Ever since I started thinking about and discovering the idea of Social Entrepreneurship and Business, I realized just how much the system we live in needs to be reinvented. How much we all need to change.

Corporate Social Responsibility is not enough anymore. Businesses need to reinvent themselves and get back to pro-customer, pro-user, instead of pro-shareholder.

Of course, when I say so, it’s a bunch of crap coming from an idealist, but when Harvard Business School professors discuss the issue and write a book “Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business“, then I can only say that we might just be closer to the end of capitalism then we thought.

Check out this short interview with the authors of the book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Et7s6ALRw

What do you think? What’s coming after capitalism?

Formal education sucks.

I said it before and am gonna keep repeating in until someone proves me wrong. To be clear, I’m talking about business and technical studies here, so not medicine, pharmacy and alike.

Why do I say this? Well, you see, I’m in business for more then 10 years already, started in business, moved to the government, then NGOs and finally back to business again (see my About me page). In all of these jobs a University degree was required, and I was “an exception that proves the rule”. And still am, actually.

Now, not that I’m too smart or anything, but thing is that in all of these jobs, University degree is either not needed because the job is not too complicated, or the University degree itself is completely irrelevant. Of course, I’m not saying that these jobs don’t require knowledge and skills, but am saying, loud and clear, that this knowledge does not require University. For some of it because it would be stupid that we learn such things there and for some because the formal education system is lagging at least 20 years behind the business. Everything I learned I did either by myself, or on specific courses, and mostly experiential. Needles to say, most of this knowledge I acquired was free of charge or cheap. Sure, there are smart things to hear at Universities too, and smart and inventive lecturers. Am not even gonna go into evaluating the importance of student life and parties etc.

But is it worth the investment? Does it provide what it promises?

No.

And then I asked myself many times why is this happening and how is it possible that existing Education system can be so slow? I mean, education system used to be a backbone of development worldwide, and smartest of them used to be gathered around Universities. And today, we hire you and then teach you your job during induction days and through learning activities of all sorts, but still we require a diploma of any kind.
I argued many times in the places I worked and work today – are we looking for and hiring people that will add value to the company or people that fulfill most of the criteria given by the job catalogue? Usually managers either tell me that “it has to be done because of the procedure” or “blah, it’s a stupid copy-paste mistake in the job advertisement”. The same people I argued with told me that they understand that University system is lagging behind and does not give us people with skills and knowledge we need. And You see, they still require the same!? Freakin’ Lemmings!

I urge you, people, please stop doing this!

These “mistakes” and stupid procedures are supporting the system that doesn’t do any good to us or our development. If there is no school for Human Resources professionals, then don’t require random diplomas (in our case it’s Economy, Organizational Sciences, Psychology and similar) just to fulfill the procedure. This is plainly stupid for many reasons:

• you’re discouraging some of the great talents to apply, because they “don’t fit within the criteria”,
• you’re encouraging the system that says – Uni diploma is a piece of paper that you need to fulfill the criteria and nothing else,
• you’re sending a message that you are a Lemming, either because you don’t understand the issue, or you don’t care or you are just lazy to try to change anything.
• by being a Lemming, you don’t have the right to blame your workforce for bad results. It is your fault!

What can you do, though?

• If you are a manager: require talent, knowledge, skills, stuff that really matters – not Uni diploma
• If you are a manager: promote learning in your company, not education and training. Don’t know the difference? Google it!
• If you are a lecturer or anyone in academic sector: don’t limit your students with formal education. Encourage them to open their minds and look outside of their books. Promote tools for learning, websites that matter, organize and promote discussions around topics that are interesting.
• If you are a decision maker within the government: relax the freakin’ system and lead the true reform of the system. The thing that Serbia (and other developing countries) is so small, poor and behind the West is a chance for us, not the problem. Technology is cheap and can only empower knowledge sharing and development!
• Whoever you are, promote tools like social networks, blogs, or any knowledge sharing and learning tools there are. Check out, for example, skillshare.com. Below is their promo video – Let’s start a learning revolution. It’s meant for US market, but it’s pretty much the same everywhere:

Let’s Start a Learning Revolution from Skillshare on Vimeo.

Also, check out the ideas and plans of the World Bank, which is rolling out their new Education strategy these days. Dragana Markovic wrote about it on her blog, check her post here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWv72ZQRnY4

To conclude:

Don’t be a Lemming!

Empower learning and knowledge, not procedures and rules!

