28 September 2024
Recently, I realized that I have been doing some of my favorite and most important work in founding, designing, running, and growing communities, but I did not properly capture this in my portfolio. I set aside a couple hours today to correct this, even though they are projects that feel impossible to summarize within a single page each.
Here is the latest document with these additional community pages that attempt to speak to the what, why, and how of this meaningful work. As my career advances, I find myself valuing this “soft skill” work above all else and am moving towards a more people-focused position over a graphic and process one.
Transparency has always been a value I’ve taken seriously in both my professional and personal lives. I’ve written about my journey (the big wins, the bigger challenges, and everything in between) through these communities before and the role I’ve played in each. For this post, I wanted to list out these other posts and provide a bit of a high-level summary to go along with these new portfolio pages.
In 2015, as a front-end developer, there was a severe lack of diversity within tech leadership roles. Besides being isolating, this meant that women were not part of the big decisions being made, were not occupying higher paying positions, and were overall continuing to get discouraged from staying in their existing roles or choosing tech and development as a career path at all.
I started ELA Conf with a friend in Philadelphia that was involved with Girl Develop It. We envisioned a space for marginalized individuals to learn from one another, grow with one another, and gather the tools necessary to become strong, connected leaders. Over three successful years, we recruited additional essential and talented organizers and ran a success event and online community.
ELA Conf filled an existing, enormous gap in tech and tech events. It was affordable, and we provided speaker travel stipends and attendee childcare thanks to our tireless fundraising efforts. We addressed the soft skills that were too often overlooked within teaching content and created a network for members to tap into for advice, help, and employment. Attendees reported finally getting those raises they were after, being promoted to lead roles, and making lifelong friends. I consider ELA Conf to be one of the highlights of my career.
Each of us founders and organizers wore many hats over these three years. I tackled all the design work from branding, to the website, to swag, to fundraising materials, and all our print needs—truly full-scope work and I loved it. I also tackled marketing efforts, Slack moderation, and, along with the incredible organizing team, managed fundraising efforts.
Leading up to the event, I consumed my time with crafting the speaker application process, making selections, curating agendas and event logistics, and ensuring speakers and attendees had absolutely everything they needed to feel confident and excited. The community work after the conference involved planning and promoting special events, resolving conflicts, gathering and processing feedback, publishing the latest news, following up with sponsors, and being present and engaged. I made lasting friendships here and I miss it often.
Working remotely, while it has countless benefits, can also be incredibly isolating and lonely. Many companies have not quite figured out how to foster a healthy remote work culture and tech is a space with a large percentage of folks that are independent contractors. Additionally, traditional networking can be quite intolerable and disingenuous—it doesn’t have to be this way.
Wiggle Work is a Discord community that provides a warm, welcoming, and worthwhile space for us folks working remotely that I started in 2023. While the tone is casual and about friendships and fun first, it’s also proven to be an exceptional place to get advice from peers, grow your professional network, and celebrate your latest wins.
We have weekly video calls, active channels about distractions, work, learning, and snacks. We love snail mail and LEGO raffles—it’s the essential water cooler bonding we would otherwise miss out on. I deliberately craft all our events and processes to foster an environment that is empathetic, open-minded, enjoyable, down-to-earth, and respectful. It’s my favorite place to spend my work week and I’m so grateful to the individuals who have helped make it such an important and impactful community.
Right from initially writing the Code of Conduct, I brought a lot of lessons learned the hard way to Wiggle Work from ELA Conf. I executed a visual design with a similar feel in that I want the space to feel exciting, welcoming, and warm. After establishing a base list of channels, I’ve been able to add many more after getting to know the community and seeing where our conversations and interests have taken us.
One of the most celebrated aspects of the community is our daily discussion prompts, our Ponder Prompts. In October I will sell access to this 38+ page living document on our Ko-fi page to assist with Discord server costs. I envision these being helpful for other communities but also for things like one-on-ones and getting to know your remote colleagues. I wholeheartedly believe that successful, genuine communities don’t happen organically and these prompts go a long way in cultivating the right tone and ensuring we are all getting to know one another in an unforced way.
I host regular video calls, both with and without agendas, and plan special events like raffles, candy counts, Look & Learns, and more. It’s a small but active space that’s the perfect mix of silly and serious. I’m also working on a new site to be launched any day now that better communicates what potential members can expect and help them feel out if it’s the right for them. This site will also have a multi-author blog for the community to share special insights, news, and summarizes.
More recently I’ve been onboarding a developer co-organizer and assembling a Top Team with individuals assigned to certain channels based on their interests. There’s a lot of autonomy within the group, and members are free to run with ideas and I’m happy to help as best I can or even step back if necessary.
Wiggle Work is an active, growing community—we’d love for you to join us.
