[Music]
hi I'm Sophie I'm an engineer at Monza
Bank in London in the UK I'm gonna talk
about the power of the community and how
it's helped me and also how it can help
you and so the way I see it I see the
wider tech community is being made up of
three kind of parts so there's my work
community my online community and my
community of people at meetups and
conferences just like this and I'm gonna
talk to you what these are and explain
how they help me and also give you some
tips on how to make the most of them so
my work community consists of people
I've worked with people I work with now
people I work with in the past and
they've got so much experience and
different backgrounds from me and so
having learnt from them over the past
like four years I kind of I've learnt so
much about things I wouldn't even have
any idea about because you know they've
been engineering for longer than me or
they came into engineering in a
different way from me and I started my
career in a really big company with a
lot of people who had been there for a
very long time and they had a lot of set
ways of doing things that hadn't changed
in years and you know people come along
and say oh let's let's do it this way
and people say oh no and and we actually
brought in a lot of contractors which
you know the people who had been there
forever didn't approve of but it working
with them was actually eye opening
because I got to learn so much about
what other companies were like how other
people did things and you know I made
friends with him I stayed in touch and
when it was time for me to look around
elsewhere those people and some of my
old colleagues were able to give me
advice because they've worked with me
and they knew what I was like and they
knew what I would like so when it comes
to building your work community make
sure that you bring yourself to work so
be honest be genuine and people will
really appreciate that and they will do
the same meet as many people as you can
so a Monday we've got a slack channel
that pairs you up randomly with a new
person each week and what this is great
for is just finding out more about how
your company works and finding out what
different people do and stay in touch
with people when they leave or when you
leave and your network will just widen
and widen and
you never know where you or they might
end up so about the online community
chances are some of us are on some kind
of social network I put money on it that
it's Twitter but you don't have to do
this but it for me it was a game changer
I used to stay away from Twitter until I
so that someone pointed out to me that
it's a bit like radio you can tune in
whenever you want to and so I posted a
tweet asking for advice because I was
giving my first ever talk last year and
I got so many replies of such amazing
information that I turn it into a blog
post and then turn that into a talk
bonus so I've learned so much from
people on these different social media
platforms and if Twitter is not your
thing you could try an online community
like ADA's list or dev - code newbie or
their various slack or discord groups my
tip for that is share interesting
conversation tent that you see it
doesn't have to be your own stuff but it
will spark conversations and it's all
about post quality not quantity
so don't post lots and lots and lots
hoping that people will pay attention
post a few times but really good stuff
or really terrible jokes go down very
well as well and finally the thing I
thought I think has had the most
profound effect on my own professional
development is meeting people at meetups
and conferences just like this some of
them are in this room right now and they
helped me to build up a network of
friends that I can talk to about the
industry about salaries which is a
really important thing to talk about
what it's like where they work and just
understanding what the industry was like
in my area so these friends helped me
realize that I was actually being really
underpaid at my last job and so when it
came to applying for a new job I knew
the kind of figures that I should be
asking for and mentoring at workshops
like code bar which has just started
here in Berlin was fantastic for
strengthening my own self belief and for
dealing with the imposter syndrome that
I feel like is inevitable in this
industry and companies could often be
very singular in their culture so it's
important to meet other people in the
same area as you so you understand what
other places are like and it's really
easy and rewarding to give back to the
community as well whether it's by giving
talks mentoring other people or even
just getting your company to host a
meet-up
I chose my current company company Mons
Oh partly because it hosts so many
meetups and its really community minded
to sum up I owe these communities so
much they helped me to understand where
I want to go and how to get there and
I'm now in a role that I absolutely love
in a in a company I never dreamed I
could work for and I'm just having a
great time and it's because of these
people say thank you to the people that
I've worked with who helped me grow and
helped me move on thank you to the
people online who boosted my signals and
got me loads of really amazing advice
and retweeted my terrible jokes and
thank you to the people in this
community who has supported me along the
way and got me to where I am today
and I'm always happy to talk about this
so you can find me on Twitter I've got
two underscores and then my username oh
you can come up at me after this thank
you very much
[Applause]
[Music]