Serbia.hope

There’s hope!

Dragana Djermanovic wrote at her blog (only in Serbian, here’s google translate version of her post – link) emotionally about Serbia’s poor brand, about our illogical attitude to look towards past instead of future etc. She compared 2 approaches to promoting something – one is Serbia @ CNN with promoting our historical values (mainly orthodox churches) and second one Kosovo @ TV, Facebook, Twitter etc. promoting people and the future.
Now it’s clear that approach of government of Kosovo is the right one – looking towards future is always better then in the past, promotes young people, young nation, it is colorful etc.
The only issue is – it is as wrong just as the Serbia’s one… It deceives and it is not true. No further analysis needed. Full stop.

Now, who doesn’t know Dragana or doesn’t follow her blog doesn’t really know that she is like.no.other Serbian lady – trying to move things regarding this topic for some time already. She was active on round tables, contacted Ministries, initiated talks among many of us, but in the end she had no luck so far. We all silently nodded while reading her blog posts, or we loudly hated everything she criticized, but that’s about it… Of course, am a bit generalizing, there are for sure some good folks that tried to help her, but in the bottom line – no visible success whatsoever.

But we are a weird nation, we function really in mysterious ways… We had to wait until we could almost feel Dragana’s tears at her blog in order to move our asses and offer initiative, help, whatever…
Or is it Kosovo’s big.awesome.lie that moved us?

In any case, her post caught me off-guard. Am working on my behavior last couple of weeks to become more focused on solutions and while reading her post, I realized I’m thinking about the topic with negative attitude – trying to find out why something doesn’t work and why it is impossible to change it 🙂 Very Serbian, huh? 🙂
But I had to offer a solution, and knowing that people reading her blog are bunch of a cool and smart people, I couldn’t think of a better one but to initiate a meeting of all of them.
Simple idea, but in my opinion it should work – these bright people are meeting often anyways, they know each other, so one thematic meeting could sparkle more then we hope for…
I can already see @Pedya generating ideas on @NovinarskaPatka blog. I wish he takes active role in that idea he proposes, at least with his ingenious drawings that we remember from famous Svet Kompjutera magazine.

What’s my point here?

Again – simple. We need one Radomir Antic in every aspect of our lives, apparently. First he gave us hope with his endless energy, then he brought all the best players together, brought authority and the system and here you go – Serbia is on Fifa World Cup in South Africa and more importantly the fans are so happy now that they don’t have a need to boo at opponent’s national anthems anymore! In just a few months he did it! And he did it with almost the same team other coaches had… How? he just knew how to restructure and direct the huge amount of energy we are spending anyways into a right direction.
We are a very strange nation…
But I believe in us!

Dragana moved us – now let’s meet and see what the next steps and who can do what…
Is that a specialized blog promoting Serbia to foreigners?
Is that something that promotes beautiful Serbia to us, Serbs?
Is that influencing our nation to change attitude, way of thinking, behaviors? How?
Is it all of that?
Is it something else? Something more?

Do you want to help? Please join us in person (still working on a date, let us know at http://twtpoll.com/3znx0q) or leave a comment here…