mattcreager/mattcreager.com

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Draft Post

I'm jammed into an economy seat on my way home, which represents a perfect opportunity to reflect on what I experienced at Realtime Conf and how the journey has influenced my perspective. These thoughts are close to the surface:

1. I'm seriously fucking excited about HTTP 2.0
2. Everyone else is just as excited about WebRTC (I think its pretty ok too)
3. &yet puts on one hell of a show

I'll write about these topics at some point, but first, by way of introduction, I'd like to describe one of the dominant themes of the conference.

Lets start with some context:

• I abandoned my first gig in the tech industry because it failed to live up to the expectations that growing up in IRC, USENET and warez communities created. I believed I had found the real world and it sucked.
• Experimented (and perhaps gained a measure of success) in sales leadership, it was career fast food. Quick, easy, and once the instant gratification faded, sickness set in.
• I returned to IT, eventually arriving at BlackBerry. Do you remember heading to a party as a teenager, determined to finally tell that special someone you've been crushing on them, only to find they've run off with someone else? That was BlackBerry.
• Attended a Hackathon hosted by GoInstant, after which, I spent hours just chatting with the other attendees and had this intense feeling of belonging.

I knew I needed to make a change, but I'd invested heavily in project management and trend analysis career capital and the decision to set it aside was the cause of many sleepless nights. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

It has been four months since I joined GoInstant, I thought I'd 'arrived'. I found a career and a community to which I belonged! Now I recognize I wasn't just looking for a sense of belonging. Communities form through a shared purpose and vision. I was a lost boy, and I had misplaced my marbles, my dreams.

So what did RealTime conf help me discover? It helped me recognize where I put my purpose, why I lost community in the first place. Belonging to a community is just that, belonging, what does it take to belong? You must give, you must create something, anything, try something, share something, drive towards that purpose.

At some point, I stopped creating and contributing, as a result I lost an intimacy with what I crafted. It just belonged to the organization that paid for the bread on my table. It wasn't mine. You might say I was consumed by consumption, as **blah blah* said, I became a social snipper. I own a domain, but I didn't know what to do with it. I had retired my creativity without even realizing it. I'm going to find it again. Starting with this post, I don't expect it to be easy, I don't expect to be good at it. I'm still going to try, I'm going to share my opinions, because I want you to share yours, because when we share, when we participate, we benefit as individuals and we benefit as a community.

I was building castles in the sky, but I wasn't filling them with love. So this is me, reaching out across the beautiful, boundless, borderless thing that connects us all.

Stay persistent,

Matt

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