In the last week I've been actively trying to join the PostgreSQL community. It's been an interesting experience. I suspect it's going to stay interesting for a while. As part of what I'm doing, I saw this excellent video from Ryan Booz, talking about joining a new community. It got me to thinking.

You have a community at work too. Your teammates, of course, but those people over on the SAN team, the network admins, and those developers, all are part of your community. So the question quickly becomes, like Ryan talks about, what kind of community is it? How are you treating those within the community? What's it like to be a new person in the community? Is it easy to join & understand what's going on? Or, are there all sorts of shibboleths you need to navigate the community (you'll have to look that up, it is a shibboleth after all).

We always have to strive to build the kind of community that we want to be involved in. And, it's not easy. However, when you've been involved in a successful community, you see how it helps everyone involved. Clearly, it's worth the effort.