My takeaways as a Hackathon Evangelist at Hack This Fall 2.0

This pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for many people , and has gifted many with the time to introspect one's interest and develop one's skillsets. With many events shifted to the virtual mode and with learning happening online, there were many things that changed my mindsets about being a STEM major in 2021.One such experience was that I was blessed to be a part of a diverse network of people, who shared a like mindedness for constantly learning , sharing ideas and taking the outreach of communities to the next level. During the pandemic, I had an opportunity to explore different fields, starting from problem-solving to Data science and web-development, and often stayed connected with many people on linkedin. It was not until, I came to be a part of the hack this fall team , that I got acquainted with the real idea behind communities.

What are communities ??

In simple terms, Community is a group ,comprising of like-minded people who have diverse thoughts and outlooks and work towards achieving common goals of reaching a higher outreach.

Recent trends

With the technology industry booming at a rapid rate, there has been a rapid rise in the growth of developer communities and events that require you to work with communities such as ambassador cohorts, volunteering and mentorship programs. Apart from this, community organizations such as MLH, HackThisFall and many more are known to host hackathons, that help in fostering the hackathon culture across the world. In the past one year, Community space has been booming in india. With a greater scope for community engagement and collaboration, hackers in the country are winning the world's best hackathons and going places, creating high impacts by leveraging the "community" mindset. Beginner hackers, have taken the first step of driving change by emerging out of their comfort zones.

Importance of contributing to communities

Communities are important everywhere, because it helps in bringing forward individuals with different mindsets and approaches, who can brainstorm, collaborate and find a solution to problems. This follows the same approach similar to that of "open-source", where different people work on common issues to contribute to improvements in development.

Communities are all about finding solutions to problems through effective collaboration, and with the mindsets of helping each other learn and grow together. Being a part of a community, not only helps you build networks, but at the same time builds your problem-solving skills, since you not only learn to solve your problems, but also become a part of fixing others problems by collaborating.

Some common examples of how organizations have benefitted through community collaborations

The outcome of how successful a community is, is decided by the members who constitute the community. Those communities that provide a Welcoming, accepting, inclusive and a diverse space for new ideas are often known to attract greater talents, and hence retain the talent pool for a longer time and sustain the community in the long run. Taking the example of github, when github started out as a new product, it never had functionalities such as making a pull request, but with effective collaborations from the community, it has developed a wide variety of functionalities, that are used by millions of developers across the world today. This is the ultimate power of "community outreach".

My takeaways from my journey as a "Community Evangelist"

I was initially based on the fact that only learning "DSA and Web Development" would make you a better engineer, with the kind of rat-race I had faced in my college. But becoming a part of hack this fall widened my perspective. The idea of being a part of communities, made me network with a diverse group of people who were like-minded, having different skill-sets, and most importantly, had a mindset of community growth, by learning and growing together as a community. I not only made meaningful acquaintances, but met people who had completely changed my mindsets and inspired me to do better. One such person is @siddharth Dayalwal, who not only mentored me ,but at the same completely changed my mindsets about giving back to the community as a primary goal of my career. As a community evangelist, We had great networking sessions through weekly sync-up calls and HTF-connects, where we had sessions with renowned people like @aditya oberai, @shivaylamba and @dwivicy. We also got to attend many events and workshops by amazing people, that also helped learn new skills. And most importantly, I got to be a part of the famous Github Field Day India,2021 , which was a game changer in my career as a developer and MLH: Local Hack Day. I was able to explore my true potential and also learnt a lot of life skills, such as having a positive mindset,coming out of your comfort-zone, public-speaking, giving back to the community, overcoming imposter syndrome and many more. In the journey of three months, I have not only grown as a developer, But as a holistic individual, who would love to give back to the hacker community and make a difference in the community, through my contributions.

Wishing you all a Happy Hacking!!