How to Prove You're an Expert

Another Reason to Contribute to the Community

Malcolm Gladwell is often misquoted as saying, and I'm paraphrasing here, you need 10,000 hours in a subject to become an expert. It's a phrase many of us have heard, whether attributed to Gladwell or not. Actually what he did imply in his book Outliers: The Story of Success is that you need 10,000 hours in a subject to become a phenom, the expert's expert, the grandmaster in chess or the #1 ranked player in a sport.

When I read Dave Gomez's blog post, Why should you share your experience with the community?, I could appreciate the arguments he was making as to why one should contribute to the Liferay community.

At the end of the post, he called on others to share their experience with the community, and why top contributors do it.

For me, I've often shared with friends and coworkers that my community contribution was actually somewhat selfish...

Becoming an Expert

So if it takes 10,000 hours in a subject to become a phenom, how many hours does it take to become an expert?

I don't really know how long it took me, but I knew it was a path I wanted to take.

While I love Liferay (the platform and the company), love the community and truly enjoy being able to give to the community and the heartfelt thanks and admiration I've received from the community over the years, I have to be totally honest, I love being gainfully employed even more.

Having lived through the dot com bubble, the economic downturn following 9/11, and the housing bubble in 2008, I have learned that even for what seems to be the most stable of jobs, external forces can introduce instability. For my family's well being, I have always tried to be in a position where I would be desirable in the job market, even in rough periods.

When I stumbled onto Liferay and saw the potential it had, I knew I wanted to become a Liferay expert. I wanted to ensure I would end up on the short list of candidates, wanted to know I could land on my feet if one job ended (either planned or abruptly).

To become a Liferay expert, I knew I needed to put in the hours. I knew it was going to take more than just completing my day job, it meant I was going to have to dedicate some personal time to it as well.

So I started putting in the time. Slow at first, but picked up speed as I went along. I'd grab a question posted to the forum and try to find the answer. Even if it was answered by a Liferay employee or some other community member, I wanted to do the legwork myself and see if I could get the same answer. Eventually I could start answering posts myself and, at some point, I started to find I could post a reply to a question without going into the Liferay code or really doing any kind of research at all, I just knew what the answer was without even trying.

At some number of hours in, I had finally reached my goal, I was an expert. Just because I reached that goal, I knew I didn't know everything about Liferay, the platform was just too big and was always changing for the better, but I felt like I had a strong enough handle on the important aspects to see myself as an expert.

Along the way I started doing more than just answering forum posts. I created and edited pages in the old Community Wiki (actually I think the wiki still exists in some form on archive.org, you can find it in the wayback machine), submitted documentation suggestions, wrote blogs, and even tried (and failed) to submit code, plus I earned some points answering posts on StackExchange.

Since I made it to an expert level, I reached a level of confidence and security. I finally felt that, come what may, my Liferay expertise would help me if I needed to land a new job or a new contract.

I knew I was an expert, and I could prove it.

Proving Expertise

There's always an issue though with declaring yourself to be an expert - having to prove it.

How do you prove you're an expert at something?

Well, you might say you prove it through certification, or maybe by taking a test, or maybe you hope that word of mouth will establish your bona fides. I just remember taking courses in college such as Calculus or French. I studied and passed the tests, I got credit for the classes, I got a degree from college, but that didn't make me an expert in those classes or any of the other courses I took.

I have the proof though. I have years of forum posts. I have years of blogs hosted here at Liferay. I have the old wiki pages available in the wayback machine. I have GitHub repositories, recordings of presentations at Symposiums and DevCon, ...

All of the effort that I put into the community, the hours of work to get myself to an "expert" level, that was all necessary things that I had to do to become an expert, but it is also the proof that I am an expert.

I still don't know everything about Liferay, there are still parts that are mysteries to me and parts where I have fallen behind the curve in the rapid pace of platform improvement. I still get some questions wrong, but that's okay. I make up for that by learning from my mistakes, studying those areas where I feel I'm soft, putting the new features under the microscope to figure them out, ...

I made myself an expert, I added my name to the list of Liferay experts.

Room for More

The good news for you, if you're reading this... There's plenty of room on that list for more Liferay experts!

You too can become a Liferay expert. By answering forum posts, writing blogs, creating documentation, sharing code repositories, ...

Every piece that you give to the community, it absolutely helps you in one form or another. It's like a guaranteed implementation of karma - the good that you do in the community will come back to you.

Maybe Dave's altruistic appeal is enough motivation to start or continue participating in the community.

I would suggest that there is a another (bigger) incentive in participating - it will help to develop expertise, in turn it will prove your expertise, and ultimately it will help to ensure your employment stability and therefore your personal and familial stability.

So take this call to action and participate! Build your experience and understanding of Liferay and work towards becoming an expert.

I look forward to welcoming you to the Liferay Expert Clubhouse...

Blogs

I really like your point of view. It's true that the expertise you develop, the importance of become "a trusted authority" on the matter and how it helps oneself to keep up to date with the pace at which the platform/technology evolves is another key benefit  of being an active member of the community.

 

Thanks for your complementary point of view, I completely agree with those reasons.