Why Communities Matter more than Ever Before, and how Tech can Help
Humans have been gathering in tribes for eons. We all know why, so I won’t bore you with the details that it was for survival, to stand guard against predators, increase chances of successful hunts, and much more. Instead, I’d like to fast forward a bit, in fact, a whole lot! Let’s fast forward to today, or rather the last several years.
As technology has expanded its footprint into people’s every waking moment, contributing to accidents on the road, and even in malls, we have become increasingly more isolated from one another, and people across the country are reporting alarmingly high numbers of loneliness. Even though we are plugged in to different social media communities and project an outward image of community, we are in fact not so connected. This applies more so to the younger generation than older ones. I do not believe that you have to give one up in order to succeed in the other. You do not have to give up your tweets, your TikToks, or more, in order to have meaningful connections in the real world. In fact, the opposite is true. And I will share a personal journey of mine to highlight this fact.
In July 29, 2019, I was laid off from the company I was working with along with others at the organization. This was when my wife was 7 months pregnant, with a due date of October 3, 2019. I immediately posted in our San Diego Tech Hub Slack channel that I had gotten laid off, and the response I got was overwhelmingly positive. And of course when things go sideways they really take a left turn as they did for us with our son deciding to be born 7.5 weeks early. So getting laid off was in some ways a blessing in disguise as it allowed me the luxury of being in the hospital with my wife and son, while meeting the needs of our daughter. All the while the SDTH community kept me plugged in, they kept messaging me, and more. It is a community that has combined real world interactions with technology and I believe that this is the path forward across our country in order to create meaningful connections and using technology in the right way. This is why I joined Claude in 2018 to help build out this community. To make it something that meant something for someone. I was now at the recieving end by the kindness and generosity of our community that humbled me beyond mere words. And for that I will be eternally grateful.
If you live in the San Diego area, come join our community on both Slack, in person, and to our many programs such as MentorBot, Be the Boss Program, and much more. If you do not live here, learn from us, find a community in your area that does what we do, and if you cannot find it, build it! If you need help along the way on how we did it, reach out to us on our Slack channel, or just message one of us individually on LinkedIn, Twitter, or otherwise.
Until next time,
Yashar
