Community never gets unfashionable

Enrise

11 februari 2016

communityPHP Benelux 2016 started really well. Cal Evans showed us on his talk by example how important – and will ever be – the value is of PHP communities and other communities in general. Not just to helping in the process of sharing knowledge, but also on making us better in all aspects.

It’s known to everyone of us that being part of a community can make us achieve more. But sometimes we lack on pushing it even further. Sometimes a simple act can make the whole difference: even a simple message to wish success to a friend which is starting a new job or a message to give strength to someone in a difficult moment. The reason being community is not just about technical knowledge, it’s about human relations.

Many people may think they don’t have knowledge to share. In reality everyone does. Maybe you do something a bit different than usual. This bit can be enough to make the whole difference in a processes for someone else.

The world of encouragement is: Share, even though you think it`s not important. If you are not part of an user group because you can’t find it near you: Be the user group, invite 2 friends of yours which has the same interests as you and suddenly this will grow. You’ll have to deal with good problems as, ‘Where to allocate so many people for the next meetup?’

Visiting a conference is all about building an index, which contains:

  • The reference people around the topic in are interested at (usually the speakers);
  • The inspirational people for the referenced people (yes, it`s a cycle);
  • The companies which are making Open Source;
  • The companies you can try to make deals or proposals;
  • People and more people of course, everyone has something to offer, remember?

This index will never stop growing, and this will help you in many processes of looking for more knowledge, new technologies, tendencies, user groups, conferences and many more!

The community will for sure push you to adopt best practices, to learn more, to share more, summing it up, being a better individual in and outside the community.