Meetups and personal growth
My First Dublin Java User Group Meetup
Last month, on 22/09/2018, I went to my first DubJUG (Dublin Java User Group), and my participation started very well with Venkat Subramaniam´s speech, an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc. At the meeting he discussed two topics:
- Benefiting from Java 9 Improvements;
- Practices of an Agile Developer.
I’ve always been into Java, and the first speech was really interesting, exploring the features that were implemented on Java 9, without not even mentioning the main part, the modules. But the highlight (for me), and what I want to share here, is about what he said in the second one.
The topic was Agile Development and with an enthusiastic tone, Venkat brought to us some extends that he points out in his book with Andy Hunt: Practices of an Agile Developer. He shared with us some concepts and practices to become an Agile Developer, and I’d like to discuss some points here.
He started with the question:
How do I begin to become Agile?
Surprisingly, his answer was PEOPLE. Who you work with, your and their attitude is indispensable for becoming an agile developer. With some funny real-life examples, he showed us that doesn’t matter who caused the problem, but yes, how we solve it. Emphasizing that you don’t put people down, you bring them up.
You probably have seen or worked with people who spend more time and energy trying to blame someone than working on the solution. However, blaming doesn’t fix codes/bugs, we should work to be part of the solution, not of the problem. Remembering that every mistake becomes a learning opportunity. He also highlights: if you are not making mistakes, you are not learning.
Following this line of thought, he kept with this point: Criticize ideas, not people. The way that we direct our words to our colleagues makes a huge difference. Whenever you are discussing something with someone, instead of saying a word about the person who had the idea, try to focus on the idea, and how to improve it.
During his talk, he presented an activity to do with a group when you have to discuss a solution, or the group has to come up with an idea. The activity is called:
Debating with knives
The activity consists of placing a knife (for the safety of everyone, I would recommend a pen 😅) in front of each person. Alternatively, one person has a knife pointing towards him, and the following one has a knife pointing out. Using the knives as an identifier, the ones with the knife pointing towards them have to talk in favour and the others against. After some minutes (depending on what everyone agreed), all the knives are turned, and now, if you were talking in favour you have to point out why that’s not a good idea.
Everyone has great ideas, and everyone has stupid ideas as well. Rather than argue about whose idea is better, we ought to work on a collective solution. If we never bring out our ideas, we will never be able to grow. And then he finishes this part saying that negativism kills innovation.
Having said that, with an atmosphere that people understand each other, and the focus is on solving the problem, the activity suggested above is a good example of how to discuss things healthily. And more! With the activity, we can realize when an idea is a belief, more than a good idea. Venkat said that when someone can talk just good or just bad things about an idea, that’s called bias!
That for me was the peak of the speech! I’ve been writing about creativity and problem-solving in my last articles, and when he said that I saw that I’m not crazy, nor talking about something that is not related to Information Technology.
“Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. […] There is no way you can’t open up your creativity. There is no ego to speak of. That is my belief.” — Zen Buddhist nun, Jeong Kwan, CHEF’S TABLE, S03E01
Venkat kept going on his speech, but it would be an endless article with everything, so I just want to stand out another point:
It’s not important to be employed, it’s important to be employable
With this, he wanted to take everyone’s attention on points like network, learning, and teaching. Network because the people that you know says a lot of you, and that can be a big help. Learning, because we should never stop learning.
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” ― Thomas Henry Huxley
If we are active learning frequently, our brain is active to learn continuously. And at last but not least, share your knowledge, be a mentor!
Are people comfortable with you? Are they comfortable with asking questions to you?
Different from money that once you give to someone, you lose it. Knowledge is the only wealth that grows as it is given!
I would say that my life is changing a lot in the last few weeks, I’ve been passing through a wonderful personal growth, and understanding the world around me in a way that I could never understand before. I’m learning new things daily and seeking knowledge.
Part of that growth is definitely because I started to go on a few meetups. I’m from a medium size city in Brazil called Araraquara with a population of 220 thousand, and I’ve never looked for some group over there (actually I’ve never heard about a group over there). But then, last year, I moved to Dublin, a huge and busy city (at least for someone from the countryside), and those meetups started to call my attention. Even not being a shy person, it took me a long time until I visited the first one, a Brazilian IT in Dublin group that, by the way, celebrated 6 years of existence on 06/10/2018.
After the first meetup, I’m certainly a new person!
Thanks for reading everything! Let’s build a collective idea, comment what you think about the article, the ideas that you have, how is the group that you work with, and connect with me!
