Why & how to join a community?
If you wish to meet and make friends with like-minded people, learn and teach new things, share your experiences with others, get recognition, create value, interact with experts, be inspired and inspire others. Join a COMMUNITY!
As this is my first article ever, so before we begin, I’d like to give you a brief introduction about myself.
Hi! My name is Amen Tyagi aka ‘The Multi-Millennial’. I am a self-taught product designer with 3 years of experience in the design industry and in case you’re wondering, “what the hell is a product designer?”, I design digital products like apps, websites, software and make sure they’re easy to understand and use for the awesome users like you!
I joined my first community back in March 2018, GDG New Delhi ❤!
I was enrolled in an Android development course at Coding Ninjas and Rohan Arora was our instructor. One day during a conversation after class, I asked him about this super cool sweatshirt he was wearing which had Google’s logo on it. It was then when I was introduced to my very first community. Rohan is leading GDG New Delhi chapter. He casually invited me to their upcoming event and I… went.
Fast forward 15 months, I am now associated with multiple, design, tech & business communities, serving various roles and responsibilities.
Here’s a list of communities I am associated with and my roles there:
- Google Developers Group & Women Tech Makers- New Delhi (Event Manager) | Organizers: Arpan Garg, Rohan Arora, Naman Kumar, Shilpa Garg, Shreya Gupta, Shilpi Gupta
- Google Cloud Developers Community- New Delhi (Event Manager) | Organizer: Pranay Nanda
- JS Lovers- New Delhi (Volunteer)| Organizers: Neha Sharma, Amandeep Singh
- Design Jungle ( Volunteer) | Organizers: Jagriti Pande, Aman Gautam, Gaurav Jassal
- Headstart- New Delhi (Design Mentor) | Organizer: Siddhant Agarwal
And it all started with me attending my first event, 15 months back, as an attendee.
So now before telling about the reasons to join a community, the pros and the cons of it, let’s first understand,
“What a community is?”
Well, the word community refers to a group of people who share some sort of common interests.
Okay, that was quite simple. Now that we understand what a community is, let’s understand,
“What makes a community, a community?”
Making a community is one hell of a task. All the amazing events & workshops that you may have attended or will attend, don’t just happen. It takes weeks or sometimes even months of preparation to organize a single day event. All the work done is done voluntarily by some very passionate and amazing people. Who are these people you may ask?
- The Organizing Team: Leads & Volunteers.
- The Speakers & Guests
- Venue Sponsors
- Event Sponsors
- YOU! (The attendees)
And now I’ll answer the first big question,
“Why should you join a community?”
Well, there are many many reasons for that.
I have listed a few of them below:
- Meet & make friends with like-minded people.
Communities are arguably the best way to meet new like-minded people at every event.
As every community has an agenda, it attracts and invites only those who have similar interests as the community itself. So you want to meet more engineers, join a tech community, love a specific programming language or technology? Join a community for the same. Planning or running a startup? Join a startup community. I can go on for this for hours literally. The point is there is a community for pretty much everything, you just gotta look it up on the internet and register for their next event.
2. Learn from the experts.
Communities are usually run by the experts themselves because as I mentioned earlier, running a community is not an easy task. Usually, only passionate people have that sort of dedication and drive. Experts are often invited to the events as speakers or guests to share their knowledge and experiences.
3. Get recognition or exposure.
Communities are usually run by passionate individuals who voluntarily come forward and take responsibility to work without receiving any monetary or otherwise returns. No good deed or positive contribution made by any individual ever goes unnoticed. Communities are all about learning, sharing and growing together. Industry experts and many founders of the various companies often come to community events. You never know whom you may impress with your contribution, skillset or personality and land a new client, new job or internship. People have even found their co-founders at community events! Anything is possible.
4. Share your knowledge & expertise.
Another great reason to join a community is that you’d get a platform to share your knowledge, experiences, expertise, and skill set with others and help them grow. There’s always something that you know but others don’t and they may find it helpful, teach them. Everybody can’t learn everything but you can always learn something from someone.
5. Find a mentor or someone to look up to.
We all have heard or read this famous quote which goes like, “Every master was once a beginner.”, and it is very true. There may be some situation at some certain points of life when you may not know how to go about it? What to do? How to fix or solve it? That’s exactly where a mentor comes in. Mentors may even work like our guardian angels sometimes. They will teach you things that no school or university would have ever taught.
(I myself found one of my mentors in the community. Arpan Garg, I cannot tell how many times Arpan has helped me. He taught me how to take better decisions, see things and situations from a broader point of view. He also helped me realize the things I’ve been doing wrong consciously or unconsciously and taught me how can I improve myself. I am so so grateful to him and all the amazing mentors I have.)
6. Schwag!!
Let’s just be completely honest here, we all love schwag! We do. And why not! Schwags are awesome. They make us look cooler than our friends. Who on God’s earth wouldn’t want free t-shirts, notebooks, pens, stickers, badges, lanyards, bottles, bags, bands, pen drives and even socks!!
Yes, socks!
These are just a few reasons for you to join a community that I’ve mentioned right off the top of my head. There are many many more!
And now you’re probably like, “Okay Amen, that was a lot! You made some great points. I am now convinced that I should join a community of my interest or at least give it a shot. But… Ummm… How?”
Thank you, I am glad that you asked! So now I would answer the question,
“How to go about joining a community?”
Well, joining a community is super easy! All you gotta decide is a category and look for it up on meetup.com or Google or Facebook. You’ll find so many communities, browse through them. Read their descriptions, read about its organizers and look for how many members does it have? Go through their past events and just hit the Join button when you find an interesting match. Sign up/register for their next event and have fun! It is literally that simple.
There’s one other question that I get asked a lot,
“Amen, How do I become a volunteer in your community?”
We must first understand that communities do not belong to any one single person. A community is not an organization. Usually, there is no hierarchy in the community. Everybody is treated with the same amount of respect and has the same level of opportunities, be them lead organizers, event managers, volunteers, speakers, guests or attendees. These are just the fancy titles we give ourselves to basically decide & clarify the number of responsibilities one would be assigned.
Now, coming back to the question. The answer to that question is very simple.
“Bring some value to the table.”
What do I mean by that? As mentioned above everything in a community is done voluntarily by some individuals who are good at one thing and willing to learn new things and most importantly are consistently determined. In my case, the value that I brought was design, I started designing creatives for the events even when I was not a part of the team. I was a regular attendee. I was consistent with my work and contribution. The organizers soon realized it and gave me an opportunity, that’s how I became a volunteer at GDG New Delhi.
If you are still not satisfied and are expecting more, consider this.
Pros of joining a community.
- Build a strong network
- Gain experience
- Learn leadership skills
- Stay updated with industry trends
- Share your knowledge
- Learn from the bests
- Ability to help others
- Find better opportunities to grow
- Teamwork
- Create value
- Positive impacts
- Practice professional behaviour
- Overcome fears and hesitations
Now you must be thinking, “Alright, Alright Amen, I get it, this is all so tempting but… there must be some cons as well no?”
Well, here you go!
Cons of joining a community.
If you are willing to join a community as an attendee then there are no cons! You will only learn, gain knowledge and experience!
Leading or volunteering at a community may often be tiring, sometimes. But if you’re passionate enough, that would be completely fine by you as the sense of gratification you receive from the communities is incredible!
Communities are awesome, you just gotta find the right one for you!
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