Multiple roles

In two years of working at Ibuildings my role has changed quite significantly, from ordinary developer (in as much as any of our developers could be described as ordinary) to a day job which involves some development, training, consultancy, brand management, editing our developer portal site techPortal, hosting conferences and events, occasional project leading, and organising our internal developer meetings. Part of this is due to me just gaining experience in general, and also that the company has grown such a lot in the UK during the same time period. But part of it is also that I have been gaining and using these skills in the software community outside of my day job; my employer has encouraged me to do so and now harvests the fruit of my improved skills.

Organisational skills

Over the years, I've organised some monthly meetings with the PHP North West user group, and also some one-off events such as the PHP Test Fest we did as a group last summer. I'm also accustomed to organising some of the PHPWomen meetings and assembling the agendas for those. So now that I arrange our internal developer meetings at Ibuildings, I already know how to book a venue, organise food, organise an agenda and make sure everyone knows where they need to be and when. It feels like a natural progression.

Marketing skills

Running those external events has also meant promoting them to people who might be interested, and linking up people who want to attend them. So I've learned to work facebook, upcoming.org, mailing lists and twitter to reach the people I need to and ensure that the event is a success. I also ran the PHPWomen site for quite some time and now I use those skills to promote the techPortal site and make sure its content reaches people who would gain value from it.

Promotion was a big factor in my involvement for the two PHPNW conferences which ran in 2008 and 2009 - although if you had asked me before I began, I'd have said I was a developer and it wasn't really my thing! Getting out to the various technical meetups and talking about the event was great and now I know how to get an event noticed, I'm doing it for the Ibuildings community events - in particular I'm hosting the Dutch PHP Conference this summer. To trust me with this is far beyond anything I had experience of before moving into this company... but Ibuildings have seen me perform this role as a volunteer at regional conferences and so here I am! Since I'm also a speaker at conferences (another spare time activity), I actually attend a fair few in any given year which gives me the experience of seeing the events and the network of people that I meet there, which all helps make it easier for me to do this job and do it well.

At conferences I also represent the PHPWomen and have brought their exhibition stand to lots of different places, and organise passes and attendance to represent the group.

Coaching skills

I've also been part of the mentoring scheme at PHPWomen, both as a mentee and as a mentor. Between my experiences there and my experience as a volunteer sports coach, it has been a relatively easy transition to start working with and coaching the speakers and writers at Ibuildings. We have such talent here, and it's a privilege to be able to facilitate the expression of that in different ways.

Reaping real rewards

It's been quite a ride and only recently have I really started to realise what a huge career boost it can be to get involved in the community. We think of community as being about "giving", but for me it has definitely reaped some real rewards along the way, and I think this is something that employers and employees alike often overlook. The skills I've gained from my open source and community involvement go far beyond what I would have been able to learn in my regular job - yet most of them now directly benefit my employer on a daily basis.

I'll be examining these and other ideas in more depth when I give a talk entitled "Open Source Your Career" at the TEK-X conference in Chicago in May. Meanwhile, I'd be interested to learn how your team manages to balance contributing to the community vs. the directly revenue-generating development work? How do you encourage your team to participate? What prevents you from doing so? Share your thoughts in the comments, I'd be really interested to hear how this works in other teams!