You know how, while you’re climbing a mountain, you just enjoy the process as much as you can and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. And then suddenly, you find yourself at the top and there’s this fabulous view all around you and you come to the realization of how far you’ve climbed and how long of a path you’ve trekked to the top.

Well, in a sense, this is our mountaintop moment. The proverbial mountain in this case is the first full year of active content creation for the English part of the Split Tech City website. While volunteers have created content in English before, something we will forever be grateful for, that work was never decidedly consistent.

And consistency is something that is needed if one wants to be considered a reliable source of information.

So, at the end of 2020, the time was right and the opportunity was there to start doing something about presenting Split’s tech community to the world in a more consistent and planned manner. And that’s exactly what we did!

From the time we have started actively working on creating content in English a year ago, we have done the following: shared stories about 13 international tech professionals, 10 startups, and 9 digital nomads.

We filmed 8 podcast episodes and organized 7 “Locals’n’Nomads” meetups. We also showcased the work of 2 community-building associations: DVK and DUMP.

Aside from that, we have created content with both, the international and the local community in mind:

• written the guide to life in Split, overviews on coworking spaces and good coffee stops for digital nomads in Split
• created a step-by-step guide to Croatia’s digital nomad residence permit, as well as overviews of the application process and some tips and tricks for said permit
• introduced our tech ecosystem to the world with overviews about startups, fintech, and digital agencies
• gave you an overview on things needed to start a business in Croatia
• followed international events happening in our city such us STup!2021, B2B Marketing Academy Meetup, NomadCrypto Workshop, Get In The Ring 2021
• presented our Festival of Technology and Entrepreneurship to the world with the plan to make it even better this year by adding one fully English-speaking day

It might not seem like a lot, but then again the results are visible in both, the surge in our website traffic, as well as in the increased interest of various internationals who reached out to us with questions about Split and life here.

For those of you who like to see some numbers, the website traffic increase looks like this:

The average monthly number of visitors in 2021 was 1283, and the average number of page views was 3633. Compared to the year before that, when the average monthly number of visitors was 486, and the average number of page views was 1070, this is a substantial increase.

And while we are happy about this result, that does not mean we will now sit back and relax. There’s no way that will happen and you won’t get rid of our online presence that easily! 🙂

We will continue to work every day to showcase all that our tech community here in Split has to offer!

Aside from the abovementioned added day to our Festival, our plan is to launch some new and interesting community-building initiatives to connect everyone interested in Split and its tech community.

Furthermore, we will continue organizing “Locals’n’Nomads” meetups (with a few tweaks in its agenda here and there), introduce the founders of Split’s tech companies through our “Split Founders” series, as well as continue to film podcasts featuring internationals, and profile startups and key local community players.

We hope you will keep following our work and, together with us, help Split realize its potential!