I'm running Unconferences - that is an open format where everyone who wants can offer a talk or workshop. I tell everyone they should offer one and most people are like “I don't have anything to tell. I don't know anything or I'm new, what should I talk about?”
And I can tell you - EVERYONE has something to tell. Your journey is interesting for a lot of people, including me! I would love to hear where you came from, what happened in the past. What was good about it? What did improve by becoming part of this community? And what is still improvable?
And there is so much more. What tech did you use and we don't? Tips and tricks in processes and interactions with colleagues, customers and other people.
And the next best thing after telling me about it, is writing about it! Or talking about it - to be honest currently I hear a lot more podcasts than I read blog posts.
I think it would be awesome! I would love to see collaboration projects between people, companies and other groups of any kind. Can you imagine having a book to learn about Shopware, be it a developer, design or user book, but like Wikibooks.org so everyone can edit it? There are great books about Shopware on the market and I have a few in my shelf, but the moment they are done and submitted to printing they are outdated. This can be fixed by having it open source and updated by the community all the time. I love this vision.
If you ask me, blog posts are the easiest way to get your knowledge into the world. And the best thing about blog posts is, when (not if) you find them three months later, when you stumble upon the same problem again 😀
But there are other ways for collaboration too. Back in the days before my times in FireGento - an association founded in Germany for the Magento community, there was a group of companies and freelancers who wrote plugins together to fix the problems an american eCommerce system has if you use in in the German or European Market.
We have this already in the Shopware community: FriendsOfShopware. So if you prefer coding over writing texts, join Frosh!
Read my texts 😂. I write a blogpost in 30min if I know what I'm writing about (this is the reason, this post took weeks!). I don't proofread them most of the time, because I think it is more important to get the knowledge out (especially so I can find it in a couple of weeks, if I encounter the problem again)
But overall if you have stage fright, I think there is only one way out: overcome it.
In my case I decided a long time ago in school that I don't care what other people think about the stuff I do - as long as I like what I do, I'll continue. Thankfully for society I prefer organizing events, writing blog posts and code over serial killing - and as you might already know, the way I write is very much unfiltered from my brain into my hands. Most people like it or don't talk about it, very few dislike it as much as they tell me.
So back to write and stage fright: Talk to people. My colleagues take 3 times longer to write a blog post - they want to deliver a perfect experience - and their blog posts are so much better than mine. But if I would take that much time for a blog post, I wouldn't finish one. So whatever type of writer you are, I hope you have enough spare time to get a blog post out - or two!
And here is my ultimate offer: If you don't know whether you have something to say, let us talk - we'll find a topic which *I* find interesting. And I'm happy to proofread your (first?) blogpost! It is so much easier to proofread stuff I didn't write myself. And on a totally altruistic note: Depending on the topic I'm happy to publish it for you, either at Winkelwagen, but maybe it is time for a community blog (but organizing it is a ton of work - I helped organize a blog advent calendar a few years back). We (as a community) can even think about a blog which publishes anonymous, so we can put out all the great, interesting or fuck-up stories which can't be written and talked about to not blame your company or the customer - but we all can learn from.
