Community and Growth : Are they linked?
“In vain have you acquired knowledge if you have not imparted it to others.”
Before I start with my journey I would like to give some answers to the most common questions which majority of the people generally don’t let their mind to stop and contemplate about it.
What do you understand by knowledge?
My definition of Knowledge is quite different. I believe that knowledge has it’s worth in extension , not in limitation. This belief of mine has been remarked by the great learned Swami Vivekananda , who devoted his whole life in spreading knowledge. If you limit your knowledge , then at some point of time you will feel that you developed a void in yourself, a void of knowledge and learning of yours . But if you share your knowledge ,inculcate the behavior of spreading it then you will always be able to bridge that void.
What is Personal Development?
Personal Development, this term is simple to apprehend but many of us in today’s era aren’t able to get into the depth of this term. Superficially, Personal Development is the enhancement of one’s skill set and knowledge and that is totally correct . But when you understand it with more depth in combination with self-evaluation and self -realization , you will be able to decode that Personal Development is also about overcoming your weaknesses and making a positive body language which can inspire the rest.
So , these were the two main questions which I wanted that every people who will be reading this article understand it so that they can able to relate my definitions with my own journey because I believe that Experience is your best teacher .
I was completely an introvert girl with handful amount of confidence and presentation skills. Till my intermediate I was totally dedicated to my studies and never much participated in the co-curricular activities happening around me, because at that time I used to think that these all things will distract me from my studies and goals ignoring the very important fact that more exposure and more interaction will give a tint of confidence and development to my personality.
After joining my college, I got impulsive to make my personality more attractive and developed because when you come across various cultured ,confident and talented people around you, you want to cope up with them and so did I. Frankly speaking my real personality development got started at this point itself when I realized that what is the importance and true sense of this term. From then, I started exploring new things and got the positive change in my behavior.
After all the changing time and the changing environment with me also making a dynamic personality, I encountered the term community which stroked hard to my mind and I felt that this can help me somewhat in making a positive and a dynamic personality.
What is community?
When the group of people get the same notion about the worthy knowledge and real personality development, they make a community to imbibe the youth with their knowledge and help the people like me in their overall personality development.
I started my research work that how can I be the part of the communities and make a better involvement in them and that’s how my community journey started. Let’s take a glimpse of my Community Journey .
Introduction to Machine Learning- Community Event with GDG and WTM at Atlan, Saket, New Delhi
The event was named as Interactive Machine learning session with communities and was remarked as my first meetup . There I got a kick to my confidence when I as a team participated in the activity planned by GDG organiser Pranay Nanda and got the chance to speak on the behalf of my team in front of all the attendees present there. In this event I got the knowledge of the main communities of Delhi NCR like GDG , WTM ,GDG Cloud abd DSC. Also I got to know about the Machine Leaning software developed by the Google , Tensorflow.
DevFest 2019 New Delhi
Then my professional life took a turn with DevFest 2019 Delhi where I finally got the opportunity to contribute in the community and be the part of the organizing team. I actively participated in all the social media marketing for the event and also contributed in it with my design skills. Opting for the design track , I became a volunteer of the biggest and the grandest tech fest of India and got the knowledge about Product Design and how to get started with it . Through Devfest I got connected with many elite people like Arpan Garg , Shilpa Garg , Rohan Mishra , Amen Tyagi ,Saurabh Rajpal and Biswajeet Malik.
My first session at Cloud Meetup organised by DSC Galgotias University & DSC GTBIT in Gurugram
Till this point of time I could say that I have imbibed a confidence and self-trust within me . I felt that I got a positive and juvenile body language and an improvisation in my presentation skills. During this phase of realization I got an opportunity to host my own session in an event which was being hosted by DSC Galgotias University and DSC GTBIT. I took the hands on session where I conducted the qwiklab that How can we integrate Google Cloud with Google Assistant. I successfully hosted that session and volunteered in that event.
Cloud Community Day
Another big opportunity was waiting for me , The Cloud Community Day .This time the design work was upon me . I contributed my best with my designs for the event and helped Pranay Nanda and Amen Tyagi in the organizing work of the event. I got the glimpse of the detailed structure of Google Cloud Platform and it’s application . It was grand and for the second time I got the opportunity to meet all the elite people I mentioned in Devfest.
Data on Google Cloud Platform meetup
This was something like a dream seeing with the open eyes. For the first time I visited the Google Office , Gurugram and was privileged to be the part of such a great event as a volunteer of GDG Cloud New Delhi. I got aware about many trending technologies that is being used by Google Cloud and got more insights on Elastic with GCP . The event was jam packed by the professionals , experts as well as the beginners. There were approximately 150 people from different companies, of different technical background and expertise level. I got the golden opportunity of interacting with the experts about their experience and got inspired from many of them.
Voiceflow Meetup, Gurugram
I volunteered in the first meetup organised by Voiceflow Community as I was the member of it .Voice has always been my favorite part and I have a keen interest in acquiring knowledge about the trending technologies of voice and so as I was at the right place . Besides being the volunteer ,I acknowledged myself with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant , the main technologies behind all the voice products . I also got to know that how Voiceflow can ease a voice developer work as it works as a cross platform that can interpret your action both in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa simultaneously with the same code.
I have always been the active and zealous contributor in mostly all of the events of the communities and had used my design skills as the main tool of my involvement and contribution for the community. Recently I have designed the launch post of an online event series hosted by GDG cloud ,Coffee on Cloud . Also I have attended my sessions and webinars by the Design Sundays of Rohan Mishra where I got into the details of UI-UX and what is it’s importance in meeting user needs. Seeing my contributions and hard work and design skills , I was able to become the part of the India’s first community for open source web and mobile developers ,mobile-web.dev . I joined it as one of the member of core team , but my design skills and leadership qualities brought to me the position of a Co-Lead and the Lead Designer of the community.
During this journey , I was successful in implementing my learnings and enhance my knowledge . I started learning Google Cloud Platform by taking the qwiklabs and achieved the title of the Quest Leader by the Google Cloud and earned the swags box from them. After gaining interest in Voice and it’s development , I build my first Action on Google skill and it was globally reviewed and approved by Google Assistant team and I had been rewarded by the Google home , a T-shirt and a badge.
I also took part part in the Round 1 of the Smart India Hackathon and my team backed the 1st position in it.
And this is how I created a small space for me in the communities . Attending all the community events made up my self-confidence and made me the see the mirror to reflect my potential , the team leadership qualities , the thought process of how one can organised an event and make it successful . I have learnt all the this through the communities and all the contributions I have made to it.
Thus , Community played an important role in my personality development and I feel that you can also have the positive and amiable body language if you are able to get the just of what is worthy knowledge and most importantly real personal development.
Connect with me, if you want to know more about the communities and how can you make yourself a community person.
Vanshita Singh
