I have had jobs and careers. Jobs are a place to earn money, but there is more to careers. Careers are good things and still have an interesting aspect almost just funny. If you think about we work to pay bills and spend time doing thing we like in our free time. I look at careers as something you actually enjoy at the same time, so work and spending time doing something we like is the same thing. It is entertaining to me because I have had a few careers in my lifetime, and have felt the most at home in technology. I have enjoyed some of the other areas I have worked in but I started to see the opportunities in a technology field and switched careers from financial to database professional. I am also finding my career has changed as my experience has increased which tends to make sense. Different experiences have led me to explore these opportunities and evaluate what I am doing. It is a dream to be able to have a job that you enjoy doing, but if you think about it, it is where you spend a ton of time. I am not trying to be a career counselor here or bore you with my career path, but I believe that there is something to be learned here about finding an area of interest by exploring, researching, and exploiting the available resources. If it is something you enjoying doing day-to-day, it becomes the hobby, too, with involvement in the user groups. I have other interests outside of databases for my some of my free time, but because I enjoy my field and my experience with the user group they play off each other to make what I do more interesting and allow me to excel in these areas.

Career development is something that continues throughout all of the positions you have. Development comes from making a plan, establishing goals, and engaging others to help hold accountable to achieve those goals. User group activities should be included in those goals being able to either use people in the community or the tasks that they are looking for volunteers.

If there are tasks or activities that are not currently available in your current position, this is where volunteering comes in. In volunteering you will have access to activities outside which will definitely help with goals and gaining the needed experience. This could almost be considered leadership training or career development training. Participation on the board of directors offers access to budgeting, strategic planning, and managing people. Working on a committee will have collaborative work, project planning, and some marketing. Volunteering to write blogs and articles will improve writing and communication skills. These are just examples of additional skills and experience that you will gain from volunteering with the user group and any of these skills can be used to meet goals for a career development plan.

Figure 8-1 illustrates different things that influence our careers.

We do have our goals and values that lead us to join user groups, get involved in different activities, and continue to learn. In the next section we will continue to discuss how important development of skills are when we become a life learning to build out our skills and seek after education to help in further career development.

Learning

Growing and learning are part of development. This is one of the main reasons that I enjoy technology is that it does force continuous learning. All of the new releases, new features, and new tools and hardware help with this. Honestly, just with technology you do not even have to look for a new career, but either get better at the current position and grow into a new one. Learning is such a big part of career development. The user group can provide several areas of education.

As a user group, what can be taught? Perhaps before discussing that, we should look at how people learn

How Do You Learn?

Some people can dive into documentation and learn everything they want to know by reading a manual or book. Others can learn by listening to presentations, asking questions, and absorbing the information from an expert in the field. Still others need to experience it, as they have to see how it works and try it out before they can grasp the concept around the technology or product. Learning can be accomplished by listening to all possible materials, webinars, presentations, and recordings, and researching information to read white papers and other article supplements.

It is typical that learning would be a combination of methods. The initial step might be the research and then listening. After grasping that material, actually doing will allow for the materials to be tested and see if there are other areas that need to understand in more detail. If more details are needed, a network can be tapped into to discuss such as a discussion forum or a meetup to get be able to get a better understanding to continue to do.

But the way that some people know for sure that they have learned a topic and really comprehended it, is to present on it. I actually learn more when I give a presentation, especially when there are great questions that I might not have thought of before. That gives me the motivation to go back and get the answer by researching or reaching out to others that might have already experienced that situation.

User Group Education

All of these ways that were just mentioned on how to learn can be offered through the user group community. The different offerings to have a journal or a collection of white papers will allow for the research and read of the information. Webinars, events, and seminars to present on topics to allow others to get the education on the technologies or products can be done by volunteers.

Figure 8-2 shows how the ways to learn can be handled through the user group activities. The education that can come through the user group volunteers can meet the needs of the community and have a surprising effect on those involved in that more information is learned and shared.

Several of these offerings and education options through the user group have been discussed as part of the strategies and activities. However, in discussing career development, it goes back into not only learning but looking for improving various skills.

Skill Development

Lifetime learning and development of skills is going to produce options for careers and jobs can bog us down with the regular day-to-day to not give us the opportunity to spend time different skills. Quick information or having a source such as a user group to get a dose of something new can boost the skills. From the perspective of planning from the user group, having quick tips, regular information blasts, blogs or short articles can provide a wealth of information for skill sharpening. This would be a great value add for the members in the community. Being able to take a weekly email blast or a blog once a week to review to help in this way will provide a way to continue to update the community and help in skill development. This is something I do spend some time doing every week, just researching, finding new materials and the user group news and websites are the first places I go to check it out. Spending this time to see what might be new and what others are thinking about helps to get some additional information and learn something.

Reading and researching a topic is not enough to develop a skill; some experience would definitely be needed. User groups offer this opportunity to learn about a skill and can provide volunteer opportunities to gain that experience. This experience is very important for career development because not only with the skill development you are learning new skills, but also realizing areas of interest. Skill development for weaker areas will help reach career goals since those are probably needed skills.

Figure 8-3 shows possible paths based on management versus technology roles. Starting roles or levels can be the same. Skills can be developed to move up the path and possibly across paths.

With leadership skills it should be possible to move from Expert to Management. Even with more technology skills it is possible to move from management to the technology path.

Networking

It might be who you know to get into a career path that you want to be in, but it can also be who you get to know. The community network has experts in the products and experts at their places of work. If they are consultants they have additional contacts. The vendor is also part of this network, which helps to provide additional expertise but other job opportunities.

