Antonio Perić-Mažar is the CEO at Locastic, a digital agency based in Split, Croatia, founded back in 2011 and with their main focus to create amazing web and mobile applications. He’ll share his thoughts about networking, contributing and open source and highlight us similarities and differences between WordPress and Symfony/Sylius community. Dive into this post!
It’ll be great to see you in Zagreb in September. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your professional background?
Hello everyone, thank you for choosing me to speak at WordCamp. My name is Antonio Perić and I’m the CEO at Locastic, a digital agency based in Split, Croatia.
Locastic was founded back in 2011 and our main focus is to create amazing web and mobile applications. We started as a small studio in downtown Split but in only a few years we have risen to become one of the most prominent development companies in the domestic market. We provide the complete development service – from client’s initial idea, through consulting and programming, up to official market release.
For the past 10+ years, I have dedicated most of my time delivering high-quality software solutions for clients from all over the globe. I strive to be a regular guest on all the major conferences across Europe and share my knowledge as a speaker at events like PHPUK London, DutchPHP Amsterdam, Symfony Camp Ukraine, PHP Day Verona, DEVit Greece and more. Besides attending conferences, we supported the majority of domestic events like DUMP Days and Shift Conference as organizers and sponsors.
As we all know, networking is the main core of every business and there’s a lot of different meetups, but you’ve recently initiated a new Tinel Meetup gathering in Split, Croatia. What’s the initial purpose of Tinel Meetup? What distinguishes it from the others and why should people be there?
Before we introduced the Tinel idea, we really enjoyed organizing meetups like Symfony and Sylius Croatia, which are still events that are held once per year. We wanted to provide something new and more frequent, a meetup based in our hometown where we can bring really interesting speakers, but in an atmosphere that will create a feeling like you are sitting in your own living room.
The main difference between Tinel and other meetups is atmosphere we are trying to achieve and speakers we want to speak. We want to have best speakers in the industry in our living room. We think that less formal environment is perfect for networking and sharing ideas. There are many amazing meetups in Split, but we want to move a step forward. Maybe it’s ambitious, but we want Tinel to be a worldwide known meetup.
So far we managed to land Sylius founder Paweł Jędrzejewski and the CEO of Lorem Ipsum graphic studio Nemanja Jehlicka. We’ve got way more surprises coming up in the next few months and I’m sure Tinel will become even bigger in the future.
You’re an active member and acknowledged expert on Symfony/Sylius community. Which similarities and which differences can you highlight between WordPress and Symfony/Sylius community? What has attracted you to sign up as WordCamp lecturer?
The main difference is that WordPress is the product for an end user. Any user can easily build a website using WordPress and from my perspective, WordPress is aiming to be a great tool for building websites for maybe not-so technical people.
Sylius and Symfony are frameworks, they are for developers. Sylius is e-commerce framework and still is not for end users but for developers. Symfony is a PHP framework, which is amazing and it is great to be part of it and see how it goes forward. It allows developers to build all kind of applications using best developer tools and techniques.
I feel that I can use this opportunity to exchange my work experiences with the feedback I received by speaking to lecturers on international conferences, which is why I think my lecture might be interesting and beneficial to all event attendees.
How long do you use open source in your own company? Should we even think about other ways of business development if there is open source?
Open source is great philosophy and allows you to share knowledge and to learn a lot. Some of best developers in the world are part of open source communities. If you want to be a great developer I think open source is the way to go. Of course, you won’t open source your commercial or clients projects, but many things that you build can be open sourced. Open source is not just about taking but also about giving because even small commits count.
We are using Open source technologies since we started Locastic and we think Open source philosophy is something that should be followed. We are trying to give best to contribute to communities and my talk is aiming to talk about that.
Did you get your ticket?
If you haven’t already, get your ticket for WordCamp Zagreb today. Tickets are priced at 20€ (around 150 HRK) which will give you entrance to the conference, (first) access to workshops on Friday and to Contributor day on Sunday. You will also get the drinks, lunch, incredible t-shirt and other cool swag from our sponsors.