Avoiding Community Organizer Burnout

An Offline Camp passion talk from Bradley Holt

Before he joined IBM as a Developer Advocate, Bradley Holt spent many years as a volunteer organizer for community tech groups such as Code for BTV (a Code for America Brigade), the Civic Cloud Collaborative, Vermont Code Camp, Northeast PHP, Vermont Community Access Media (VCAM), BTV Ignite, and BTV Gig. Although he loved the work, it was incredibly draining, and he’s thrilled to now be able to incorporate community contributions into his paid day job. In his passion talk at Offline Camp California, Bradley addressed the burnout phenomenon that is prevalent among community organizers:

Avoiding Community Organizer Burnout (an Offline Camp California passion talk from Bradley Holt)

Bradley wrote an article earlier this year on the burnout phenomenon and his happy transition from volunteer leadership to professional community organizing, including as a co-organizer of Offline Camp:

Building Community for Fun and Profit

Bradley has a longtime interest in Offline First through his work with Apache CouchDB and PouchDB, which led him to his current role helping developers get started with IBM Cloudant. At our inaugural Offline Camp in the Catskills, Bradley shared a passion talk on Cloudant Envoy, a massively scalable one-database-per-user model for Offline First apps:

Editor’s Note: Participants at Offline Camps have diverse backgrounds and interests, ranging far beyond the Offline First approach that we come together to discuss. Through short passion talks, campers share with us some of the hobbies, projects, and technologies that excite them. We offer you this taste of that passion for as a preview to our upcoming events. Learn more at the camp website or follow us on Twitter for updates.

Camp co-organizers Bradley Holt, Gregor Martynus, and Steve Trevathan celebrate a successful, burnout-free Offline Camp experience. (Image credit: Teri Chadbourne, CMP)