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Why participate in community life and how does it help professional growth?

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It’s great to participate in the life of a professional community for several reasons: you can discuss work there, ask for advice, find like-minded people, and even friends, pump over speaker and organizational skills, and, in the end, it's just interesting.

I’ve been organizing GDG events (Google Developer Group) for several years now, so I can tell you a lot of interesting things about the community’s internal cuisine, organization of conferences and, of course, how this helps in professional development.

Background


It all started like this: in 2014, I became interested in mobile development (before that I was developing a backend in C #). I had an Android smartphone, so the choice fell on Android development, and I began to actively study Java. And how can you quickly understand the technology? Take and participate in some hackathon when you have a goal and you need to quickly give out the result. My friends were just going to the hackathon in Minsk, and I went with them.

Among the organizers of the hackathon were the guys from GDG Minsk. At first I thought that they work for Google, but then I found out that they are simply addicted to Google technology and organized a community that helps others learn them.

Why should people be part of a community?Community is just one of the tools that helps you grow. First of all, communities provide an opportunity to build relationships. For me, networking is generally the main goal of events. You meet new people, you are discussing something. Then, when you need to ask something, you know who to contact, or at least write a chat. And they will most likely help you, because you have common interests, similar problems. Community is a tool of socialization, as it gives people a reason to get together, discuss something important and interesting. “Let's just get together and chat,” well. And when there is a more or less specific topic or an interesting guest - another thing.

After learning about the GDG and what activities they conduct, I began to find out why we, in Nizhny Novgorod (then I lived there), have nothing of the kind. Why did all the hackathons I participated in take place anywhere, but not in our city? In fact, some events took place in Nizhny, but, it seemed to me, they were not very noticeable, and I decided that something needs to be done with this. I had my local goals - I wanted to develop, pump my skills, and globally I wanted to raise the status of Nizhny Novgorod as an IT city, where many different events take place, where famous speakers come, not only from Russia but also from other countries. And I thought: “Why not open the GDG chapter with us?”

It turned out that there was nothing complicated in starting. Here's what you need to do:

1) leave a request for opening a chapter on the official website of GDG ,

2) wait for a regional manager from Google to contact you, who oversees the community in Russia. You call up, they ask you where you work, what experience, why you are interested in developing the community. Interviewing is not difficult: it just needs to be clear that you are ready to take the initiative and do something. How, when and on what topic to hold the event always remains at the discretion of the local community leaders. The main thing is to do something. If the community is open, but inactive, that is, nothing happens for a very long time, it is closed.

I launched the Nizhny Novgorod branch of GDGin May 2015. Then in Russia there were about 10 chapters, I don’t remember exactly already, now, by the way, it’s already 33. We can say that I am one of the oldest leaders. Moreover, at the time of the opening, I was not an expert in any of the Google technologies. By that time, I had been developing for Android for about a year, and that was only in my free time.

The organizer of the community does not have to be a cool expert: it is not necessary to speak at the events yourself, you can always invite experienced speakers from the outside. A community leader is, rather, a person who can gather everyone in one place, organize a report, energize. It is important that you like the technology by which you make events, then, firstly, you will be pleased to do it, and secondly, it will help to develop by leaps and bounds. For example, I was very impressed with Google products, and the more I found out about them, the more I liked them.

And about a year ago, I moved to Moscow and joined the development of GDG Moscow .

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Inner kitchen: where to get topics, speakers, budgets


The community’s life is organized like this: you gather at meetings, get acquainted, then communication moves to chat rooms — some topics are constantly discussed there. After a while, you meet again at events, and if someone is interested, he slowly joins and begins to do something too. Someone becomes a speaker, someone connects to the organization.

The main issues that the organizer faces are what to conduct, on what topic, where to get speakers and a budget. I'll tell you everything in order, as an example of how this works in our community:

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  • Themes and formats


There is an official framework that Google has set for GDG: events need to be held at least once every three months. But if you want the community to develop, to learn about it, of course, you need to do something more often. In Nizhny Novgorod, we tried to hold at least one event per month. In Moscow, we also try not to lower this bar, but so far it does not always work out. Especially now, in the era of self-isolation, when offline events remain an unattainable dream. The life of the community at the moment has completely moved to the network, for example, soon (namely on May 13th), together with GDG SPB, we will conduct a joint online meeting on the future of mobile development . Welcome, as they say :)

And if you look at the picture as a whole, not taking into account the current difficult situation, there are many reasons for mitaps. A global event is taking place (for example, Google I / O or Android Dev Summit), a new product is launched, or a new version of something is released. All these are reasons to gather. You can watch the broadcast together, and then discuss it. You can invite an expert who attended a global event and ask him a question. You can simply discuss experience with the product: what are the opportunities, pitfalls.