Do something!

What an extraordinary experience!

And I’m not saying experience just like that… This was simply all but a usual conference. It’s so different (to anything happened so far in Belgrade) that I continuously struggled to explain people where the hell I am and what kind of a gathering that is. Even now, after the conference, I had to go to their website – www.shareconference.net – in order to find a proper description

“…is a unique educational platform that represents new forms of social activism, and promotes internet, new media and music related contents, a feat done for the first time in the region.”

So, take a bunch of social and internet activists and media artists, put them in a fantastic new setting of recently renovated Dom Omladine (Youth Center), organize free WiFi, get connected with the internet community to create a hype around it, create a fantastic night program throughout the conference and add a thing or two in the halls to make the atmosphere relaxed and enjoyable, and there you go – Share Conference has begun its, we hope, long and prosperous life in our capital.

The whole program of the conference can be seen on their home page, along with the short biographies of speakers and explanations of almost all sessions, so I won’t go into detailed explanation of all of them, but I’d like to point out a few memorable ones. Memorable for me, that is…

Day 1&3: ImprovEverywhere – Causing a scene

Brian Fountain i Robyn Sklaren shared a story about all the famous videos and activities most of us already knew about (Frozen Grand Central, Grocery Store Musical, Best Buy etc), but now with an extra flavor – background stories, anecdotes, results…

All in all, a hilarious presentation that culminated 2 days later when they organized one of their activities with all of us in downtown Belgrade!
We gathered in front of Hotel Moscow where we were instructed briefly to split into 3 groups and get into 3 positions downtown respectively. The idea was to create a Mobile Club downtown, with all the possible things one awesome club usually has – walls, great people, music, light show, queue in front, security in dark suits and dark sunglasses, foursquare spot , and of course a fantastic atmosphere. And what a party it was! Before the videos are out by the organizers, check out a couple of photos here:

Photos credits: ShareConference on Flickr

Day 1: Face2Facebook - Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico

Now these 2 guys are completely nuts! They followed the same path Facebook had when being developed – they downloaded 1 million (yes, one and six zeros) photos from cca 250.000 Facebook profiles, ran a special face recognition algorithm to divide faces into various groups (by facial expressions) and then built a dating website around these photos.  If you’ve seen The Social Network movie, you probably know that Zuckerberg did pretty much the same when he built FaceMash.

The theory behind this idea is that Facebook already plays a role on the thin line between a social network and a dating website, because if you look closely into

what kind of data are we asked for and how technology within Facebook is directed into making it easy for us to share photos, statuses and communication in general about our relationships, then it’s easy to draw a conclusion that one of the main things Facebook is being used for is to be a platform to build relationships.

Website they built  - www.lovelyfaces.com – did not last long (nor was it supposed to), and they are still fighting legal battle with Facebook (and their accounts were banned for good ), but nevertheless they are very happy about the outcomes of the project. Along with other initiatives at that time, they succeeded to force Facebook to change their claim over users data, which is a huge success.

During the Q&A session, they didn’t want to reveal future plans, as they are not sure whether they want new legal battles before they finish with current ones

Day 2: The Copyfight – Peter Sunde (PirateBay & Flattr)

I have to admit – when I checked out the program of the conference for the first time, I did not recognize Peter’s name. Never heard of Flattr before neither. But then, just before his lecture, I realized that it is actually Peter Sunde, one of the founders of ThePirateBay.org, which is, in a way, guilty for almost 60% of today’s internet traffic, as it played a crucial role in popularizing torrents which are today the most popular peer2peer way of sharing files on the internet.

Peter told us about the history of PirateBay, about their legal fights with providers, courts, governments, about how they tried to buy Sealand and were followed by private investigators (stupid ones, but nevertheless), even how Belgrade played a role in the whole story when famous PirateBay bus was hidden in Belgrade during the trials etc.

Don’t know the age span of the participants, but I’m sure that I was not the only one thoroughly enjoying this fantastic story and smiling stupidly as a sign of being happy that I live in this time and that I was a part of the whole story around PirateBay, at least as a simple user of their revolutionary website. My Serbian readers will understand what I’m trying to say if I compare this smile with the one that only those who were old enough to see and actually enjoy the 3 point shots of Djordjevic with Partizan and Serbia can have.

Peter also shared with us that they are not putting almost any effort in maintaining the website (hence the prehistoric

al design , and that they would probably shut it down if the server broke today. They are basically keeping it alive because it’s still in top50 sites worldwide (!!!) and people simply use it.

