Gifts

A couple of days ago I finally received my goodies from DigitalOcean. What these are? A hoodie and a t-shirt - personally chosen by me from their SWAG store. The overall price was $75. The cool part here is - I did not pay for them, it was all part of a gift. And not only I received a $75 gift card to use in their store, but I also received $25 to contribute to any opensource project I like through OpenCollective.

The day I received the email with the gifts, I instantly felt so great, I could do anything. My motivation instantly skyrocketed and I was ready to work 16 hours/day on my projects. All-day. Every day. Imagine one of the companies you admire for their services giving you the chance to not only wear their merch for free but also contribute to any opensource project you love. Trust me, it's awesome!

" But why did you receive these gifts? Did you do something big for them? "

No, not at all. I was just killing time in their community by answering questions that happen to fall under my expertise. And I can't say I answered tons of questions, maybe twenty? Twenty-five? What I am trying to point out here is I did close to nothing and still got recognized. So then again - why not being proactive and get to experience the same excitement I did?

Proactiveness = Motivation

For me, these two go hand-in-hand. The more I push myself to be part of the tech community, the more I feel motivated to work on my projects. Maybe for each person, it works differently but what I am sure of - it does not hurt to try. On the contrary, you boost the industry by putting even more awesome content out there. Say you answered a question on 'How-To`. Now, say I am a person looking for a solution and I search 'How to ____'. I find your post. Your post just fixes my issue and I am grateful to you for that.

Conclusion

That's my short story on how answering 20 questions in a community forum made my day. And boy oh boy, was it superb when the items arrived at my place.

Hey, and if you are already out there in these tech communities providing life-saving answers - continue putting smiles on our faces! On behalf of the whole internet - we are grateful!