Balkan Residency Proposal

I think is that when you work together you create lasting connections. My impression is that some of the people from the Balkan countries are close because they spent some time together working on the same project.

I think that this is something worth pursuing.

Reasons:

• Most of the communities at the Bucharest meeting said that they are small, and that they lack people to do different stuff. Somewhere we have a group of coders and no designers, or no one willing to do a presentation in front of a crowd. But every community has some useful qualities.

If we can use these qualities across the communities than maybe the communities and their activity will grow.

Proposed solution:

• Create a short-term Balkans residency program.

How it will work:

• A Balkan community working on a project can ask for a member of another Balkan community to join them for a short period (7-10 days) to work on the project and use her/his skills to attract people that would continue their work.

Example:

• If Croatia needs a designer, and Albania has one, than the person from Albania can go there for a short visit, make designs, create template, share his skills (IMHO, a person form a given trade can more easily attract people from the same trade - designers go with designers, coders go with coders).

Measurable:

• The residency will have measurable results because it will be easily tracked for the purpose of the host community projects.

Spillovers:

• Also, all (most?) Balkan countries have hackerspaces, so meeting room is kind of solved. Even more, maybe those places can turn into or share into Mozilla spaces over time.