That was actually part of some of the problem with succession planning is when the vendor decides to step in and recruit people away from the user group to go and work for them. When presenting and volunteering these members start to be recognized in the community and by the vendor. The user can work with the vendor on other tasks and projects for the user group, so there is additional exposure to the vendor. Eventually, the vendor realizes the talent that they have in the user community. The user group did provide the networking and areas to volunteer, and in taking advantage of this the member did benefit and find another career path. I guess when you are doing the right things for your membership in providing ways to continue to learn, skill development, and career building opportunities it would be better just to promote this as benefits of the membership. Redefining the succession planning can be the least of the concerns.

Networking to have contacts and experts just an email or next meetup away has already been discussed as a big part of the user group. Networking contacts can help talk about their experiences and how they got to their position. They can provide the skills that were the most valuable to get there. There will be others that can help out with the decisions of staying technical or moving more toward a leadership and management role. Along with leadership topics, there might be a track to have people share about developing into the roles that they have and what they like the most about the role. Career building means to also understand how to get there and where it is you want to go. Learning about other’s experiences helps to formulate these goals and direction.

Even learning about being a consultant versus a full-time employee can come from the community. I gathered a bunch of information here when I was playing with the idea of consulting. I was able to find out several details and things to take under consideration when being a consultant. It is nice to have choices and making friends in the community makes it easier.

Career building in the community might mean the user group can have a job board and resources for skills and other feedback. It is something that other support vendors can also be a part of and a great place if another company in the community is looking for people. The community is a perfect place to look good people because they are already excited about the product or technology, wanting to learn, and building skills by volunteering.

Advantage User Group

The user group played a very big part to my career. When I first started working in the database world, I joined the user community. It started off as a great place to get a variety of education around the technology and database. I started to meet people and they all saw the enthusiasm I had for learning and the databases. This is also where I say networking is about who you get to know. There were volunteers in the community that encouraged me to also volunteer. I picked some topics that were important to my current position and projects we had going on, and I was introduced to different product managers and developers for the products. It was very valuable to get this information for implementation and getting everything setup and questions answered. The projects were successful and I continued to learn and build my career. The next set of skills was leadership. I was able to be in the special interest groups and manage a group of volunteers and lead the group. This provided me a place to practice leadership skills, make new friends. The technology I was learning was being applied in the work place so the company was benefiting and I was learning as well as supplementing my career through volunteering with the user group.

There were opportunities to speak and share what I had been learning. In talking with people I had met in the community, I was offered to help write a book. Things that I could barely imagine doing, but they were coming from getting to know people in the user group community. The vendor also took notice and I was able to start speaking in different places all over the world, talking about the topics I enjoyed and also very relevant to others in the database field. I was able to meet more product managers on the vendor side, and built up even more understanding of the database software. Not only was I building a network of friends, but I was recruiting, too. This was great to include others and mentor them to be involved and learn even more.

In dealing more with the database and the areas of security I was able to add value to my company while still being able to focus on other parts of the database. In having specific database security projects I was able to bring feedback to the vendor on performance and areas of concern. This did help significantly with building these relationships.

I had the privilege of being on the board of directors for the Independent Oracle User Group, which allowed me to lead a group of volunteers and association management staff. As I learned more from the user group, I looked for people in the field and members that might not yet have been engaged, and turned around and did the same thing that others did for me. I encouraged them to speak at the conferences, write for the journal and start to participate in the conference committee or special interest groups. In setting up succession planning with the user group board of directors, I was developing skills that were needed for regular day to day in planning cross-training, having others involved and excited about their role and goals of the team. I was enabling others to do the same. It is an amazing feeling when you are involved in a community that is really working to help each other out, provide services to improve the areas and careers that we are in and develop leaders in technology and in their fields.

When I do look back, I was provided with some great opportunities to get involved and I am glad I was able to roll up my sleeves and learn and volunteer in various ways. Any time I am looking into a new vendor, I look into user groups that are available because that is going to be the best place to plug in and really get to know about the vendor.

Summary

The user group is not necessarily about career development, but when you get involved in a user group you have opportunities to be engaged and develop skills that are not possible from just the regular job. The goal of the user group is also around education and networking and another benefit that comes out of it is providing the community and members chances to build out a career path that might not have been anticipated before.

Since the user group provides the education and additional skills such as leadership skills are valuable and should be included the additional skills can help in planning careers. The user group should take this into consideration and realize that they are also in career development too. The user group can give opportunities for volunteering and a place to gain experience with these skills that are being offered in education.

The user group is not a career counselor, but people that are involved in the user group are happier in their jobs and with the products that they are using. So there are definitely opportunities to support the membership with networking or additional skill building to have better careers or move up through their career path. With decisions that you have along the way in regards to management roles or technology, networking can help to formulate and consider the options for the choices.

There are several involved in the community that are that way because they have experienced the benefits and how it has helped them get access to product managers and other vendor experts. It is a great way to build out a career, plan by talking with others instead of just sitting back relying on things to fall into your lap. It is work to develop skills and gain some experience to show what skills have been learned. Leadership skills are needed for any path taken, even if continuing down a technology path to be a technology group leader it is going to require these skills.

Consideration should be given to make sure these leadership skills and other soft skills can be included in the user group conferences and events as part of the education strategies. The volunteer roles will give experience. Active engagement in the community will allow for you to learn more and want to continue to pass along to others in the community. There are definitely ways to take advantage of the programs of the user group to provide better career development. And the user group should be pursuing ways to have these strategies included.

A strong community will start to promote and be more engaged because of these opportunities that they are given. Members are going to be more enthusiastic about the skill development and learning including the products that they are working with. All of this helps with being more excited about their careers in this field.