FROM TRASH HERO TO CREATIVE HEROINES AND BACK

What InterVenture people do when they are not at work?

InterVenture is a house full of diversities. We have colleagues who write books and poetry, teach kids robotics, have their own music label. They are into winemaking, photography, ecology activism. We have Trash Hero and a Nani Zani heroine. How to be successful in your daily job and still have the time, energy and creativity for doing totally different things, so delicate and unique? We asked them about their unsual hobbies, and here are some of them.

Trash heroes

At InterVenture we cherish green initiatives. A lot. That’s why we were enchanted with our new colleague, Boris Nikolic. He is an iOS developer at Urban Connect, but also a local Trash Hero Beograd co-founder. As part of a global volunteering platform for encouraging people to take care of the plastic waste locally, Boris initiated numerous cleaning projects in Belgrade and Serbia as well, collecting more than 23 tons of waste! (Recently we cleaned Zvezdara forest as well). On top of that, Boris is a transcendental meditation teacher! Multitalented person with special skill of time management. 🙂

Pen hero

When it comes to the good time management and another unusual hobby, we can’t skip Pavle Pesic, iOS Engineer at Redbox. Pavle is also a writer, board game creator, writing a tech blog and developing his own app in free time. He compares writing with programming, seeing it both as a creative process. The second book is in progress and Pavle told us that he usually writes on Wednesday, from 2 to 4 hours, which can be enough for him to finish a chapter. The first novel was composed of 12 intertwined love stories and the second one will be a thriller. His blog posts are mostly on tech topics and you can read them here.

Creative heroine

Creative heroine of a special kind under InterVenture roof is most definitely our Community Manager, Tamara Zidar. Tamara has a special eye for photography, playful writing style, crazy hobbies and 3 sons. She founded Keva.rs blog for parents, Putospektiva – travel community for sharing stories and experiences, Nani Zani special necklaces for mommies and a unique toy for babies. Communicator, content creator, community builder. Have an idea how to team up with the IV community? Let her know. 

Roboheroes and teachers

Great visionaries and movers are Slavisa Avramovic (Java Lead Engineer at Escriba) and Predrag Maric (Lead Backed Engineer at Flaschenpost) who managed to create and start running Digi Kids – programming & robotics school for kids. They said it was a “hobby gone wild”. Searching for a creative way to spend time with their kids they developed a whole program for children of different ages to help them develop curiosity and creativity using technology. Every Saturday, InterVenture office space becomes a floor for learning, running, creating, where kids from employees have the opportunity to attend Digi Kids lessons.

Cartoonish heroine

Beside being a QA Engineer at Twint, Tijana Stikic accidentally discovered her new hobby! 

She started making personalized birthday cards. You tell her the story, detail, fun fact and a few days later, you’ll get a unique present. Tijana combines story information with visual elements creating beautiful collages. The process can last a week or so, even though she always sees a space for improvement, but hey, the card needs to be delivered eventually.  

Music hero

Among InterVenture people we also have a passionate music lover and a founder of a record label and event organizer Glitch Records. Our colleague, Pavle Eftimovski, Senior Software Engineer at Renovero has been active in the music industry since 2014  and in 2019  together with a friend he has started Glitch Records. It was their way to contribute to the local music scene and give support to the local artists to focus more on the creative process. Pavle shared with us Glitch Sessions they made last summer. Hope you’ll enjoy it. 

While leaving you with beautiful sounds to continue your day with, we can’t be more happy that we managed to gather all those wonderful people, so similar and so different, giving their personal touch to the IV team spirit. That’s why we love working with all of them, but also to support their hobbies, initiative and ideas, creating a workplace for growing in all, personal and professional directions. And if someone asks is it possible to create single team culture within virtual teams, esspecially today, we can proudly say “You bet it is!”.