Become Involved with Communities
Joining a tech community, whether online, in person, or hybrid, can make a huge difference to your professional life.
Although I had my first management role in 1999, it was joining the InfoQ community as a Java news writer eight years later that really changed my career. I was given access to the editor’s mailing list—an intensely active group of around 40 people, who were smart, interesting, and keen to share their thoughts on anything and everything. Through that list I made many lifelong friends who I regularly have lunch with, or chat to when I’m stuck on a problem.
I also got to attend various conferences including QCon London and other QCons, Craft, JavaOne, and SpringOne. With that came opportunities to meet hundreds of the best minds in the industry, from the US, Europe, and China. I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but when I landed my first CTO role in 2011, QCon exposed me to new thinking around what became the cloud, DevOps and continuous delivery, as well as the importance of psychological safety. It totally changed how I thought about both software and management.
Finding Your Community
It’s easy to overthink when you’re trying to find a community group to join. User groups are often a good starting point because there are plenty of them and they are often friendly communities.
“I would start with why you want to get involved in the community,” advises Carla Gaggini, head of ...
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