As a guy in charge for our Zagreb office I’m thrilled and happy to share some news with you. First of them is our little anniversary – today marks exactly 2 months since we have been incorporated and established our first office here in Zagreb, Croatia.

We are the youngest FatDUX office worldwide and as such we see ourselves as an important part of the overall corporate success. We will embrace this blog as well as our Twitter accounts more actively in the future so for this first, introductory post, I’d like to introduce you to our office, our team.

But most importantly, I’d like to celebrate the fact that despite this global economic downturn that is hitting southern Europe and the New Europe countries especially hard – we are thriving, adopting to our client’s needs and, oh well, we are being innovative as much as we can.

Often it is being said that necessity is the mother of innovation – apart from that being just too often cited – there is actually truth in that. Also, one can argue that this current downturn and climate certainly affects the ability of the companies to stay ahead and innovate in a negative way.  However, it is also serving as a catalyser for change, opportunity to rethink your mission, your business and your overall business values.

It is challenging – for sure

When I’ve left the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen where I used to work as part of a really great and international user experience team – I was filled with mixed emotions. Leaving the Microsoft where I used to work and collaborate with for years (counting my Microsoft Croatia experience) and starting the new business from the scratch was huge endeavor. Truth be told – in my personal contacts, over Twitter and even via Facebook bunch of people were saying that I should accept the offers and stay in Denmark with Microsoft or some other company but just few said that I should return back home and start a new business with my team.

And here we are today – two months after official incorporation, after months of prep work, market analysis, team gathering and consultations. I’m bold, proud and thrilled to say that we are here and we are here to stay!

Our team

Our core team in Croatia is rather small but we are utilizing the broad network of our local and international contacts. Antun Debak is our creative director and our youngest employee – may that not fool you – he is extremely talented guy with years of experience working for some big names as a freelancer, Darko Čengija (pronounced as cheng-ee-ya) serves as our external consultant – he is employed at the Poslovna učionica not by FatDUX (though we treat him like he is one of us) and I (Vibor Cipan) am serving as a CEO of the FatDUX Zagreb office.

Three of us have meet several years ago and worked together and collaborated with Microsoft Croatia and their partners on various projects – from design, product development, coding, project management, copywriting… After all these years – it was quite natural for us to start on something together.

After my first meeting with Eric and Søren in Copenhagen while I was living in Denmark, I knew, intuitively, that one day we will be part of our FatDUX family. Months of negotiations, discussions, talks – and we had our deal. Today we are proud part of the FatDUX global family contributing to our client’s bottom line and their success.

How the sayin’ goes: We work hard and play hard. I know it is braggin’ but heck, we went to Rammstein concert for our first team building few weeks ago. Life is fun at FatDUX Zagreb and we love it that way.

Keep in touch

As I’ve mentioned – we will keep in touch on a regular basis now – utilizing this blog, Twitter and all other services we can thinks of. Yes – I guess you can get a clear picture that I’m a pretty much a huge fan of social networking and interaction – significant part of our local business and corporate communication strategy is being shaped by direct contact with. And yes – we love to talk. English, Croatian, Czech and virtually any other language (with a little help from our friends) works for us…

That being said – here is how to keep in touch with us and contribute. We sincerely want to include you in this conversation.

Antun  (@adebak) is on the Twitter – you can follow him there. He is also on LinkedIn. Darko is on LinkedIn too (trying to convince him to join the Twitter) and you can reach me on Twitter (@viborc), LinkedIn and my personal blog – UXPassion.com.

Be sure to follow us there and we also have our official FatDUX Twitter account so – follow us and let’s talk.

Keep in touch!
Pozdrav iz Hrvatske!