2024: Failures and Lessons Learned
A lot goes wrong before everything goes right...
If you are connected with me on LinkedIn, you might have seen the post where I share my achievements and LinkedIn wrapped. In case, you are not, you can check out now. I have shared my achievements publicly but does that mean that I didn’t fail?
Of course not, I have failed. Not once, not twice but several times and each time I stood up and did something where I won. But in this blog, I will reflect on my failures and the lessons I learnt along the way.
And if you ask me, what motivated me to stand back up? The answer lies in the following picture and a letter I received from a stranger with the quote “Never give up!”
CFPs
I still remember the afternoon back in mid-April when I was sleeping (unofficial holiday in college) and Aditya D called me and said “How about we start submitting proposals to speak in events? I will submit only if I have you as my co-speaker.” Initially, I hesitated but then I was like okay I have a trustworthy partner. It started with GitHub constellation India ‘24 and we thought what are the topics that can be submitted so that it gets approved. After much thought, we submitted three proposals and waited for the selection announcement. None were approved!!!
Then we submitted one CFP for Ubucon Asia ‘24, two for Pycon India ‘24, two for Kubecon India ‘24, AI Community Day Kolkata ‘24, AI tools webinar, Devfest Kolkata ‘24 and every CFP were rejected. And the worst was Devfest Kolkata, where the team didn’t even care to inform officially about the rejection.
One thing I learned - You must have a great profile when you are applying to be a speaker and should do thorough research on what topics will be given more priority before choosing one.
Volunteer application
After attending React India ‘23 virtually, I applied for being a volunteer at React India ‘24 and filled out the form for some role which I don’t remember exactly. Three to four month went by and then one sudden day, I received a mail saying I was not chosen this time and that I should apply next time.
Though the exact reason was not specified as to why I wasn’t selected but I learned that I should have more experience before applying again.
Experience »» » Fresher
I applied for being the program manager at SWOC and I never heard from them officially about the rejection. I understood the importance of networking with right folks.
I also applied for being the lead in The Hackers Meetup Kolkata chapter. I received a phone call from the lead saying that the position is already filled and that they will give me a role I’m best suite for. I attended their meetup, waited for two weeks and then I didn’t like the vibe so I left the community.
Community partnership
I attended IndiaFOSS this time but no one knows the whole story of all the problems I faced so let me clear it up. Aditya applied for the community partnership and maybe after a day or two, we were informed about the acceptance. We both were excited as we will be getting two free tickets and we will represent OS Community in a national level conference.
We sent our tee designs to be printed, received it, bought train tickets and did a hotel reservation. With only two weeks left in hand and the community partner designs made public, I saw that our community logo was nowhere to be found. I immediately shoot a text to one of the core team members at midnight and described the problem. Next morning, he redirected me to the person handling it and I texted him as well. After checking, he found out that it was a system error.
I was a bit furious as cancellations at that point meant loosing hundreds of buck (around 2k) for the mistake that wasn’t even mine. After sharing this with him, he discussed it with the others in the team and offered me a free ticket. I thanked him for the help.
There was this person who was willing to sponsor a free ticket and when I reached out to them, I haven’t heard from the core team. I shared my problem and they replied, one more person asked and if he doesn’t respond I will give it to you. I was hoping to get one from either of them. Thank god, I got both and attended the event together with Aditya. Had I been alone, I would have felt lonely.
I learnt that in order to be a community partner we need to have at least one open source project that can be showcased in the booths. Also, I chose not to take any names to maintain discretion.
Job
My batch was so lucky, that when I was about to complete 10+2, covid struck and when I was about to graduate, it was the recession or so said by others. After graduation, job search was tough. Wherever I applied, I was rejected because of either of two reasons:
My degree
Lack of experience
I applied for an entry level position in Wipro and I forgot amidst the dozens of submissions. After I logged in 2 weeks later, I just saw the word rejected and no mail specifying the result or even why. Later I realized, it was for my own idiocy, that I did not changed the resume as per the role and submitted the generalized one.
Event organization
After I returned from Bangalore, I planned to organize a Hacktoberfest webinar. The proposal was accepted by MLH and everything was going as per the plan. But at the last minute I had to cancel the webinar cause I was so busy organizing and promoting that I did not read the terms which specifies that Zoom only gives 40 minutes of free video calling and as I already had a 30 minute meeting earlier that day, I had only 10 minutes left with me. I was so frustrated, disappointed and upset that till now I haven’t been able to organize any other webinar but I plan to do some soon. And it will be all on Google meet and you will get to see more tech related videos on my YouTube.
Blogs
I have had a lot of ideas which I thought to publish in forms of blogs but taking too many responsibilities at a time did not leave me with much time to write so yeah maybe this year you will get to see more of it. And as of speaking I am working on 20+ drafts, all I can say is stay tuned to my blog.
Concluding note
Trust me when I say, so much remain unshared in my LinkedIn and had I not said, nobody would have known. But I thought I should not hide it, since failing is the first step to achieving something great. I learned lessons and I won. That’s the greatest take of this year!
Also, I would love to connect with the readers and comments are welcome.
Signing off,
Saumili Dutta [@aumiidutta]