#3 Open Diary Of A Young Tech Enthusiast - Tapping Into The Power Of A Globally Connected Community

#3 Open Diary Of A Young Tech Enthusiast - Tapping Into The Power Of A Globally Connected Community

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Tuesday, 27-08-2019. Oh!, wow. Just wow. Long time no see. 6 months from when we wrote our last diary note, it's really not easy keeping up with writing posts, I wonder how others do it. Well, it's all good, at least we came back again to our notes today. So in case you come back to this in future My only hope now is that you have overcome our challenge of writing and you are probably a better writer and already have lots of many other write-ups published by us. If you have achieved this already then I am so proud to be you, I'm glad and proud of us that we were finally able to overcome our challenge of not being able to write stuffs. If you've got any tips for me that you think will make us better than we are in your time and you get access to a means to reach out back in time to me. please do not hesitate to pass all necessary Info across. Thanks, yours you. :D

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Content

Oh, how I wish we had discovered about the power that exist in the global tech community in our early periods of getting to know about tech, especially when we were still doing our undergraduate studies, I am very certain that we would have been far much better in different areas of our journey through tech than we are at the moment. We were only used to the tech community around our local geographical location and didn't go beyond that to tap in the power of the global community. The world through the eye of technology is only but a small global village. Each and every area, people, persons, geographical locations, etc. are all connected by one means or the other, we are not so much far apart. Data flying around everywhere. To get any details about anyone, anything or anywhere is just a simple OSINT (open source intelligence) search away.

Benefits of Being Active in the Global Community

  • Being Active in the global tech community is one way to secure ones future and livelihood in the tech industry. Your name gets to spread far and wide and you never know who might just pick interest in your journey. Your potential destiny helper can easily find you out from anywhere in the world due to your activeness globally.
  • When you are active on the global tech community, you don't even need to talk too much in job interviews, your activities and contributions will speak for you even before you get to the interview. what you will just be discussing when you get there is a reasonable pay you are okay with :D.
  • Being active in the global community bring you global connections and you get to make new friends and network with people from different corners of the world. You just don't know who might connect with that will change your entire story for the better.
  • Giving back positively to the global community is your own way of contributing to make the world a better place. The stronger and better the community gets, the better the world becomes for all and you played your own role to contribute to a better connected world.
  • As an active contributor to the global community, you stand a chance of being invited to different areas of the world to go an impact more lives globally the best way you can.
  • Your contributions to the global community can earn you lots of respect from others in the community and you get to be a role model and mentor to many. ...And now that is one way to live a fulfilled and purpose driven life. You were able to impact many other lives positively. You did not lead a vague life.

There are so many other benefits, I don't even know of at the time of writing this, because clearly we are not there yet. Still working our way through.

My Regrets For Not properly Utilizing The Global Community At An early Time

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Every time when I look back to when we got into the space of tech one regret keep coming up and that is the fact that we had the opportunity to join certain tech communities, back then in school, that would have helped introduced and connected us to the global tech community but we saw no need to be a part of such groups. We preferred to be on our own, more like a lone ranger trying to make sense of things all by ourselves and could not set out time to be active in the global tech communities we had then. Those of our friends and mates who decided then to be part of such groups to give back to the community have been able to build their networks today. They've grown their connections of friends on a global scale. Some of them have gotten the opportunity to go to different parts of the world to make more impacts just as a way of them giving back to the community. They've got connections with strong friends in high places who as got their back and are ready to help them out in times of challenges they don't have to struggle the way we are doing at the time of writing this note. Well, it's still a good thing we got to learn this the hard, at least we now know how it's like from this end and Ofcourse our story will get better soon. Hopefully we now know what we must do to get to the other side and I very much hope that by the time you come back to this diary note, you are already at the other side of things. ๐Ÿ™ƒ

Different Ways To Harness/Tap Into The Power Of The Global Tech Community

All what we would be highlighting here, are all summarized under one caption "Giving back to the community"...

Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

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STUDENTS

  • Join active Tech community groups in your school environment and participate actively: you don't want to make same mistake I made. Back in my time there where just two active tech groups I was aware of and that was Women Tech Makers, WTM, and Google Developers Group, GDG, ( I was not an active participant but rather a passive one, if there's anything as such), but today, in the same school we now have lot's of diverse type of student community groups. We have, The Ingressive community, Student Developers Group (SDG), Github Campus group, Genesys Campus Club, Django Ladies, She Code Africa, SCA, and so many of them today that you have no excuse of a group not being available. At least, I know many of these groups are spread all around Nigerian schools and Africa at the time of writing this note and they would likely continue to expand and there would even be more tech groups as time goes on.

  • Be Humble and Eager To Learn From Others: In any gathering where there are groups of people, that thought of pride and ego will always come. So it's now left for you to break it down and not let it stand in your way. Any place where you are the smartest and there is no one better than you, I think it's about time you left such gathering. You don't always have to be the smartest one in the room but you need to be ready to learn whatever you can from everyone around. Even those you might be better than In one aspect or the other might still have one or two things to teach but you won't learn if you let pride get in your way. Another tip is, Don't conclude that someone is feeling too proud by just seeing them from afar until you approach them and they make it clear to you. Concluding that one is proud because they did not reach out to you with a smile or do what you expected them to do will only bring damage your way and make you miss out on what you should have gotten from them. If you can follow these tips well enough, you will be surprised to see how friendly that guy can be, and you would also get to learn a lot and even faster than when you are just trying to learn on your own.

