time. This shows how much women can do in such a short time when being completely dedicated to something they enjoy in and believe it will be valuable for the entire IT community.
We are beyond grateful to all our sponsors including our Gold sponsor Halk Bank, our Silver Sponsors A1 Makedonija, Metergram, CodeVix, Damilah, Silce, ⋮IWConnect and our Bronze sponsors Prospective Media Services, Melon, part of Kin+Carta and of course to our supporters, all the speakers mentioned before, volunteers Mihaela Cacanovska, Silvija Gelevski, Simona Gjosheva, Maja Spasovska, Bojana Tomashevska, Angela Burneska, Eleonora Moneva, Sandra Kostova, Rosana Stamenkova Jankov, Slavica Petrushevska, Elena Kostoska, Ivana Nikoloska, Marija Poprizova, Dafina Andonova, Ana Palchevska, Loreta Todorovska and attendees.
We can proudly confirm that this was one of the biggest and most successful conferences that Women in Tech Macedonia Crew has ever organised.
They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some to prove the saying!
In addition, here are some feedbacks:
See you next year – even bigger even better!
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