This post came at an opportune time, as I was invited to participate in Digital Orlando 2016 happening this week, to sit on a panel and discuss community engagement. Outside of work, I lead the WordPress Orlando user group, and am one of the organizers of WordCamp Orlando, having been involved with that organization for nearly the last five years. The community is probably one of the greatest discoveries that I’ve made in my life.
A Very Limited History of david and the Web
I’ve been doing web development since middle school, where around 1999-2000 I discovered HTML. From what I can remember, inline properties were still the way to go. CSS2 was just approved and published at that point, and most guides (and the class that I took that got me interested) were using things like this to center and bold text on a page:
Oh, did I not mention the marquee tag? It was pretty awesome; the height of cool for your personal site in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.
Anyway, away from that tangent, I didn’t start interacting with other people about websites until I started building some for clients. I think around 2004 is when I first got paid to build a website for someone, and I honestly wish that I’d kept better records to show it off. When I first started my web development career (working my way through college but still looking toward the future) I hadn’t even heard of WordPress or other CMS’. I didn’t start using WordPress until early 2008, so think of my earlier, pre PHP and DB based sites as proto-david.
Even after moving onto this platform with a famously charitable community, I wasn’t aware that it existed for another few years. Sure, I used the support forums, but even I was late to the game of correlating text on the screen to real people behind those handles. It took a while to get involved, a bit longer before I met any of these people in person, but then a quick take off when I realized how awesome it was to regularly converse with people who shared a passion with me online.
Enough Tangents, What About Me?
Right, so should you be involved in communities around your interests? The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is yes yes yes!
I absolutely credit much of my professional life and personal successes to the people that I choose to be around, and the time that I devote to helping those communities in any way that I can. I’m not going to write a long post about the many ways that you can give back your time, but suffice it to say if you’ve learned something from someone else, you have something to teach yet another person. A lack of confidence is the biggest reason that I get from people who tell me why they don’t get more involved, even more than a lack of time.
When you demonstrate that you are offering up even some of your time, expertise, or experience to other people without the expectation of anything in return you demonstrate that you are interested in an ecosystem and not just yourself. By being involved you’re absolutely improving yourself by improving that ecosystem, but it won’t be seen as a purely self-serving gesture.
As an example, I’ve gotten paying clients who I’ve given free help to at Happiness Bars at WordCamps (basically help desks for WordPress problems). The conversations all went the same way: “Here’s a fix to the problem that you’re having right now. If you have questions later, feel free to email me.”
Note that in the prior example I did not offer paid services or suggest that I was offering subpar support to a free question. I try to do the best that I can in the limited environment there, and make the offer that if the person that I’m helping has questions later (they will) that they can reach out to me for more help, again free. If it is a complex problem, site build, or something that would take me a half hour or more of work, I suggest that it’s a problem worth hiring for.
How Do I Get Started In a Community?
First, repeat after me: It’s never too late!
There’s always that worry of “Am I too late for this? Did I miss the bus and the opportunity to make money?” Which can be a valid concern, but not here. There are always new people entering a community and older folks leaving. Even if you choose a network or community on the decline, you can follow other participants to the next network and be on the ground floor there. In my case, WordPress is definitely still a viable community to get involved in, with profitable businesses starting up every day.
The way to get started is to find where the people that you want to interact with hang out. In my case it’s Twitter, Meetups, WordCamps, and the make.wordpress.org community. Do a quick search for the thing that you’re interested, and it’ll probably be easy to make a connection to where the people that you want to network with in that field hang out.
After you find the place to be, enter with an open mind. You don’t know everything (that’s why you’re there, right?), so don’t act like it. Be ready to learn, and ready to share. By virtue of your presence, the network that you’ve entered has grown more connected and has a new viewpoint to share. You know something that those around you don’t know, and you can likewise share with them as you learn from them.
What About Personal Life?
Right, I guess I did mention that in the title, didn’t I?
This section is intentionally shorter since I think that these are more straightforward lessons. Use some of this time that you’re creating for yourself. I love the internet enough to make a weekly newsletter about it, and I literally bring my work home. I also make time for myself and for those around me. I take walks, play some video games, read often, and go out to lunch without notifications on my phone or my laptop in tow.
There’s a finite amount of time available for all things, and I block work into times convenient for me. I guarantee that however hard you are working now, you can cut a few hours off of that work time and be just as productive. I’m certainly not a poster child for this, but I’m trying to get better. Using tools like in the previous posts in this series help cut down work time while producing better work. That sounds like a win for myself and my clients alike.
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