If you have seen some of the projects that I am working on, or the content that I have been creating throughout the past months, you might wonder what gets me so excited about creating this content, about my work, and sharing my learning experience publicly.
A month ago, I came across a Google Docs that I wrote nearly two years ago when I moved from technical writing and engineering work to developer evangelism. I wrote this in response to a question I got from my manager at the time.
"Where do you see yourself in 3 years?"
I am highly impressed by the thoughts and passion of my 'past self' and thought that it would be nice to share with you. Note that this is a 1:1 copy so excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes etc.
Enjoy.
Where do you see yourself in 3 years?
“Knowledge Circuit” - An analogy
The people who inspire us the most, who get us moving, explore new topics, places, and skills, have one thing in common, they share information with us. Information that has either been inaccessible or unknown to us prior to the encounter.
If we close ourselves off to new encounters, we disregard the possibility of widening our own understanding, and ultimately becoming trapped in the same state that has guided our actions in the past and the present. However, it won’t suffice for the future.
To widen our knowledge circuit, our understanding, our perspectives and biases, we have to engage with people who are in a different state to ours. Only then we are able to discover unexplored terrain of information that will allow us to reshape our present.
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Where do I see myself in 3 years (in the most general way)
- Working with skilled people, and open thinkers;
- Participate in the project planning and execution;
- Visualize the technical architecture in easy to follow diagrams;
- I want to gather knowledge, reshape and share everything that I can learn with the people around me, and ultimately get those, who have yet to explore the use of the technology I am working with, excited about its potential;
- Most importantly, the goal is to empower developers, users and non-users alike, to be able to do something they would not have been able to do without my input.
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A knowledge circuit is an intermediary, who gathers and reshapes information and knowledge for the following purposes (continuing the analogy):
- To “manipulate” (doesn’t have to be negative),
- To engage,
- To teach,
- To learn and explore perspectives that have yet to be thought of with the same information,
- To share.
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Overall, I perceive development skills more as the means to an end rather than the sole focus within a project. The process can be the path and the goal at the same time. Throughout development, maintenance, and adding features, there is no clear cut as to when a project has been finished. Thus, it is crucial to not only continuously participate in the reshaping of the information that has guided the development, but also to develop and foster the gathering, maintenance and sharing of information, which allow new people to add value to the project; since without it, it won’t suffice for the future.
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As for those reasons, I want to develop the skills to be a technical writer; to communicate, educate, and most importantly, engage people with the applications that require the input of information from different fields to develop technical-rigorous applications.