Most of us have heard about the word community, we hear everyday a new community being created where some individuals join, but, what is actually a community, and why should we really care about getting to know what a community is ?

A community is more than just a group of individuals—it is a place where everyone can share their thoughts, ideas, learnings, anything new they learned, or anything they are building. In a nutshell, we can say a community is like a platform that ensures everyone grows together and collaborates instead of competing.

A community can be started by any individual or group of people passionate about learning and wanting to grow with others in any field. In the field of technology, having a community is crucial as it is to have a strong foundation for building because tech demands evolving constantly - and one of the ways we can help ourselves to stay updated is by connecting, networking with others, and growing and the platform where this can happen is again a - Community, where everyone shares there knowledge and uplifts others.

How to find and join communities?

Now one might question - “Where can I find a community, where I can learn more about tech ?“. Well, there are a lot of ways one can do this:

LinkedIn - One can search from the keywords or hashtags to join such communities.
Twitter/X - A lot of people posts about their daily learnings and what they got to learn from the communities, so one can search on this platform also by connecting with like minded people.

What is GrowInCommunity ?

Okay, now we had enough talk about communities, learning about what they are, what they do and how do they play a role in shaping the career of an individual or a group of people. Now giving a great example of one of such communities which I found a couple of months ago is - GrowInCommunity, the founder of which is Akshay Kumar who is a DevOps Engineer @ NIC.

Talking more about this community - here we have a strength of 1000+ members and also, every week we have our “Weekly Community Call“ where Akshay bhaiya joins as the host and others people also join from various background, some of the members who join are students and some of them are working professionals - which gives a good mix of learning as we get to know the current industry trends and also get to know what the college students are learning these days.

Apart from this Gurumoorthy Raghupathy, who is famously known as Agile Guru also joins the call most of the times and he never fails to amaze us by showing his great knowledge about the various DevOps tools, along with his fun talks which ensures that the sessions is light and interactive.

My experience with GrowInCommunity

I joined GrowInCommunity back in the year 2023 in the Month of October, I had recently grabbed an on-campus placement and now had some free time to explore the things which I had not much explored and did not paid much attention to during the previous years of my college life. One such thing was - soft skills and interpersonal skills in which I won’t lie - I lagged a lot.

One day I got to know about GrowInCommunity through a LinkedIn post, where the weekly call was happening, so I decided to join this call and give it a try and get to know more about this community. Initially, to be honest I was not sure what to expect about this community, I had an image in my mind that this will be just like any other online community, where some formal discussions would be taking place.

But I must say when I joined the call for the first time and got to know more about the community, it was amazing and fun to interact with others in a free manner where everyone has a chance of speaking and interacting with other in a healthy manner. I soon realized that the things in which I lack, which were majorly soft skills, this community has the potential to help me overcome this barrier.

How did GrowInCommunity helped me overall until now?

There are a lot of things in which GrowInCommunity helped me. One of the best part of being community is that the supportive environment not only helps you grow in technical terms but also helps to develop soft skills and interpersonal skills. There are a lot of areas in which GrowInCommunity helped me to develop.

Networking Opportunities - One of my main key focus apart from learning technical concepts during the community calls is networking with others, as networking helps us to know things which might help me in future, for example when we discussed what all we are learnt in the week, this helps me to connect with the people who are learning same or almost similar things so that I can take some inputs from them on how to learn or grasp the concepts of that particular topic. Not only this, other benefits of learning and communicating in a community is that when I told in the call that I am learning a particular thing, few of the members also messaged me and took guidance from me and asked questions like from where I am learning that topic and how was my experience until now. It also gave me a chance once to help a member in a CI/CD Pipeline project issue which he was facing, this helps to network better, learn to know more about others and culminate a feeling and environment of belongingness and brotherhood among the community members.
Valuable Inputs - Agile Guru and Akshay bhaiya always give their valuable inputs apart from the technical topics, such as how to behave professionally in an interview, always emphasizing on the fact that our camera and audio setup should be such that we are always ready for an interview, the lighting should be good, we should not keep ourselves on mute and turn on the cameras as these small things always impress the other person who is taking our interview. Apart from this I also asked Akshay bhaiya on guidance on public speaking, when I had a talk scheduled on the topic of Cloud Computing at Chitkara University. He guided me on how to grab the attention of the audience, how not to feel nervous during the talk and even offered me his platform of GrowInCommunity to do a small rehearsal type talk on the same topic so that I can get an idea on how the actual talk will be (although due to time constraints I was not able to give a talk on the channel, but I am sure in the future if I have any hesitation related to public speaking, GrowInCommunity will be my one stop solution to remove all of my hesitation and problems regarding the same), the areas where I need to improve. The sample type talks like these can help one to remove all of their hesitations of public speaking and I think that GrowInCommunity is a great place for this as everyone here gets an equal opportunity to speak and put their voice on the platform.
Fun & Interactive Sessions - We have to accept it…learning from the slides or reading the content from a website is all boring until and unless we do a practical demo or if someone shows us a practical demo of the concepts. Agile Guru made sure that whenever he joined he brought something new to the table, something exciting and fun which will grab and keep a hook of our attention. Agile Guru always explain the practical concepts, showing us demo, telling us how a particular thing is helpful, it’s various use cases and what not. And not to forget, all of this is done while having a fun chit-chat with him to ensure the sessions are smooth, light and informal so that no one gets bored. This is a thing which I think makes GrowInCommunity exceptional as I have not seen this much kind of learning with fun in any other community which I am currently a part of. A huge shout out to GrowInCommunity for this ! Also this induced a sense of curiousness of learning and exploring that particular concept further own my own which had helped me explore some of the DevOps tools and best practices which I was not aware of before.
Job opportunities - Akshay bhaiya has created a dedicated channel on the discord server wherein people can share the job opportunities and openings as per availability. This is a really nice initiative, as this might help the community members or even a person outside the community to grab a job.
Personal Branding - Got valuable insights from the different community members on how to create a personal brand, what to post and what not to post on LinkedIn, learning in public etc. This is something which I am currently implementing (even while writing this blog !).
Getting Knowledge about technical events and also sharing about upcoming events - There are a lot of technical events which take place now and then, which are shared by the community members on the channel. This gave me a chance to register for those events timely and got an opportunity to network with like minded people. Here is a glimpse of some of the events which I attended where-in I also met Akshay Bhaiya in person.

