Finding motivation in the tech world
The past 2 years I’ve traveled a lot, and (with some exceptions to see my family) all of my trips were for conferences, Meetups and summits. In 2018 I took 33 flights covering a distance of 86.951 kilometers. According to my Google Maps Timeline that’s 2.1 times around the globe! More than half of those flights were on October and November, or how I like to call it “the conference season”.
A lot of people ask me if “I ever work”. Those that know me better ask me how do I find all this energy. Some others ask me how do I manage with my company and if they’re ok with that. So to answer these questions: yes, I do work, like everyone else. I find the energy to do all these because I love it. When you do something you love, you don’t care if it’s Monday morning or Sunday night that you have to work (and community work is work as well). At Pixplicity, it’s in our DNA.
Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
Today we’re here to confess our love for the tech community and why contributing to it is so valuable to us.
There are days that I spend more time on Stack Overflow than actually coding. And then others I spent more time looking for tutorials, videos, libraries and articles when the topic is new to me. Is it just me? Nope. Is it just our developers? Of course not; we all reach into this communal gold mine of knowledge when we are faced with a challenge.
Isn’t it a bit unfair to be only ungratefully consuming from this community, and never offer anything in return? Moreover, isn’t the biggest problem the lack of participation and empowerment of a community that has saved your skin so many times?
Communities have always been essential.
The cavemen created communities to have better chances to survive. During the 16th century the first school is built. In 1963 more than 200,000 people gather to protest racial injustice.
Each community has its own reason of existence. Some are for learning. Some are for fun. Some others for protecting. They all have one thing in common though; People created them to support each other. This support is empowering every member, and so they can reach a common goal.
Do tech communities work the same way? Absolutely.
During the past years, I’ve met amazing people, from all around the world! But conferences require a lot of hard work and preparation. Giving a talk most of the times require adjusting your content, while on stage, to the audience’s level, so you have to be well prepared. In all the conferences I have 2 favorite parts. The first is the Q&A after the talk and the chat with the attendees after that. It will challenge you to think of problems, that you’d otherwise might never think about. Try to find a solution — sometimes even research it after the conference. Some of those questions ended up in a chat, and that chat to an article or even the inspiration for a new talk!
The second part is the after party. Well… … it’s a party! But it’s not any party. It’s a party where only like-minded people with common interests are attending. You might end up talking about Kotlin co-routines over a beer. Or about the country’s culture. Or how funny that cloud up on the sky is. The outcome of any of those conversations will be the same; you’ll have fun and you bonded with that person. If you’re lucky and you meet again, you’ll end up with a new friend!
When you actively start to get involved in the community, you’ll see that after a while there’s almost always going to be a familiar face among the crowd. After a while, you won’t care if there is one or not, because you know you’ll make more acquaintances there. That joy is what will power you up now on and what will motivate you even more. Because then it’s not just a “faceless” community, but the people you had so much fun with and the people you will have fun with at the end.
This motivation doesn’t reflect only when it comes to the contributions to the community. I fell in love with my job. This feeling though eventually might fade away. I think (or better put: I want to believe!) that this is the natural course things take. It takes a whole community, to keep you energized, inspired and motivated. No matter how deep the fall or how big the frustration, there is a whole community to support you, to share your fears, to encourage you, to acknowledge all the hard work you put… to make you fall in love with your work again. And there’s not a bigger asset for a company than happy, motivated and inspired workers.
Do you know Astro Teller? If not, he’s a brilliant scientist with crazy ideas working for Google X. They refer to those ideas as moonshots. Astro Teller described Google X as a moonshot factory. A factory doesn’t need a place tho, just the materials.
A developer isn’t the person that only writes code. This is the coder. A developer isn’t the person that only makes a program. This is the programmer. A developer is the person that will be taking the technology a step forward. They are the person that will have a working factory in their head. A moonshot factory! And factories need a combination of people to start working.
When I started volunteering at the GDG all my friends and family would keep telling me that I was out of my mind to withdraw into this and devote so many hours daily. As community work isn’t paying you with money, none of them saw that I was actually getting paid. It was with knowledge, experience, acquaintances, job offers, networking, friends and so much more. I was paid with rough diamonds but what everyone saw was just carbon.
“and those who can’t hear the music think that those who dance are crazy”
— Niche
Back then I was watching the Android Dev Summit from my couch, screaming with joy while they were announcing Android Studio 2.0 and Instant run (little that I knew… ), secretly wishing I was there to share my excitement with someone. This year, I made it. If you’re an Android developer you know that there was only a handful of people that got that magic ticket (in total there were probably less than 800 people from the community + the Googlers). During and after the Android Dev Summit, my team and I managed to reach out to all the different Android teams within Google we needed, find solutions and get in contact with the appropriate people for some issues and problems we were experiencing with the platform. Those two days had been productive, exhausting, and fun. It was also the first time I met all the people I met around the world in one place. And almost everyone knew each other, either online or in person, creating an atmosphere that words fall short to describe it. A memory I’ll keep dear to my heart, and that will motivate me for years to come.
