My Involvement in the Tech Community

While working with Select Sires, I had a late night chat with my boss and co-workers sometime in early 2013. The gist of the conversation was about all the free articles and videos we were able to use to do our jobs. It occurred to me that I had a responsibility to give back. I started speaking at local events and writing articles about my development experiences.

On August of 2021, I took a course offered by my employer to prepare for my first AWS Certification (external training company). Having never worked with AWS or prepared for any certifications, I found the course to be significantly less than I needed. I also realized that I had six-weeks to pass or have to pay for the course.

I buckled down. Every free minute outside work became study time.

Six weeks later, two days before the deadline, I passed the test!

Along the way, I had been accepted at a conference to speak on a topic I am passionate about, but hadn't written the presentation yet.

The night I passed the test I posted something like, "Passed the test, now on to prepare my conference talk!"

... five days later, I was surprised to find that no-one (not even the conference that I tagged) had responded, liked, or retweeted my post. It felt like I was "screaming into the void!"

That same day, I saw #100DaysOfCode posts all over my feed. It was the same thing; lots of posts talking about success, fears, failures ... an no responses. I took it on myself to reach out to a few people.

In January of 2022, I saw the #100Devs bootcamp start ... thousands of posts on Twitter. There were a lot of people concerned about what they had gotten themselves into.

For four days, I reached out to support as many students as I could. There was no motive other than to help others.

A month later, they started Coffee Chats and I got an opportunity to meet hundreds of those amazing people!