The Power of Personal Growth in Tech Communities: 5 Take Aways for Building Your Community and Providing Real Value
Last week I had the honor to participate in a global event, let by Meetup.com where I was interviewed and shared an uncommon approach, we use at Wix Engineering, for encouraging our community, community members and developers to share their learnings, improving their soft skills, leveraging the power of communication, and growing their personal and professional brands.
Here are 5 takeaways from this event:
- Be open and seek for content: Great meetup groups are those that are driven by passion for their topic and provide value. In a constant search for great stories and big insights, a great organizer is open to and seeks out new and insightful stories.
- “What did you learn?” By focusing on what we learned, rather than just the details of what we do in our jobs, we provide greater value for the community. And ourselves, as part of self learning.
“With great power comes great responsibility” (Uncle Ben)
- Let your speakers focus on their talks, you do everything else: In providing value for our members, we know that with great power comes great responsibility. As an organizer, it’s your responsibility to help your speakers. Whether that’s coordinating marketing, logistics, workshop setup, or a presentation, it’s best to help with anything they need so they can focus on sharing the best content they can without worrying about the extra details, all in the pursuit of providing value for your community.
- Fight the resistance! In his book, Seth Godin (I actually interviewed Seth — you can read the full interview here: The New Resume, Dancing with the Fear of Innovation and Nike’s Brand: Special Interview with Seth Godin) talks alot about the resistance, a negative power within us that present us from accomplish great things. As part of that we all have the tendency to feel that we have nothing to offer others or that our perspective and knowledge is the same as everyone else’s. This is a common mistake (please, stop reading and think about this point) because we have a responsibility to share our expertise with others. When you’re able to help people see the journey that got them to have the knowledge and perspective they have today, you must help them to understand why they’re unique and why their voice needs to be heard.
Leaving our comfort zones is what helps us grow.
- Be like a journalist: Think like a journalist — they’re on the hunt for good stories, but they also have a great ear for whispers of cool things that are happening around us. Look for stories actively.
Here’s the full talk:
Sharing our deep engineering knowledge with the community is part of our culture at Wix Engineering. This is just part of who we are and what we do. We invest in the growth of our developers, knowing that learning new things and leaving our comfort zones is what helps us grow.
Feel free to check out our Meetup group and visit our blog