AWS ACD Session ‘24 at IIT Delhi

In this event we had talk related to everything about AWS. Since I had worked on AWS before, this event was a game changer for me as I got to know so much more about AWS in depth, the various services, how are they being used in industries and some of best practices which were followed by two insightful hands-on sessions related to AWS Bedrock and AWS Step functions. Apart from this, the members of GrowInCommunity also got a discount on the ticket of this whole AWS Workshop :), below are some of the images took during the workshop -

Disruptive Tech Delhi Meetup ‘23

It was the first time that I met Akshay Bhaiya in this event, after attending couple of calls virtually, he helped me clarifying my doubts related to various certifications exam related to CNCF. Apart from this, the event was very amazing for me as I also got to meet Kunal Kushwaha for the very first time after watching a lot on him on his YouTube channel. It was like a dream come true for me ! Got to network with some great individuals also who are doing really great in their fields irrespective of the fact whether they belong to the technical background or not. This gave me a motivation that if those people can do something great in their careers, then I can too ! Attaching some images below of this event -

GitHub Universe ‘24 Recap

This is the latest event that I attended on 30 November 2024, I shared the link on the discord channel of GrowInCommunity too so that other people can also join me and come if possible, after all this is what networking is all about :). This event focused mainly on GitHub Copilot and how it can help us in our daily lives and ease most of our tasks. This event truly made me realize that AI when integrated with human capabilities can do wonders and we should be seeing AI as a collaborator and not as a competition. Met some of the amazing personalities, yet again - Kunal Kushwaha who cleared my career-related doubts, and also Akshay bhaiya with whom I had lunch and insightful talks. Also met the new community manager of GrowInCommunity, Saumya Bhushan for the first time in person (also huge congratulations to her for securing a job at Google !). Overall, it was a very nice and insightful session and I can’t wait to do hands-on of all the stuff related to GitHub Copilot on my machines and use it for my personal projects!

Overall, I would say, GrowInCommunity has helped a lot in my career progression, both directly and indirectly, and also both professionally and technically. Not only it created a sense of belonginess with other people, but also made me learn how to communicate in a community or in a professional environment.

It also kept me motivated to attend these sessions with the community host itself and some of the members of the community on various unique topics and advancements in technology. Overall I can say, GrowInCommunity has provided me a motivating atmosphere where every ones progression helped me to stay motivated and do better.

The biggest thing which GrowInCommunity helped me was, seeing other people giving talks on various topics it helped me to come out of my comfort zone and do something in the similar field. Initially, I worked on improving my LinkedIn profile and crate a personal brand of mine on the platform as I was lacking a bit in that. And this thing did wonders for me - I was invited to teach App Development to college students at IGDTUW, since I had already earlier worked on the same using Flutter and updated the same in my resume and LinkedIn profile both. This helped me to fulfill my dream of giving back to whatever I have learned, all the knowledge which I had gained from GrowInCommunity, and teach the aspiring future engineers. Along with this, the advice given by Akshay bhaiya on public speaking also helped me a lot as this was the first time that I was teaching someone on a field in which I had worked earlier.

After winding the App Development cohort which contained 8 engaging and insightful sessions, I got another opportunity, this time I was invited as a guest speaker where I would have to deliver a talk on Cloud Computing to the college students (majorly freshers). Without a second thought, I accepted this opportunity, as I knew this will be helping me to create a personal brand of mine, and again I would like to mention GrowInCommunity here, because of this community only I got inspired by other people, and it helped me to come out of my comfort zone and deliver such talks/speeches to the college students.

Final Thoughts ❤️

To sum up everything, I would say GrowInCommunity is not just any other random community, the host and the other members ensure that the sessions are engaging and fruitful, and if anyone is facing any kind of difficulty or any career-related doubt, it is solved.

Joining GrowInCommunity was one of the best decisions of my career. The collaborative environment, weekly calls, and constant encouragement have been very beneficial in my journey. From public speaking to technical skills, from networking to motivation, this community has been a game-changer.

If you’re looking for a place to grow, learn, and thrive in tech, I am confident in this that GrowInCommunity is where you should be. It’s not just another community, it’s a family that celebrates your growth as much as their own.

Special thanks to Akshay Kumar Bhaiya, and everyone in the community, for making this journey until now so fulfilling, engaging, and filled with knowledge! Looking forward to more such insightful and engaging conversations in the future!

#growincommunity #kubeconindia2024 #cncf

How GrowInCommunity helped me rise the career in tech?

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