I grew up in the Split-3 neighborhood of Split, Croatia. To this day, this neighborhood is an inspiration to many architects for its design that encourages community interaction.

With plenty of pedestrian space, it was a pleasure to play with friends in a safe environment in our small "city within a city" and interact with the younger and older citizens. The MoMa recently held an exhibition mentioning this atypical architecture of Split-3.

My passion for computers started early - back in 1997, during the second grade of elementary school, I discovered the world of PC gaming. It all began with games like Red Alert, Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake, Half Life, and Counter Strike, which I played with my friends in PC playrooms. As a young kid, I was fascinated by the endless possibilities that technology offered, and I knew that I wanted to explore it further.

However, there was one major obstacle that stood in my way - my family's financial situation. My parents didn't have the means to buy me a computer right away, and the rapidly changing technology landscape made it challenging to keep up with the latest hardware and software. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and do my market research every couple of months, collecting price lists at various shops and building my dream configuration.

This process took me three long years, but it also encouraged the development of the entrepreneur in me. I learned how to be patient, persistent, and resourceful, and I knew that my hard work would eventually pay off.

In the fifth grade of elementary school, I finally got a computer. I will never forget that day! I walked into the store with my dad, and I knew exactly what I wanted. From that moment on, the computer became a part of my everyday life. While my elementary school peers played Counter Strike Deathmatch on public servers, I had a different goal in mind - I wanted to build an international gaming team.

So, I reached out to my virtual friends from Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, and we started playing together regularly. We communicated via IRC and TeamSpeak, and we spent countless hours strategizing, practicing, and competing. It wasn't easy to coordinate schedules and overcome language barriers, but we were determined to succeed.

Building an international gaming team in elementary school may seem like a small accomplishment, but it taught me valuable lessons that I still carry with me today.

I enrolled in the School of Graphics, where we learned to program and design websites. I had an excellent teacher and mentor with whom I used to stay to talk for hours after class. In 2006, at the end of my third year of high school, this teacher recommended me to a local IT company.

I ended up working for them as a front-end developer. During the summer, I worked from the office and during the school year remotely from home. In addition to that, together with a classmate who focused more on design, I started creating websites for various clients.

After I left the university, most of my generation still studied and socialized at the campus. I felt isolated and tried to find an event where I could meet colleagues from the tech industry and exchange experiences. Unfortunately, such a thing did not exist in Split. At this time, I learned of the OpenCoffee concept started in London by Saul Klein, one of the founders of Skype.

The goal of OpenCoffee is to meet people from the tech community face-to-face. This concept started appearing worldwide, so in 2008 I decided to launch it in Split in the form of the OpenCoffee meetup. From then until now, I have organized 136 OpenCoffee meetups and connected 1500 individuals. They were attended by tech leaders from the region who shared their knowledge and experience. So, throughout my twenties, I invested more than 100 Saturdays to build and connect the local community.