by Muhammad Abutahir

Recently I got a chance to be a part of the organizing team for the AWS Community Day India 2022, Virtual Edition. At first, I was like “Seriously? Should I even volunteer? and for what? Am I even getting paid for all the effort that I put in?” But then I felt like “Let’s give it a try!” And I started off my journey in the month of August 2022.

I was a bit lazy at first, but all that went away once I started attending the weekly meetings. In those meetings, we review our progress and take further steps to make the event a huge success. The first thing I noticed was the different mindsets of people. Now the question is why is it important.

Don’t wait too long, find shortcuts!

I started working at KonfHub Technologies LLP in mid-2021 as an AWS Serverless Engineer. So, I am a person with less than two years of experience in the field of development now. And one thing I know as an ex-fresher is that I have come to find a comfort zone in my work. All I know is to do my work properly and how to talk to people that I am surrounded by in my virtual office!

Now a person who has had around 10 years of experience and has been working across different companies would know how to talk to anyone! Be it a senior engineer or a higher-level manager. But for people like me? We don’t get to experience it unless we get into that situation or we put ourselves into it, waiting to gain experience and changing companies is a bad idea to learn the skill! Time Consuming! Are you really gonna wait for 10 Years? This is where volunteering in the community days come in.

You get to talk to people of different mindsets, and different profiles, you get to talk to experienced personalities, and you find amazing people. In short, if you are a person who can learn by looking and listening to others, You will become the average of all these people combined. Your communication skill will increase and you get to know “How to talk to People”.

Builds a Business Mindset

For an AWS Community Day to become a success, we have to look into different aspects. We divide the teams such as Social Media Management, Speaker Management, Workshop Management, etc. All these come at a cost and we are on a fixed budget.

As you get to attend meetings, you will understand that we have to use budgets properly. We should look into different trade-offs and this is where your business mindset starts getting built. If you are a person like me who is very fond of entrepreneurship and have future plans of being an entrepreneur, This will really be helpful!

Planning the budget, getting to know the cost of different products and why is it so, and listening to senior persons in the team on how they decide to proceed will make you a person who thinks in all ways, be it development, be it budget planning, or be it speaking to big shots, This is really going to help!

A Sense of Leadership

You are given complete freedom to take up things in your own ways. It would be surprising that being a developer, I am into Designing Posters! Yes! That’s where I stood different. I am a part of the Social Media Management team.

Since I was one of the earliest volunteers I got a chance to take on the work and start doing it in my own way along with one of the volunteers, We were just two initially. As people slowly joined the team, we always will have a responsibility to guide them on what was happening and what was going on, and what we need to do. You always have an upper hand, and that will slowly start building your leadership skill.

Networking

What else do you wish for? Being a good personality requires your effort, become a great personality requires the word to be spread. As an Individual, Networking is one of the most important aspects of shaping you and your career. Networking helps you in so many ways that you wouldn’t have thought of. You meet a lot of people in the community as well as outside the community. It shapes your mental thinking. If you are thinking of being an entrepreneur, You will always have a Point of contact who is willing to help you. If you have a hard situation? There’s again a Point of contact to guide you! Networking is many things.

A Sense of Achievement

As a volunteer, Your Picture is always shown on the AWS Community Day volunteers section. People will see it, and this will lead to network growth which is obvious. And this my friend, is a sense of achievement. I myself felt it amazing! Many of my friends ask “How did you get there?!” It’s good to listen to these people and it will drive you to do more!

With all the things that I told above, This is a question to ask yourself, “Will it not let you to the things you want to achieve?”

Conclusion

Volunteering for organizing AWS Community Days really helps us in personal growth, also you learn a lot of things that generally take time.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!