The Power of Community in Building Technology.

Last month, my friends and I got together to organise a self-paced 100-day challenge. Our motivation is obvious: All three of us are driven by building solutions and seeing those solutions solve problems. But the problem was momentum.

Let's take two cars for example - Car A and Car B.

Car A - accelerates uniformly at 5km/hr² and Car B - accelerates at 20km/hr² but breaks for 30 mins at hourly intervals. Here's what the graph looks like:

Eventually, Car A overtakes Car B. I was like Car B, and the cycle goes something like this: motivation from a video/conference/talk, then a burst of adrenaline followed by setting targets for yourself for the umpteenth time, and then a ton of work gets done within a short time, life happens, and you're back where you started.

It is frustrating.

I didn't sustain momentum enough to reach any reasonable milestone. While we individually had things going, it wasn't until the challenge that we realized the benefits that community brings. It might sound funny, but this is when I really understood how to use Github😂(all it took was a couple of explanations from my friend, who was also part of the challenge). This blog and Noob Kit (a product I launched for hardware engineers) are by-products of this community.

The challenge is simple: code consistently every day for the following 100 days after the start date. It doesn't matter if you open your laptop, and all you type is:

name = input('enter your name:')
print (f'Your name is {name}. Good to meet you!')

Just <code>

When it kicked off, we got lots of work done, because the collective motivation, shared experiences, and mutual support created an environment where we could be accountable to each other.

While it may not count as the next unicorn, I'm proud of what we've been able to do.

Marvellous is finalising his home management solution, doubled down on cybersecurity and launched a product (desktop mats for work tables). Miracle has launched Cognicraft (an AI for interacting with your study materials) and he's adding features regularly. My app (to assist CAD engineers put intended designs into perspective in the real world) is also underway.

These were all ideas we had in our minds but made little progress, until this challenge.

Summary

The #100-day challenge taught us that the power of community is invaluable in building technology. By leveraging collective motivation, shared experiences, and mutual support, we were able to achieve more than we ever could alone.

This journey not only, resulted in tangible products but also, fostered a sense of camaraderie and continuous learning. So, whether you're coding, designing, or innovating, remember that by leveraging community, you can turn individual sparks into a blazing trail of progress.