Building Communities…
If you know me or have been following me for any amount of time, you might know that I am a full time remote worker here in Florida. Being a remote worker, you have to put some conscious and additional effort into building and maintaining relationships. You can’t just show up to an office and passively foster relationships with coworkers and friends around the water cooler or in the break room. The real connections of a remote worker have to be intentional and time has to be made to make them.
Some of the best ways I have been able to do that is by building and joining online communities. I’ve always enjoyed the process of community building online. Finding and connecting with people who have similar interests has never been easier thanks to the internet. (For better or worse).
Early on as a teenager, I ran a pretty successful BBS (Bulletin Board System on my Tandy 1000) that was basically a springboard into the career I have now. As the internet and my career matured, I remember writing about the benefits of using Twitter to engage in technical conversations here and here. <—Woah.. those posts are a decade old and I talked about Twitter as a new social network.. lol
Obviously, there have been Facebook groups, Reddits , subreddits, slack communities, Smart Home communities and others along the way but now my new social focus is YouTube. Not that I have left any of the other outlets behind. Ok, I don’t do the BBS or ICQ anymore. 😉 But YouTube seems like a super cool platform to build communities around and the people involved on the creative side that I have interacted with have been nothing but supportive and helpful of the experience.
This past weekend, I reached out and met up with another YouTube creator (@feinbergPaul) and we chatted all about YouTube Analytics, challenges and rewards of creating online. It was a great time and I managed to grab a quick cameo in his latest video about the topic of creating. If you have a minute, check it out below!
If you are not reaching out or putting yourself out there, you might be short-changing your experiences.
Like Paul says in the video, Go Create!
… and I’ll see YOU in the future.