The year started like any other. We had plans at Atlantbh, big plans. 2020 marked our 20th anniversary and we were going to celebrate in style. Then the world stopped.
We closed our office, changed our routines and were forced to rethink nearly every process and event. We weren’t alone as the whole world had to learn to navigate through the new normal, with no idea how long these conditions would last.
Yet here we all are, nearly 10 unprecedented months later and what have we learned?
We have learned that you don’t need the flashing lights, bells and whistles to shine. We have learned to be thankful for the little things and to appreciate the small achievements because sometimes they are bigger than expected.
That is why this year we won’t be doing our annual year in review. In fact, in last year’s “Year in Review” we said, and I quote, “2020 is gonna be a big year for us”. Well, that didn’t age well did it? That is why, this time, we will be listing all the things we are thankful for in 2020 instead.
Family
While it was challenging to adjust to working from home, we are grateful for the extra time we had to spend with family. Shorter commutes meant more time with our loved ones while lunch breaks could be spent at the dining table enjoying home-cooked meals. We are also thankful that our work family grew in 2020 as we welcomed 28 new Atlanters.
Staying connected
Zoom will forever be synonymous with 2020, as it became our go-to app for online communication. Shout out to all the apps that helped us stay in touch with our colleagues and community. We are thankful that we were able to host 4 online meetups, participated in 3 live events to take our ABH JobFair online and host a Virtual DevDays.
Supporting young talents
While we had no idea how the situation was going to unravel, we were determined to find ways to help youth in our community – now more than ever. When it came to the ABH Internship, we went virtual which presented challenges in itself, but we persevered. Thanks to our amazing team, 12 interns were able to build their profiles and 5 interns have been hired!
As for scholarships, we are proud to announce that 20 first and second-year students studying in an IT-related field at a B&H university were awarded scholarships to help offset the cost of education. That’s twice as many as last year, in honor of Atlantbh’s 20th anniversary. We also announced another 10 scholarships for 2021. As always, we continued to support student organizations and their events as they too learned to cope with the new challenges.
#Putuj387
As travel bans were implemented and flights were being canceled, it became clear that the pandemic was going to affect vacation plans. As with everything, there is always a silver lining and we began to appreciate what we have in our backyard. In an attempt to promote domestic tourism and support local businesses affected by closed borders, we created a viral social media challenge: #Putuj387 which translates to travel 387 (387 being the country code of Bosnia and Herzegovina). We are so thankful for all the support from locals, including homegrown celebrities such as Edin Džeko. #Putuj387 currently has over 13500 posts on various social media channels.
Local brands and community
We are above all thankful for all the local brands and to our local community. If 2020 taught us anything, it is that no man is an island, and only together can we survive these unpredictable times. That is why we turned our efforts to helping and supporting our local community. From providing mask and glove donations to under-supplied hospitals, donating laptops and tablets to students who otherwise would not be able to attend school online, to sending our Atlanters gifts exclusively made up of local products. This is something we don’t plan on changing anytime soon, supporting local has become the new normal for us.
While 2020 may go down in history as the year the world experienced a great tragedy, there is much to be thankful for and we appreciate having the privilege to embrace this. We send our condolences to everyone negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and commend them for their strength and bravery. As we move forward, we wish everyone good health and a more optimistic new year. Oh, and there is one more thing we are thankful for; despite it all, we are thankful 2020 is coming to an end.