EVERYONE

  • Teaching Is The Best Form Of Learning: I always notice that whenever I really want to learn any concept, no matter how many times I read about it from different sources over and over again, I still don't get the concept fully until I teach it to someone else and Boom, it all starts to make sense. It's no news that lots of researches have proven it over and over that the best way to learn and master anything is by teaching it to others. You don't need to be a master or guru on that topic before you start to teach it to those who are still trying to learn it. Some ways you can teach others what you know are:

    • Answer questions on Quora: There are lots of questions from different areas of life on Quora. You can contribute to the internet community by answering some questions over there as best as you can.
    • Answer Technical questions on stack overflow: On this platform, People ask questions about challenges/issues they are facing or concepts they are trying to understand. Try to contribute answers and solutions to any of the questions or challenges you think you know about. This way you are giving back to the global community and definitely your efforts will not go in vain. we will talk more about this later.
    • Help Those Around You Instead of Laughing At Them: Help out your fellow mates, developers that are having issues understanding certain concepts or solving certain challenges. Their problem might seem like a minor thing to you, and even laughable, but to them at the moment it's a big problem. So, please help out any way you can. No matter how basic their challenge might seem to you, there's no need to mock them with it.
    • Share your knowledge: Whenever you learn a new concept and you want to make more sense from it, try to look for others around who are trying to also learn that same concept and teach them what you know, it would help you understand it better and will also enable you earn respect from others in the community.
  • Share Your Experience To The World And Earn Respect And Recognition From The Community While At It: From clear observation and possibly casual investigation we see that all those who are known or are very popular and active in this global community is because they give back to the community by sharing their knowledge and experience through one means or the other. When we got into this field of tech, there is this particular person we can't forget so easily, Bucky Roberts. This man was all over the place in the multitudes of tutorial videos we where using to learn how to code; Is it Java, or Python, or C++ Or Html, Css, Javascript, Php. Bucky Roberts had a tutorial for you and he explained the basics very well in these videos that we learnt a lot. I'm sure this popularity from his work brought him respect and lots of money as well. So yea, you can even make more money for yourself by sharing your experience with the community. Sharing of experience is not only by video tutorials. You can share your experience with the community through any of the following ways:

    • By blogging about your journey or experiences in this community. How you joined this community, what are you learning at the moment, Just start up a blog and put up whatever you feel like writing about yourself there that speaks well of you. This is where people will go to get to know more about you, potential employers can browse through your blog to verify your level of experience and expertise in this field. If truly you know what you say you can do, your blog will speak for you and take away the stress of you trying to prove yourself or convince them with long stories. Your Blog can be used to write notes and even tutorials that would end up being useful for others as well as for you in the nearest future not so far away. When you start a blog you really should not care about getting readers at the moment. Instead, start the blog for yourself and write contents for yourself as time goes on others will come to find your contents useful and also appreciate you for your awesome contribution to the community.
    • You can share you experience by giving befitting response to questions that require it on platforms like Stack Overflow, Reddit and Quora. These platforms are awesome places to pass knowledge across to impact uncountable number of persons in the community, even possibly, your answers can also help you in the near future. A good thing about these awesome platforms is that they have their different systems in which you earn recognition, respect, followers, points, etc. for your good contribution to the community by contributing awesome responses. You never know when any of your response will blow up, to reach up to and impact a very high number people in the community. I advice you take Reddit and Quora especially very serious, there is always a way you can contribute on these platforms no matter your current level of knowledge in the community. your respects and points you earn on these platforms are worthy to be added to your resume as a sign of your activeness in this awesome community.
    • Many others also share their experience through YouTube videos. Another popular video platform now is Twitch. You can do live streaming sessions on twitch to impact knowledge on all those who respect your work and look up to you. You can just do live questions and answers session as well just to help people clear their doubts about things and encourage them not to give up just as you did not give up too when you where in their shoes. We all started from somewhere. We were once noobs too, so let's try not to forget how it feels like to be one no matter how much knowledge we've amassed so far.
    • Think of ways to create good contents and give it out to the community. This is a great way to give back to the community. Put in your best and produce quality contents for the community and your efforts will definitely not go unnoticed. Some appreciations in monetary and diverse other forms will come back to you. These contents can be in any form, be it write ups, books, video series, podcasts, software tools that make the community better. It may even be contributing your time. All with the aim of making the global tech community a better place for everyone.
  • Be Open to Connect, and Build a Positive Network with Others globally in the community: Always try to maintain a healthy online presence. Don't be a cyberbully if you really want to be seen as an Icon by all those who look up to you. Of course this doesn't mean that you should pretend to be someone else you are not but its really not bad if you observe courtesy and for the sake of earning good respect and reputation you play nice with everyone you encounter on the cyberspace. Be known for your positive contributions to the community. Strive to build your network of friends and followers on any platform you interact with others. Some of these platforms where mentioned in the previous point. Be humble enough to respond to DMs asking for help in certain areas. Render help where you can or make suggestions to other places you think the help can be rendered. The more positive your interactions are with people, the more they speak positively of you to others and the more recognition and respect you earn from the community. One more final note here is, Attend Meetups; be it local, national or international anyone you are opportune to attend try to make it. Don't just attend but be friendly and open to all. Try to reach out to others, it is an opportunity to meet new people in the community and expand your network and connections.

Wrap Up

It is very obvious that at the time of writing this note, we have not yet fully implemented all of what we highlighted above but at this stage we've seen this work for many others in the community and we've done some personal research on many popular and well respected members of this awesome community. So, this note is more like a checklist which we would come back to once in a while to see how far we've progressed as time goes on and we hope to give all our very best in order to be part of the great shakers and movers in this awesome global community.