A part of Pirate Bay, he is mostly into developing Flattr.com these days. It’s a social micro-payment/micro-donation system that allows users to put a monthly amount/credit on flattr.com and then user “flattr this” button (similar to FB Like or Google +1). In the end of the month, the credited amount is donated to the flattered websites per flattr-ing ratio. The idea is that they make donations as direct as possible, without expensive middle-men etc. It’s a great project, and I would love to see it working in Serbia soon.

Day 3: Technologies of Empathy – MIT Media Lab - Chris Csikszentmihalyi

That’s what I call a special guy! He is a director of MIT Center for Future Civic Media, which develops new technologies and techniques to strengthen local communities. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, just mentioning MIT was enough, right? But that’s not the only thing he is special for. Check out his style on this photo and video and you’ll understand why we all tweeted frantically about him for the first 10 minutes of his lecture

Jokes aside, he was awesome. He spoke honestly about projects they are trying to do to re-balance power between citizens on one and corporations and political factors on the other side. He reminded us that MIT became so big and important because it is one of the biggest defense contractors of the US Army. He also reminded us that most of their work was inspired by the fact that during the Bush rule, government did not share much information about it’s activities, and yet wanted to have and control the data about everyone and everybody. We’re talking about pre-Web2.0 time, of course. Now, Chris argued that government did not ask us whether they can use that info, so what would happen if we just took the info from the government and used it in any way we can think of?

This way of thinking inspired many activities and serviced in the years to come, including Txt2Mob which was a java applet that helped sending SMSs to many recipients via foreign countries’ servers, and all because government instructed phone companies to shut down services protesters in the US used to organize them

selves. There’s apparently a rumor that the source-code of this service was used when Twitter was being developed. How cool is that?

Chris mentioned many more services and you can explore them at their website, but the one that I loved the most is SourceMap which runs under a motto - “We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of”. It’s basically a system that allows you to map literally anything in a structured and organized way. You can also browse many maps that are already in the system, and that are really detailed. I believe that no-one in the room felt completely comfortable after Chris has shown us a video of where and how certain materials that exist in all our smartphones are made. Check out this intro video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g30laGwoYTU

All in all – a great lecture. He definitely marked the day with showing off all the amazing work they do at MIT Media Lab and certainly left many of us drooling and dreaming about being part of it.

Day 3: Deconstructing the role of social media in Tunisian Revolution – Global Voices – Sami Ben Gharbia

Sami is Tunisian, but lives in exile in the Netherlands where he works as Advocacy director at Global Voices, which “seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.”

He got one of the longest applauses on this year’s conference and for a reason – he deconstructed, step by step and in details the whole story – what, when, how and why it happened. It’s really not easy to explain the whole story in a few sentences, and for that you’ll have to wait for the organizers to upload all lectures (yes, they promised to do so shortly after the conference), but let me just tell you that it was proven that Facebook is good to start the revolution, but Twitter is the one that really brings it to another level (Facebook is a closed platform, you need to be registered and also friends with people or a member of groups if you wanna see news, while twitter is a completely open platform).

Also, it was all about strategy, not tools. Sami presented the 3-way ecosystem, where Facebook, Twitter and other tools is just one part, while 2 others are organizations supporting these kind of activities (human rights, big NGOs etc), and classic media, such are big media networks (CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC etc). As Milos Djajic nicely put it today – it’s about finding a way to get published in influential media. So it’s not just about organizing protests, it’s about creating a hype around it, so that people and organizations get interested continuously. I mean, if 30.000 people protests against Gadaffi and no-one know about it – technically Gadaffi can kill these 30.000 people in a matter of hours probably. But if the eyes of international community are at Libya, then it’s not that easy anymore.
And it helps when government makes stupid steps, like trying to censor internet and specific tools like facebook or posterous, which only brought more people on these platforms.

And this strategy is different in all places – i.e. Facebook and Twitter revolutions were good for Tunisia, but are unlikely to work in Gaza, where internet connection is not so good.

We all followed the situation in Tunisia, but when someone puts it in such a cool presentation and explains why something happened in certain moments, then you realize it’s pretty much modernized version of what Otpor (Resistance) did in Serbia while fighting against Milosevic. As someone putt it nicely – if we had social media back in the nineties, Milosevic would be gone by Dayton Peace Agreement (1995 – Peace in Bosnia).

