Gist of the meetup

Attended Community Classroom's first tech meetup recently and got to meet so many amazing people from the community. The meetup kicked off with deep dive into DevRel as a career, and how brand building can be defined as getting credibility publicly and not gaining followers. Got to know about how to start off as a DevRel by being an active participant in communities, starting with tech talks at college societies and clubs. Broke the myth that you need a big audience to become a DevRel. Next was Kunal Kushwaha's talk where he discussed his journey how he started contributing to open source from his first year and completed all the core subjects of CS by himself. Gained insights about how life goals and career goals are different, and how has he been the "star" student throughout his college time. He also spoke about the power of networking and the numerous ways we can benefit from it. Followed by Kunal's talk there was a session by a student panel on open source contribution. And then there was Khushi's Product Management talk where she explained the difference between product and project management, the deck was very well structured and the analogies used were super impactful.

Key Takeaways

Here are my 5 key takeaways from the meetup -

1. Bottom-Up Approach:
An average student admitted in a 4-year B.E degree follows the top-down approach, which means he enjoys the first 2 years of his college life and in the 3rd year he studies rigorously to get placed in the 4th year. Kunal shared that he has been following the bottom-up approach during his college period, by bottom-up, it means to study rigorously for the first 2 years of college, complete all the core subjects by that time, get placed by the end of 2 years and enjoy the remaining year afterward.

2. Learning in Public:
You must've heard many people saying learn in public but ever though what does it actually mean? Or how can you benefit from it? Learning in public does not mean posting what you are learning on your socials, though you can do that too, but, it means posting some content related to the stuff you are learning and the content should be such that the post attracts the interest of learners as well as professionals from that domain.

3. Importance of contribution to Open Source:
Kunal told how his career growth revolves around Open Source Contribution and its benefits as it helps in networking with people all over the world, helps in learning new stuff in a limited period without being spoon-fed each and everything, and by figuring out the solution yourself by reading documentations and code snippets.

Here is my detailed blog on Open Source Contribution

4. Building Connections:
Open Source, building connections, networking, participating in communities, all these things are interlinked with each other. Kunal told the importance of building connections and the way it can help you a high-paying job if you are skilled enough and are out there speaking to people, solving their tech issues, asking for help from them if you need it, and adding value to the community can directly benefit you as people you've built connections with can give you a referral, an offer at the company or anything that could be of your help if you are skilled enough.

5. Insights into Product Management and DevRel:
Got to know in detail about Product Management and DevRel. Also, no DevRel is not a fad and product management is not equal to project management, got to know how diversified and blurred the work of PM is.

It was a good meetup followed by a wonderful meeting and lots of swags!

Thank you for reading! :) Have feedback? Connect with me on LinkedIn