Or, for example, a request arises from the members of the community: "Let's make a mitap using such and such a technology." And we take and do. If the topic is in demand, after some time you can meet again - this will already be a series of mitaps. So we had with Go - we did a mitap every two months.

GDG is an international community. Therefore, when you do not know what to do this, you can spy on what is happening in other locations, and take some ideas for yourself. You find yourself in a large family, where you can always ask for help.

There are global programs that come up with Google, make up guides and then offer local communities to use them. Then the event takes place immediately around the world. For example, there is a type of StudyJam workshops - they are prepared by specialists from Google. Using such a system, we conducted Android StudyJam, Cloud StudyJam, Flutter StudyJam. In April, I was going to hold a Firebase StudyJam, right in the Moscow office of Google, but COVID confused my plans a bit. But I believe that soon everything will work out, and I will definitely spend it.

Formats of events can be different: meetings, master classes, hackathons, joint viewing of online broadcasts, large conferences. It all depends on us.

  • Speakers


Where to get speakers? There are several ways. Firstly, they can be raised within the community: find those who are interested in speaking, listen to them, and give feedback. They will train at local meetings, and then you can go to the conference.

Secondly, there are already experienced speakers, and they can also be invited. Calling a famous and sought-after speaker is quite difficult, as his time is scheduled for many months in advance. Here, personal acquaintances play a very important role. If a person knows you, he would rather agree to speak than the one you are unfamiliar with. Therefore, networking is so important.
And, by the way, right now, it’s much easier to call a famous speaker to your mitap, precisely because life has moved online. For example, at the next event, about which I spoke above, one of the guests will be Matvey Malkov from Google UK, pulling him out to speak offline would be, I think, much more difficult.

Another great opportunity to meet speakers and make contacts is a trip to some major international conference such as Google I / O. There you can catch a famous speaker on afterparty and interpret. And then some time after the conference, write to him: “Hello! Remember me? You and I drank beer on I / O. I’m doing an event here, do you want to come? ” And often, experts agree - personal contacts save. The main thing is to invite speakers in advance, for example, for six months.

And of course, you can become a speaker yourself - it happened to me.

  • Budgets


Community Development - Volunteer Activities. Nobody pays for her. There are only benefits in the form of useful contacts, swag and sometimes trips to events. But it’s clear that you won’t spend a good event without money - you won’t bring a speaker, you won’t feed people. Therefore, for example, you can ask Google for money - write: “I want to spend such a thing, give me a little money,” send a plan and an estimate. Google sets budgets, but usually not big ones - a necessary minimum.

So, if you want to hold some big event, you should look for partners - contact the IT companies, talk about the community and offer to hold something together. You come to the company and ask: “What technologies are you interested in? Let’s give you a speaker, a platform and cookies, and another speaker and an audience from us. ” It’s always easier to make affiliate events, and it’s good when it’s beneficial for everyone: a company can show itself, talk about its projects, people can learn something new and eat cookies, speakers can speak, share knowledge.

When I began to develop GDG in Nizhny, after some time I personally knew all HR and DevRel in all Nizhny Novgorod companies. Now I am in Moscow and am also making contacts, but here this process will not be so fast - there will be much more companies. And again, in Moscow, unlike other Russian cities, there is a Google office, and you can hold meetings there.

What the community leader does: Case study DevFest


I organized the first big GDG event in Nizhny alone. It was a DevFest conference for about a hundred people. Everything took place at the hotel, there was the necessary equipment, catering, and it was only a matter of finding speakers and promoting the event.

And next year there were already four people in the organizing team, and we decided to organize a larger DevFest, for 500 people. We did everything ourselves, up to setting up the equipment and laying out cookies on plates. By the way, exactly in that year EPAM appeared in Nizhny Novgorod, and we had a speaker from the Minsk office of the company. 500 people failed to gather, but more than 300 developers came.

Every year the scale increased. In 2019, my last Nizhny Novgorod DevFesttwo days passed and gathered more than 500 developers, 23 speakers, and some of them were from abroad. And all this happened with the support of 13 IT companies. On the day of the event, we ourselves did almost nothing on the site, contractors did everything.