A really great lecture it was. Too bad that organizers could not set up a video link with Dalia Ziada – an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist, would be cool to hear Egyptian part of the story too…

Conclusion

To conclude, there were more really cool lectures, some I visited and enjoyed (News Analysis, Visualization and Summarization by Institut Jozef Stefan, or Belgrade, beyond an image of a party city by Viktor Markovic from Belgraded.com, Istinomer (Truthmeter)) and some I unfortunately missed (Crisis mapping in Action by Jaroslav Valych, or What makes a movement by Sam Graham Felsen).

And I’ll just say once again how great and inspiring this experience was, that I’m happy that Belgrade and Serbia were hosting such a fantastic conference and that I’m really hoping it will become a tradition.

Sir Robinson is one of my favorite characters of all time, as he expresses eloquently everything I stand for in terms of education and how it should look like.

First time I got to know about him was his TED talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

And then recently I saw his latest work – the most explicite and eloquent explanation of why our education systems need to be changed, and moreover why we need to completely change our way of thinking. Err, they need to change the way of thinking. I always thought differently.

Why?

Being an undergraduate for ages already and trying to get a diploma in the archaic education system of Serbia (the rest of world is not much better, to be fair), so that I can finally be accepted and taken seriously when the bosses plan salary budgets, I’m often pissed off because the very system I’m forced to follow has never thought me anything I know today, nor has given me tools that I’m using in everyday life or work. Almost everything I know I learned through experience and non-formal learning, mostly while volunteering in AIESEC, and also by working with some fantastic people in my 10 years of working experience. University? Not really.. I mean, how can it help me when I have to, for example, learn what the hard drive is made of (IT Management Subject). Who the hell cares? etc etc…

And what happens when I ask why the hell do I need a University diploma to do my job, to get a promotion or simply a salary raise? I get one of 2 possible answers:

1. “You don’t have the proof to have the knowledge to do the job.” (note: there is no University in Serbia that teaches you what I do – People Development, Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship)

2. “It’s the procedure, we can’t do anything about it.” (of course you can, you just don’t want to – you want me to suffer just like you did)

3. “I know you are good and deserve a raise/promotion, but you know, it wouldn’t be fair to others and people will talk/ask questions.” (very common and shows just how stupid we are – it’s not important to keep me satisfied and productive, but what people will say)

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. This happens to many people around the globe every day. And worst thing is – our bosses often “don’t understand” (to say the least) why we don’t want to accept these conditions and are changing jobs, or they simply mark us as “damn Generation Y” – as if that is a bad thing. Let’s face it: we are slaves of the stupid system with wrong values and we are expected to “fit in”.

Now, spare 10 more minutes and watch what Sir Ken Robinson has to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

What do you think about it? Are you facing similar issues? What would you do if you had your own company?

So it happened…

9 years after a last attempt of having a Pride walk (or gay parade, as many refer to it) in Belgrade, and 9 years after a bloody attempt, that is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIQqw68d_s

It was a wrong timing, obviously. Serbia early after Milosevic’s era and a decade of isolation was unprepared for such an event.

This time, however, the government and the police were on the right side and decided to show the world that they can protect those who want to practice their basic human and constitutional rights – to walk freely regardless how different they are from the majority.

It wasn’t easy though. Around 6000 hooligans, most of them supportive of extremist right-wing organizations and movements, were attacking whole day 5000 policemen defending the Pride. Shock-bombs, tear gas and demolitions of Belgrade down-town reminded us of the days we thought will never happen again… And again these criminal groups managed to attract the worst type of people to the streets, many of them being there only so that they can use the opportunity to destroy the shops downtown and steal new clothes. Carpe Diem, in a way…

Some of them used it for their political agendas, so they attacked and tried to burn the headquarters of political parties (namely Democratic Party and Socialist Party). I guess they looked gay with all their blue, yellow and red colors… (latest news: papers proving that Obraz, a hardcore right-wing movement, is one of the organizers of violence have been found with their arrested leader)

Some of them were stupid enough to also throw rocks at try to destroy the mobile mammography scanner, only because it has a TV B92 logo on it. As if their sisters and moms won’t ever need it…

Total damage was estimated at 1 million euros.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq0R9uk6xW0

Photo credits and more photos at: Mondo.rs

In the end, there were 150 injured and 200 arrested. An interesting fact is that more then 60% of arrested are not really from Belgrade, but from other cities in Serbia. Dunno if this is a good sample of the whole bunch of hooligans or people from other cities are less experienced in fighting the police, but it’s still indicative.

