Community Building
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings. This past weekend was Thanksgiving, and today, if you're looking for tech stuff, we have Cyber Monday offers.
This year, I saw more "promotions" around Small Business Saturday than before. I recommend buying from local businesses if you can!
I hope you had a relaxing weekend and managed to rest. We're getting ready for the last weeks of the year.
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Things I discovered in the past week
- Rough notes on learning Wardley Mapping by Will Larson. Wardley Maps are such a difficult topic. While I've seen some folks present them, I never fully understood them or whether the presenter understood them enough to present them.
- I've been watching an unimaginable number of Gift Guides on YouTube, and I'm tempted to get my brother an Anbernic device since he still plays his 3DS and PS1.
I visited another city a couple of weeks ago, and during the visit, I saw many activities that support building community.
That made me think about everything we do at work to build community, implicitly or explicitly. An example I thought about is a meeting we've been running for about five years at this point. It's a low-critical Friday meeting that's more social than anything, but we discuss technical topics with a lower barrier to entry, so new-ish people tend to comment more. Still, everyone gets involved, which is nice.
Other aspects that come into play are participating in open-source projects, meetups, and seasonal events like Advent of Code.
The underlying aspect of finding community is building relationships, finding people through shared interests, or in the case of work groups, sometimes commiserating about the situations that happen.
Sometimes, the community also makes it hard for people to leave their jobs; if you're slightly annoyed at work, you might ignore it rather than those you work with.
Don't stay at jobs that are dangerous or actively damaging you, though! But, people ingrained in the community always leave a "hole" in it. And while we keep in touch with friends outside of work, it's different when you no longer "see" them (in person, slack, etc) 9-5.
We notice more of the community we've built during the holiday season, when people tend to get together, exchange gifts, have potlucks, etc.
Your turn!
In honor of Thanksgiving and the end-of-year Holidays, I suggest you thank people in your community! Reply to this email to let me know how you build community at work if you do or why you don't.
Happy coding!
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