Of Tech Community, Mentorship and Servitude: Three things to get started
I am writing this with a great sense of fulfillment in my heart. As you all know, I am big on communities, not all of them, but tech communities, not all the tech communities, but those aligned to Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence. Then I thought, why not share what it takes to get to where I am and beyond?
In this article, I will share three core things you need to take with you on this (tech) community service journey. By the end of the article, I beg that you take one of them and start taking action TODAY!
- Take time and evaluate your key impact area
When I started my tech community contribution journey, I couldn't choose a key impact area I was just all over the place. There is a quote that says, “What gets measured, gets done.” That means if you identify a key impact area, you can measure that impact.
After a while, I started leaning toward supporting speakers, and what better way than through understanding how to run a Call for Papers/Presentations (CFPs). This meant from choosing the tracks and thematic areas, setting it up on a platform like Sessionize, running Speaker training and preparedness sessions, evaluating and selecting CFP Submissions, preparing the Event Schedule, and supporting speakers before, during, and after the event.
I grew into this by taking the lead during the inaugural AWS Community Day Kenya 2024, WriteTheDocs Kenya Summit, and supporting the CFP during the AWS Student Community Day 2024, DevOps Days Nairobi. This culminated in being the lead within the Organizing Team for the recently concluded Africa DevOps Summit 2024.
2. To Lead be ready to be Led
One thing I see people do within some tech communities and is so sad is either being too clingy on community leadership and role rather than using it as an opportunity to grow more leaders. Without chills, I can say I have witnessed this in some tech communities in Kenya. What did I do? I left them without looking back and with no regrets.
Since I am in several tech communities, I am not a lead in most of them and those that I got into the leadership or management was purely out of the goodwill of its leaders and the members. I am now a manager within Nairobi DevOps Community, an Organizer within WriteTheDocs Kenya Community, Atlassian Community Leader for Meru ACE, Mentor at DadaSTEM, Student Membership Coordinator at Projet Management Institute — Kenya Chapter and Special Programmes Committee Member at ISACA Kenya Chapter just to name a few.
I believe in the next few years, there need to be people who can take over from me in most of these roles.
3. Have a relentless bias to action
We know most tech communities run on the passion of their volunteers. It is rare to see a community where its core members draw their livelihoods entirely from the communities they lead or serve. This means that as a leader, you can’t leverage the underhand tactics that are prevalent in the corporate world simply because that person’s career and income are at stake. I detest tech communities where leaders are very good at setting up planning meetings sometimes to the point of having a meeting to plan when to sit down and draw a plan.
As a Community Leader, there are decisions you just have to make yourself and run with them. Volunteers within a community will be ready to support tasks and actions that are well laid out. Communication and transparency are key at each point of a specific initiative. Whether you are organizing a key annual event, or a weekly workshop/meetup the most important trait as a(n) (aspiring) leader you need to show the same dedication whether or not sponsorship money is involved.
Your core team can easily detect fakeness and dishonesty from you however hard you try to keep them under wraps so take the high road and stay honest and remain authentic.
Wrapping up: Now what?
Let us recap what I just shared with you:
There are three things you need to take with you in your tech community contribution journey.
- Take time and evaluate your key impact area, it matters a lot.
- To lead be ready to be led otherwise, you won’t have anyone to lead.
- Have a relentless bias to action, the world is full of talkers and “planners”.
Where do we go from here, I begged you to take one of the three and start implementing TODAY and the question would be how to do it.
For each here is the first step you can take:
- To evaluate your key impact area, look back on the part of your volunteering that gives you the most fulfillment. Is it serving attendees at the registration desk? Is it making sure everyone is communicated to? Is it making those stunning design and posting them on the community social media? Is it being in the limelight as the MC and the host of an event? We can go on and on…
- To be ready to be led, check that community you have people looking up to you or one that no one knows you. Offer to set up that virtual meeting and send the invite to attendees. Offer to set up the community website and official emails. Offer to reach out to prospective speakers. Offer to set up that monthly newsletter. Whatever it is, just offer…
- Have a relentless bias to action by calling out inaction and setting an example on taking action. Don’t procrastinate anything that can take you less than 5 minutes to do, prioritize anything that takes more than 5 minutes, and add all that you need into a task manager like Akiflow, Todoist, Asana, etc. I have Akiflow and it keeps me in check.
- Bonus: Develop tiny/atomic habits. If you have read any habits book, the message is usually clear. Develop systems and the habits will follow as James Clear said in Atomic Habits. As Dr. BJ Fogg of Tiny Habits said, you can anchor your new habits on existing habits e.g. After I brush my teeth, I will review the latest cybersecurity news and share with my community. After I am down with lunch, I will review the community email I manage for any correspondence.