I mean, I followed a good part of the happening from the airport actually. Was on my way to a business trip and there was a TV in the airport coffee shop, so we all followed Studio B (they really stepped up and did what national TV stations failed to do – covered the whole event thoroughly – kudos to them!) while waiting for our flights. Interesting fact was that the large majority (90% or more) were supporting the Belgrade Pride!

What does this tell us? Most of these people are probably not travelling for their first time. They’ve seen the world, they’ve seen how developed countries treat all their citizens equally and how everyone is entitled to walk freely and proudly. On the other side, you have a bunch of kids from small, poor cities in Central Serbia that have probably never travelled outside of Serbian borders, and have grown up in isolation, poverty and bad education system. Should we be surprised that they are easily becoming hooligans and vandals? Nope, I don’t think so… But I’m sure that this will change very soon – as we don’t need visas for Schengen zone anymore, travelling is becoming cheaper and cheaper, so these kids will eventually see the world and finally chill out. It maybe sounds stupid and simple, but I’m sure that’s the only way for this generation to change and make a difference between human rights and promiscuity.

So, it wasn’t easy, and I’m truly sorry that there are so many injured, but this is a big win for Serbia regardless. Violent majority will never again keep this country a hostage, and hopefully next year less people will see the Pride as a provocation of violence (how dumb does that sound?) and more people will realize that this is as much about LGBT rights as it is of the other minorities – Roma, disabled, war veterans etc…

(Apart from TV Studio B, the only channel of communication that worked properly and gave real time information was Twitter. Check out how it went at #bgpride hashtag)

A moment we waited for 12 long years has finally arrived – Partizan won Maccabi in the quarter-finals and reserved the place at the Final 4 in Paris! With a little luck this team can also achieve something we are waiting for 18 years – to win Euroleague…

Yup, I actually said “with a little luck”, because this team is, despite the youth and low budget (salary of just one Olympiacos’ player is bigger then the complete budget of Partizan), really something special and far from an underdog. It is consisted of a carefully selected group of players which are all talented, but combined with Partizan’s legendary coach, Dule Vujosevic, and the equally legendary Partizan’s fans, Gravediggers, this group becomes a very special team that gives 150% on every match and has become a very tough cookie for all the biggest teams in Europe.

Even Mr. Gershon, Maccabi’s coach, has noticed in one of his interviews that Macabbi has already taken a couple of great players from Partizan, but they never played anywhere as good as in Pionir Arena and under Dule’s guidance.

Below is what I’m talking about, and what Paris can expect from 7th to 9th of May.
I suggest the city of Paris to strengthen the foundations of Bercy Arena, for earthquake called Gravediggers is coming!

Last minute and celebrations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZTjTXNNOb0

Coreography:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRa0AePQS8M

President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, cheering with the fans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnCEMe1QEvI

Celebrations in the Arena and later streets of Belgrade:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzQUsQlyo8M

Emotional moments before every match (with subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4NpPN-NC5U

Remember Bobby McFerrin, the world famous author of “Don’t worry, be happy” song?

Well, if you are aware of him and his work, you also know that he is more then just a singer. His style and approach is very unconventional and his music cannot really be put under any of the genres, which makes him unique and which brought him 10 Grammy awards, invites to play with most famous orchestras in the worlds etc.

But not only… Recently he got an invitation to participate at the World Science Forum and its Panel “Notes and Neurons – Search for the Common Chorus”, which aimed to find answers on questions like “Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined?” or “Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?” as well as to illustrate “music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions”.

And he did it in his own way. They told him that not everyone is musical. His answer was to show the power of pentatonic scale:

See full coverage of the panel here.

Now, this video is fun to watch for anyone, but if you think a little bit about it, it’s much much more. It shows how wrong and limiting our education system is… Imagine if education was there to really support your creativity and not to limit it within the curriculum made in 1960. or whenever… Imagine if teachers were talking to us instead of lecturing us?

Internal CSR, or being responsible to your own employees is equally important as being responsible externally and communicating it.
Depending on your business, that can mean anything from allowing them to have unions, have fair compensation and benefit systems, growth opportunity, security, but also quite often their own safety.

However, it’s just not good when you overdo it. I bumped into this example at sustainabilityforum.com and found it very disturbing.
I mean, keeping your employees safe is one thing, but having a policy not allowing them to help someone not to be beaten up brutally is something else…

Check it out below. Conclusion is after the video.

