To Dev or not to Dev

During Tech-Ed I was interviewed by Ruari Plint about South African Communities, in particular on what it means to be a community lead and also on what challenges communities face. The video has been posted on the Tech-Ed Online website and is available here.

The one thing that both Ruari and myself wanted to achieve doing the interview was to raising the awareness and hopefully the motivation for individuals to step into the role of community leads. Being involved is all about Passion, especially around the IT industry and technology, and as importantly commitment. As community leads we are by no means special, in fact our roles are to ensure that the wishes of the various communities we represent is made real. We are driven by the needs of the people we engage with on a daily basis, including driving the content for talks, planning events, representing the communities at events like Tech-Ed, and liaising and speaking to sponsors and companies about the value added by the various communities.

The challenges communities face is involvement and funding. In the case of the Microsoft Technical communities the focus is on revealing and promoting new technologies and products, from a real world perspective. Sponsors are given an opportunity to be exposed in an environment more specific to their products and/or services, without being able to enforce or control the marketing. Events are held by the community, using the community, for the community.

South Africa has currently got a few active Technical Communities:

• SA Developer.Net
• SA Architect
• DotNet.Org
• Information Work
• Business Intellect User Group
• BizTalk Community

If you are not currently involved in a community but would like to learn more, please feel free to visit any of the sites listed above for more information on each.

Crossposted from Diago.co.za