Last night was the always-fun Creative Coast Holiday Mixer. It’s a great chance to see people I only ever see at that party, catch up, and talk about what everyone is working on. Someone asked me “Is TechSAV your main extracurricular?” That got me thinking about all of my extracurriculars, and whatever the opposite of that is. So, instead of just thinking about it, I figured I would list them here… because multiple people have asked, and I sometimes forget, so I figure it would be good to have them all in one place for reference.
I think this is also a way to show me at “fully committed”. It feels like I’m busy enough that there’s always something that needs doing, but not so busy that I feel like I’m losing my mind or can’t rest.
If you’re not involved in non-profit work, or advisory boards, I highly recommend it! It’s a great way to meet new people, help in a cause you care about, and bank some sweet sweet karma.
The Not Extras
- Family: May is off at college, and Brian is a sophomore in high school, so my kids don’t require the daily maintenance they used to. Jen is super busy with all of her extracurriculars. I would say family stuff is pretty much under control, it just requires the regular work of maintaining a marriage, and making sure the kids stay on track.
- Work: Planted is still chugging along, and I’m still the CTO. I’m also the only developer and opsling, so this definitely keeps me jumping. My work days are packed with solving interesting problems with an amazing team.
- Me: I did alright on the me front this year. I lost a little weight (not as much as I wanted, but losing is better than gaining), started exercising semi-regularly, and have been doing a lot of work on being kinder, more thoughtful, mindful and reducing the amount of anger and stress in my life. I’ve also been working on learning about white supremacy and coming to terms with my own biases, microaggressions and misconceptions. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Understanding and Dismantling Racism. It’s a great intro to racism and how to fight it.
The Extracurriculars
- TechSAV: We’ve officially been a non-profit for 18 months now! I’m the cofounder and director. TechSAV is trying to build the technology community in Savannah through events, education, outreach and community service. We do things like codebar (see below), monthly lunch-time talks, happy hours, and maintain a 200+ strong Slack group for distributed mentoring, advice, job hunting, etc. It’s a lot of fun working with my co-conspirators and doing guerilla economic development. It doesn’t take a ton of time, but it means being “aggressively accessible” and always being willing to talk to folks, and always looking for ways to do outreach and help the community.
- Susie King Taylor Community School: I’ve been on the governing board for a while now, and clerk of the Governance Committee for about a year. It takes a lot of time… monthly board and committee meetings, writing and reviewing policies, emails, etc. It’s extremely rewarding, though, to be a part of a school that’s doing innovative work, and the growth over the last couple of years has been amazing. This will get even more involved next year when I start co-clerking the whole board, not just Governance. If you’ve been on other advisory boards or even non-profit governing boards, a charter school is a whole new level of time commitment. Prepare to spend nights and weekends reading up on laws, writing policy, etc. It is the most rewarding board experience I’ve had so far though – being a part of educating kids, and working with committed and passionate educators, board members and parents on behalf of students is literally the best.
- codebar Savannah: Savannah was the second codebar chapter in the US! We’ve been doing workshops every month since January 2018, and I just scheduled all of the workshops for 2019. It’s a free monthly workshop where students can learn how to code, and coaches get to help the next generation of developers. It’s a ton of fun, and not a huge time commitment apart from one evening a month and some planning / question answering. It’s a lot easier than trying to coordinate quarterly Railsbridge workshops – mostly because it’s not an 8 hour commitment on a Saturday.
- Various advisory boards: Someone me asked what the difference is between a governing board and an advisory board. The main one is that a governing board is has fiduciary responsibility for the health and maintenance of the entity. It’s a big deal for a non-profit. It’s an even bigger deal for a school. It’s a significant time commitment, and there’s frequently a fundraising requirement. By comparison, advisory boards are awesome. It’s frequently just a way to lend your reputation to a cause you believe in. Sometimes, it’s answering a few questions over email a few times a month. Sometimes there’s an annual meeting. There’s no fiduciary responsibility. There’s no real responsibility at all, except for whatever you agree to advise them on. Here are the advisory boards I’m on right now:
- iVolunteer International: This one’s recent and I haven’t done much advising yet, but I love the concept and the team is great.
- Savannah Arts Communication Arts: May went here, and Brian goes here. I’ve spoken to Dr. Cook’s classes the last few years, and it’s great fun. No meetings, and I get to corrupt high school students with my crazy ideas once or twice a year? Yes, please!
- Savannah State Computer Science IAB: I don’t even know if this is still happening, but as far as I know, I’m still on it?
There are other short-term or one-off things that come up every year, like cooking for an event, or school things.
There you go, my not-extra curriculars and extracurriculars in one blog post. Hope it was helpful and/or interesting.