The Potential Brutality of CSR

Written By Chris Milton
Published On February 12, 2010

There’s a reason I’ve not put any picture with this post: because there’s a video at the bottom.

I think you should watch this video. It’s just over seven minutes long.

It’s of a news item from CNN in the USA last night.

It shows CCTV footage of a girl getting beaten up and having her head kicked in at a bus station in Seattle, Washington.

Then there’s the three (four? five??) security guards who watch this happen. Clearly within arm’s reach.

This is terrible, says the commentator. Surely as decent human beings, maybe even fathers, they should intervene and stop this brutality?

The attacker even returns for afters and is unhindered.

Why didn’t they intervene? Because there is a policy, apparently, that security guards do not intervene in violent confrontations. Difficult to swallow that one.

So on comes a guest, a Sergent from the local police force, who steps through this policy and explains why it’s there and that, once the fight had finished, over 60 officers attended the scene.

Then at the very end the presenter thanks the Sergent for his time and for explaining it to them.

So that’s OK then.

Now, why am I posting this on a CSR blog?

Simple. The reason these guys didn’t intervene is because they had a policy to follow. Tick boxes, insurance (no doubt) and all of that.

And this has subverted their normal human behaviour.

CSR and sustainability is all about reinventing business: it’s not a standard to acheive, it’s a model to follow on a path of continual improvement.

The tick-boxers and standard acheivers in the CSR world are little better than these security guards: watching disaster happen infront of them “satisfied” that they are following their professional protocols.

No one, not even a member of the public, intervenes. But it’s the security guards who are best placed to do so.

We all want to be on the side of the defenseless, the impoverished, the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. However, we — as people — have to act for that to happen, not just implement a policy and think that’s the best we can do.

Needless to say, those of a sensitive nature may prefer not to watch the video, and please be sensible with minors. The video can also be watched here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/11/seattle.beating/

Please watch it. Now.

Conclusion:
Personally and as an HR professional, I blame this not only on the company policy, but also on the corporate culture that they obviously have. I mean, this culture has to be very passive-defensive and very strong to change (in my opinion) basic human behavior to react in such circumstances. Or all of these 3 guys are simply bad people…
I hope that the kid is fine…

Since Yugoslavia stopped existing, a lot of things have been changing in Serbia, including the coat of arms, flag and anthem.
Many things changed, but some remained the same – corruption in all spheres of life and levels is one, and the second is success in many many sports.
The corruption is what kills us, makes us feel helpless and quite often deeply depressed and highly apathetic (see some stats at @Dzangrizalo’s blog post – serbian & google translated english), and when any government brings us a new anthem or anything that should gather us all around, we simply cannot accept it so easily… Even if that anthem is a beautiful song from 1872, it is still not easy to relate to it… Not even if they play it every morning and evening on national TV station… (I suppose that is an explanation to the hatery towards celebrations in the same blog post )
Myself included…

However, recent shower of medals on World Swimming Championship, Waterpolo Championship, as well as U18 European Basketball Championship (all in a couple of days) has brought us a lot of happiness, and along we listened the anthem in a whole new light… All of a sudden, I didn’t care about the government, about the corruption, about anything really – just enjoyed the goosebumps I missed so much last couple of years…

It’s stupid, I know, and I feel like a kid when this happens, but these successes give you kind of a boost and motivation to do more… They wake you up from apathy and show you that if you are talented and really want to do something more with your life, there is no system or surrounding that will stop you do more…
So, thank you Serbian swimmers, waterpolo and basketball players – you have been such motivation boosters this week!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgTR4sQDkc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_0fmJoC4bE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikhEmTkJrik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNWHMu3KU70

What an awesome day!

1. No more visas soon!
Report: EC to propose visa liberalization
14 July 2009 | 20:03 | Source: Tanjug
BRUSSELS — The European Commission (EC) adopted unanimously on Tuesday recommendations for visa liberalization for Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

EU diplomatic sources told Tanjug news agency that the recommendations relate to period starting January 1, 2010.
More at B92.net

2. Champions League: FC Partizan hammered Rhyl in qualifications 4:0…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSSC_YbLUdk

and most importantly:

3. THE LEGEND COMES BACK!
Partizan Belgrade announced Tuesday that former star forward Dejan Milojevic signed with the club for what may be his last season.
More at euroleague.net