The Communities we belong to...

We are given time to innovate each week and sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't. I really need to get better at not only spending innovation time innovating, but also what I am innovating on. Well, we had a really interesting and fun experience at work yesterday. We were able to participate in Open Space (more information at http://openspaceworld.org/). We weren't given much information as to what the day would entail or what would be expected of us. At the beginning we discussed passion and that maybe Open Space would help Innovation Time to get some real quantifiable results (sometimes the innovation projects got lost and nothing comes of them). We were given 45 minutes blocks to bring up topics we felt passionate about. I brought up C# learning. I didn't expect many people to come to this session.

When the session started in the afternoon, I was surprised at how many people came to talk about C# learning. It makes sense, another team is going to start using C# more and wanted to see what I, a person on engineering using C# everyday, was doing to help in my learning. Our discussion led us to what I was using and how we could all learn what resources and communities others were using in order to stay on top of their coding.

I thought that I had a limited number of resources I used...but then I really looked at the sources I am using. Between blogs, people I follow on Twitter, and my network at work I actually do have quite a few resources. Of course there is the obvious one, I use the book resource that leads to most of my blogs. I feel it is a great resource, I get in-depth training on the basics of C# and I (hopefully) provide what I learn in a blog. 

At work I obviously have my co-workers that I can work with and ask questions of. One, K.C., appeared to take particular interest in me and I ask many questions of him. You could say he is acting as a mentor to me. Strange thing, I have never asked someone to mentor me that is younger than me. I am getting old, but then I guess that happens when you switch careers.

Then I follow other coders on Twitter and try to read their blogs (at least when I don't think that the subject will be a mile over my head). I like getting their perspectives and I hope that the bits of information I get from reading their blogs and posts will help in my learning. I follow (to name a few) Scott Hanselman, Troy Hunt, Jeff Atwood, John Papa, Visual Studio and those are just a few of those I feel can add to my learnings. Hey, maybe one day I will post a question in Twitter and receive a response from those I follow or that follow me.

I was lucky one day and found a retweet from one of those I follow about CodeNewbie (funny that I picked Newbie Programmer). CodeNewbie is a set of blogs, podcasts, Twitter discussions, and probably more that I haven't found out about yet. From listening to the podcast I have already found a couple great communities to use in my code adventure. Some of the stories are similar to mine, 30 somethings that switch careers and trying to learn to code. I hope to take part in the weekly discussions that are held on Wednesday nights and that I will be able to contribute my knowledge gained.

There are more like Free Code Camp (I just started following them and need to check it out more), Evasium Programmers (need to look more into this one too) and the usual Microsoft accounts to help in all things Microsoft. I know my world will keep expanding too.

So, I have a few communities I use to learn, and it continues to grow as I dive deeper into coding. In the Open Space meeting where we talked about what everyone uses, I am not aware of anything used at work for one person to pass along the resource and communities one person belongs to those that are trying to learn C#. Maybe I should start a Slack channel at work, or is there a better way to pass this knowledge on? I need to let others know what I am reading and who I am following. They may prove useful to someone else just starting to learn to code.

What communities have you found to belong to?