I didn’t always start out in this industry as a “community” guy.  Actually, even when I was a student at the University of Northern Iowa, I really didn’t do much participation with any of the get-togethers or “club” scene within the Computer Science department.  Most of my interaction was always done outside of the building where that department was housed.  Years of isolation and wanting to feel more involved with the technology scene, I felt it was needed to make a push external to my employer.  At the time, this was rather radical due to the fact that external technical community involvement was rather frowned upon.  The ego-driven nature of many departments and the general push towards self-reliance within started to cause a rift to form between my direct management and even with some of my team members.  I remember certain times where just thinking about attending a regular local VMUG meeting, even with my immediate tasks completely to ensure I had the time to attend.  It wasn’t long afterwards that I finally started forcing conversations about it that I agreed to present for the first time at one of these events.  As you would imagine, I caught the bug with community involvement and it wasn’t much longer after that I received my first vExpert award.  I left that position shortly afterwards too, as these sorts of things were still points of contention.

Fast forward a few years and I finally had an employment structure that not only encouraged involvement, but also felt it was net positive to not just myself personally, but to the business I worked with.  In the right hands, influence can be a powerful thing in not just the technical communities we are involved in, but with places we do may do business with.  To some, we offer a level of credibility that can be used to many advantages.  I’m never going to say that my existence with my current employer was the tipping point for any sort of business deal, but I can’t help but think that building a good reputation certainly can’t be used against you.

So, what happened between now and then?  I stated I got involved, but what specifically did I do between leaving my previous role and what I currently do now that is so drastically different that I’ve been able to accelerate my career in ways I never would have thought possible five years ago?  After many moments of reflection, I remembered a conversation I’ve had recently with a very influential gentleman (and I’m not just talking about his bourbon ways either).  You may know the gingered one, Mr. Josh Atwell, from his popular webinars and presentations related to all things DevOps and still bringing up some coding components from his memory banks from long ago when we used to try to beat Luc Dekens to all the questions in the VMware PowerCLI community forums.  Back in July, the both of us were in Indianapolis for the Indianapolis VMUG UserCon.  I had given a presentation on DevOps and IT culture earlier in the day and Josh was about to give his closing keynote.  I don’t recall the exact quote, but we were talking about how things were going and that things were starting to accelerate rapidly with my public persona (as well as my corporate/private persona with my current employer) and I was told (again, butchered and horribly paraphrased), “You are doing what you need to be doing.  Right now, that’s just showing up to events.”

So, you want a good piece of advice to your career and how community involvement can take it to a whole new level?  Just show up.  You may not be ready to actually start getting your hands into some of the involved pieces of community involvement, but sometimes, the first step is just attendung user group meetings or meet ups in your neck of the woods.  Sooner or later, you start to get recognized, just due to physical proximity.  Who knows, maybe you can get inspired to challenge yourself with overcoming your fears of public speaking by offering to do a small presentation for one of those user groups or meet ups?  Perhaps a spark from a conversation topics prompts you to open up a WordPress account and start a blog?  Even better, maybe you continue down the tracks in multiple technologies and get recognized by their influencer programs?  You could move on to being invited to speak to larger and larger events.  By chance, maybe you get a Twitter follow from Stephen Foskett and end up on a delegate panel for a Tech Field Day event.  Like a great many things, before you can experience steps two through infinity, you need to start with step one.

So, show up.  That’s my advice, even if I’m stealing it from Josh.  Show up and who knows what could happen.  Honestly, the worst thing that could happen is that we may buy each other a pour of Blanton’s and wax philosophical about DevOps for a while.  What you do after that, I leave that to you.  🙂