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This is what organizers usually need to do.


Preparation begins a few months before the event. You need to decide on dates, start correspondence with speakers, prepare partnership offers, start looking for a site. As a rule, these things are done “in the background” and do not take much effort.

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The most fun begins a couple of months before the conference, when you need to announce the program, produce promotional materials, solve problems with partners. You sit at the main work, write the code, and in your head: “In the evening, you still need to do this, to get in touch with why the speakers aren’t given a visa, half of the stand area that you already sold to partners was closed for your needs, so what do?" In general, the closer to the conference, the more difficult. Especially when you have little experience and this is not your main job.

How the community helped me


I spend quite a lot of time and energy on community development - I either constantly prepare reports or somehow participate in organizing events. It takes almost all the free time, but it's worth it. Here is a short list of what has given me participation in the life of the community:

  • I met a bunch of interesting people, and I always have someone to turn to


Thanks to the community, I had a huge number of acquaintances in Russia and abroad. Slowly, at meetings, conferences are getting better. I was on several Google I / O, as I said above, and there for me the main task always was not to listen to the reports (they will later appear on YouTube anyway), but to communicate, get to know each other, establish contacts. And I always know who to contact if I have technical questions. Sometimes I can directly ask something from a person who develops a product that I use - this is valuable.

  • I found a work area to my liking


Participation in the community helped me decide on the direction that I am currently engaged in - this is Flutter . If it weren’t for the GDG, thanks to which I learned about new Google products, maybe I would never have known about this technology. And now this is my main job - I am a Flutter developer, and recently began to officially develop this competency in EPAM.

During the conference, often something goes wrong, breaks down. The situation can be aggravated only by the fact that you are also a speaker at your own conference. That is, you need to make a report, and they run up to you and say: "The electricity has turned off, the boilers are not working, the coffee machines are up." And you run to look for an electrician. One such experience was enough for me to understand that I would never give a presentation at my conferences.

Usually a week before the conference you think: “That's it, I will never do this again.” And then the event passes, and you get a huge charge. People come up, thank, are interested in when there will be events, they say: “Well, before we didn’t have this, but now we have it, and that's cool.” And you think: “How awesome! We need to prepare for the next conference. ”

More than 2000 people attended the GDG events in Nizhny Novgorod while I was the organizer there. Active members of the community who regularly attend meetings, write in chats that you already recognize - about 50-100. It seems to me that in the IT party in Nizhny there is no person who does not know about GDG. In Moscow, it’s more difficult with this, since there are much more IT companies, communities, events. But I am actively working on visibility, and I hope soon more people will know about our community and come to our events.

  • I have new hobbies (which, however, are related to work)


If it weren’t for the community, maybe I would never have become a speaker. Because I would not know that it’s possible and it’s not so difficult - you just need to take and try to perform. Mitapas, which you organize yourself, are a good opportunity to train your public speaking skills. I started with my meetings, then I spoke at my own conference, then at conferences in other cities, and so I slowly got to international ones.

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Most recently, I represented Russia at Flutter Europe , before that I spoke at Mobius , TechTrain , DartUP , Rolling Scopes , our ITsubbotnikin Moscow, at DevFest in several cities and countries. Now I'm getting ready for the next season, I hope that conferences will be able to return offline, since it seems to me that online events, for all their charms, do not give such an immersion as offline.

I also participate as a presenter in two podcasts - Mobile People Talks and Flutter Dev Podcast . We launched Mobile People Talks with colleagues from EPAM, at first we talked on the air ourselves, and starting from the second season we began to call guests. For example, recently Katya Petrova from the Submarine came to us, was also the creator of Kotlin Andrei Breslav. Being the host of a podcast is an interesting experience: while you are preparing for the release, talking with the guest, you will learn a lot. From 500 to 2000 people from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and many other countries listened to each of our releases.

  • I became more confident


When you work a lot with partners, contractors, speakers, you begin to feel more confident in communicating with people. And then, feedback after events is very warm - when they come up and say “thank you” or write. When they ask questions after reports and do not let go for a long time - for me this is the most important indicator that everything was possible. And you immediately feel better and understand that everything was not in vain.

Here are some communities and conferences that I recommend paying attention to mobile developers:

Google Developers Group


As for the Flutter technology, I recently created a channel in which information about all events related to Flutter and held in Russian appears : FlutterRussia , I hope it will be useful.

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