Who else is making apps
The brief
Write a 250-300 word post noting your progress so far. Identify one challenge and / or an obstacle and one SMART action to resolve the issue.
My experience in week ten
The source material this week was focused on the importance of communities of practice with regard to our learning and professional development as app creators. There were several different communities highlighted including some analogue examples such as meet ups or conferences and some digital examples such as Stack Overflow and Github.
Utilising such communities to aid my professional development is not alien to me; when I started to grow Antiblanks I knew that relying on my existing client base to bring me work was dangerous and that I would need to grow my network in order to expand my reach and raise awareness outside of this circle. Being a programmer for years prior I was already engaging in digital communities; I was housing all our internal projects on Github and I was releasing some public code (reusable JQuery plugins and such like) and I was also utilising Stack Overflow on a daily basis to get answers for technical issues I would face. I realised though that I needed to engage more in the analogue space and I sought various avenues to network, this saw me subscribe to Business Network International (BNI) and the Institute of Directors (IOD). Both services were useful to some degree but I found BNI to be quite demanding with regard to the level of participation they require and ultimately it became more of a hinderance than a help. Following from this I started looking at more peer led community meet ups; I started by looking for subjects relevant to my practice (web development at the time) and despite visiting many, only the monthly React London Meetup has remained a regular to which I attend today and if I am honest my interest in this is waning.
This weeks content has reminded me of the importance of communities and prompted me to assess more deeply how I can benefit more from these. I realise from my prior experience that time is an issue for me, so the communities I seek are ones that require minimal effort, however in listening to what Professor Heidi Ellis says about community acceptance and how this requires integration and participation, it does make me realise that time and effort is required if I want to make the endeavour worthwhile. Essentially I do need to give a little more back to the communities I use because at present I am only taking, for instance I can’t remember the last time I’ve returned to answer a question on Stack Overflow when I’ve searched and found it’s not been answered and so I have invested the time to work it out myself. Another thing I realise is that my community portfolio needs revision; we’ve just actively moved Antiblanks toward being a more IP led company where the focus is more on apps and experiences, so my communities need to be revised to suit this. The content on Researching Communities by Al Parker helped me to realise that my time wasted with BNI and the IOD could have been saved had I properly researched communities that were more relevant to my practice.
Tying this to my project
In light of my learnings over this week I’ve gone on to seek communities that are more relevant to the types of app that I am creating and the type of technology I am currently interested in. I’ve found both a React Native Meetup and a AR / VR Meetup that I feel will be much better placed for me to attend than my existing meet ups which are too web-centric. Both of these are more relevant to my current practice, have a strong following, meet up once a month or less and do not demand a level of participation which is greater than I can manage.
I’ve created a SMART action to support my active participation in these meet ups:
- Making it Specific: The goal is to regularly attend meet ups that are more relevant to my current practice.
- Making it Measurable: I want to attend one or both of these meet ups ten to twelve times.
- Making it Attainable: Meeting up once or twice a month would fit comfortably into my schedule and opening this up to my colleagues as a regular work outing will force me to keep the engagement.
- Making it Relevant: Both meet ups will keep me abreast of advances within each technology, help to inspire solutions for my app ideas and expand my network both for finding new work and potentially for finding new and useful developers.
- Making it Time-Based: I want to attend all of these meet ups in twelve months.
Summary
In the above post I’ve briefly touched on the communities I’ve been involved with in the past and those with which I am still involved and I’ve noted the good and bad experiences I’ve had across these. I’ve gone on to mention some of the noteworthy learnings from my experiences and this weeks source material and how this has identified the need for me to refresh my active communities and inspired me to seek new communities that are more relevant to my current practice. Finally I’ve created a SMART action to regularly attend two new and relevant meet ups.