Nice to Meet You, #TechMasters
The tech community that keeps on giving
I’m not always the go-getter type. Luckily for me, several opportunities managed to find me instead; one was a double internship in Hong Kong at which I learned the LAMP stack from scratch to co-produce a video-recording system, and several years later I’m now finding myself making headway into my career as a front-end developer. Between then and now, I learned a lot more about myself such as my willingness to learn challenging skills, my tendency to follow likable people who are more intelligent and perceptive than me, and a preference to harmonizing tense situations rather than avoid them, among other things.
I look back fondly at my past job experiences, even those tense times when I felt powerless, but made it through on my own. Lately, however, I’ve been longing for a means to attain my goals faster. After following like-minded people on Google+ and Twitter for a few years, someone eventually posted a link to the TechMasters Slack group. At that time, there were 400 members, mostly from Toronto like me. Instantly, I was caught up in the multiple links, shares, discussions, and meetups. How did I go this long without them?
After attending some meetups, debugging code with others, sharing opinions, observing others’ input, discovering podcasts, and stepping into open-source development, my learning has accelerated tremendously. The community brought me more than I bargained for, so it is time I give back! Read on and meet some of the folks that make TechMasters a great place to be.
Meet Some of our Community Members
Every Friday, we have a weekly discussion around a particular topic, and a considerable amount of our members contribute to the discussion directly or tangentially throughout the day. In our first weekly discussion on July 22, 2016, the community members shared their work environments and workstations.
Let’s start with a View —@jamonation
Beginning with community member jamonation, who can be productive even in the forests of Canada:
About Jamon:
Real name: Jamon Camisso
Work: SRE/devops
Lives: Abroad
Enjoys: Cycling, Home Brewing, Baking
Open-Source Projects: jsyslog and go-tls-check.
How TechMasters adds value to Jamon:
Keeping up with tech community back home in Toronto
Advice for the community:
Nothing ever works out of the box the way you intend it to.
Home Office Retreat — heidi valles
Continuing in rural Canada, heidi made a zen space complete with diffuse lighting and a mahogany-flavoured desk. This ought to carry through a full-stack project with unlimited flow:
About Heidi:
Real Name: Heidi Valles
Work: Freelance Developer and Web Accessibility Consultant
Lives: In the countryside of Pembroke, Ontario
Enjoys: Making music, writing
How TechMasters adds value to Heidi:
As an isolated, remote worker, it’s great to have a forum to connect with other developers to talk shop or simply socialize. It’s also a solid networking tool to find and connect with folks for freelance gigs or side project collaborations.
Message for the community:
I would love to collaborate with any devs interested in assistive tech/accessibility-based projects.
Developer/Parent Extraordinaire —@davi.m.f
Next, we have davi.m.f always at the ready to write a few lines or feed their developer-in-training:
About Davi:
Real name: Davi Morais Ferreria
Work: University Professor
How TechMasters adds value to Davi:
Networking-building.
From the Land of Poutine — @simon
Here we have simon showing us how to bring the office anywhere, fully-loaded, and under 3 pounds. They’re always ready to discuss the elephant in the room: PostgreSQL. No database is too inaccessible, and no elastic search is too difficult to wrangle:
About Simon:
Real name: Simon Grondin
Work: Backend Software Development
Lives in: Montréal
Open-Source Projects: unblock.us.org and bottleneck. Simon is also a founding member of okTurtles.com and contributes to okturtles/dnschain and okturtles/group-income-simple.
How TechMasters adds value to Simon:
A mix of laughs, good links and sometimes even good conversations!
Dependable Website Builder —@amanullah
amanullah has a small arsenal of screens and pencils. Everything a full stack developer needs:
Unicornishly Knowledgeable and Skilled — Andrew Moore
Next up is the unassuming workstation of awmoore, who is always at the ready for any networking, system operations, or security need. After experimenting with several setups, simple proved best with this configuration:
About Andrew:
Real name: Andrew Moore
Work: Head of IT
Lives in: Colorado
Enjoys: Traveling, Copy Editing, Community Technical Advising, and Reading (Technothrillers, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Cyberpunk, and Fantasy)
How TechMasters adds value to Andrew:
Allows me opportunities to periodically identify questions and conversations that pertain to my interests and expertise, enabling me to strengthen the knowledge I have about said interests and expertise by providing answers and insights on subjects I care about.
Advice for the community:
Every company or group providing a product or service could make use of having a blue team mentality, no matter how big or small they are.
Office of Chill —@bmaca
Toning the dial down to -11, a hefty bottle of R&R is very conducive to bmaca’s regex productivity:
Tower of Computer Power — Jonathan Walsh
I’m surprised there was enough space on the upper shelf of this treehouse. walshie even managed to complete the setup with a mobile restroom on top!
About Jonathan:
Real name: Jonathan Walsh
Does: SAS
Lives in: Toronto
Enjoys: Reading, Walking, and Fasting
How TechMasters adds value to Jonathan:
Creating connections and sharing news articles and events.
Working on the Next Big Talk —@jlord
Is this an office or a sanctuary? Only jlord knows, as they come up with the next big JavaScript breakthrough at spiriadigital.
About Joel:
Real name: Joel Lord
Work: Technical Director at Spiria
Lives in: Ottawa
Enjoys: Programming and tinkering with hardware. Being an ex-programmer, they can do some cool stuff at home without the pressure of deadlines or costs.
How TechMasters adds value to Joel:
It’s a very active community that is always there to help us with technical problems, but it’s also a great place to hangout for chit chatting.
Last, but not least — Ahmad Nassri
The founder of TechMasters and an always-connected individual; Ahmad is never too far away to manage the community. As VP of Engineering at Mashape, everything you see here directly facilitates a means to the end of a day’s work: a decked-out multi-tech clubhouse complete with open-source and geeky paraphernalia.
About Ahmad:
Real name: Ahmad Nassri
Work: VP of Engineering at Mashape
Lives in: Toronto
Enjoys: All things open-source, travel, teaching, and dog walking!
Open-Source Projects: Currently focusing on NodeJS, published 33 Packages that were downloaded over 10 million times per month!
How TechMasters adds value to Ahmad:
Community-building, mentorship (both ways), insightful conversations and discussions, minus all the noise of social media.
Advice for the community:
Never stop learning.
What’s your setup like? What brings you to the world of tech? Join the conversation at https://TechMasters.chat/ and introduce yourself! I hope to meet you soon! 🍍
