The world has changed — everything is fast. You’re busy updating your technical skills and leveraging the latest tools, but are you using the most efficient learning techniques to improve yourself? Are you building your own network in a systematic way by contributing to FOSS communities?

There are massive benefits to contributing to Open Source projects, especially Java as one of the largest and most innovative software development communities in the world. But remember that although communities are fun and valuable they can also be fragile and change radically. They need continual nurturing so they can support opportunities for contributors.

In this session, we’ll explore the skills necessary to learn new things deeply, offer contributions of value to communities, and build our own networks to leverage markets. The result is that we benefit, the community benefits, and our employers benefit. These three levels represent critical reciprocal relationships that need careful consideration.

We’ll touch on concepts from network science, neuroscience, education, and history to help promote innovation and learning. We’ll also cover the who, what, where, when, why, and how of contributing to FOSS communities, highlighting Java specifically and the Japan Java User Group. And finally, I’ll share some career success stories of my own and also some of my catastrophic failures. I’ve photographed thousands of developers and interviewed hundreds of them for videos, streams, and podcasts, so we surely have many images to show and lessons to learn as we become inspired to thrive in this crazy fast world.

Recorded at Javazone 2024.