What Are Demo Days?

#blacklivesmatter #career #opensource #showdev

What the heck is Demo Days?!

When I decided that Rebuild Black Business would be an open-source project, it was with the intention that it would serve as an avenue to help those participating learn new skills, create new connections, and enhance their communication skills. I understand that in any industry that it is challenging to land your first job without having sufficient exposure (aka experience) to how a real-world business and its' various teams operate. To overcome this challenging hurdle, one would usually have to find an internship or another opportunity within the industry they're looking to apply for such an option, which is typically non-paying. Having been at this cross-roads before where you have to decide between making any money to survive, and the experience needed to land your first job, I didn't want anyone else to go through such a difficult decision. During the rapid design and development of the initial Rebuild Black Business web-app, I was beginning to notice the skills of problem-solving, business requirements collection and team collaboration was beginning to emerge among our participants. Knowing that these are highly desired skills from our recruiting partners (such as Shopify), I knew this could become an opportunity to assist those looking for a chance to interview at companies that are actively recruiting while making an impact to the black-owned business community. I believe that this approach of helping open-source participants could become a norm within the open-source community, especially projects such as ours that are helping to make a positive social impact.

How Does it Work?

To participate in Demo Days it's nothing more than you registering and joining our Discord server, and simply asking "where can I help?". Once inside our group on Discord, you'll have access to our open-source repository, and the other tools to make your experience working on our project a pleasurable and memorable one. We understand that working on an open-source project for the first time can be a daunting challenge. To help alleviate this, we've meticulously labeled our issues according to their level of difficulty and assigned managers to assist you with any questions and guidance you may need (use @TeamLead within the Discord to ping them). Proceeding the big event on September 8, your Team-Leader will take inventory of all the completed issues, and the individuals that completed each task to ensure each participant has a chance to present their completed issue. Please do not fear that an issue may be too small to be discussed, because any created issue has significant impact to the longevity of our project. After presenting your issue to the audience, you'll be able to answer any questions from our recruiting partners that are in attendance, including talent scouts, Directors, and more from their respective organizations. We also understand that it's impossible to have every company in attendance, which is why the event will be restreamed on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, LinkedIn Live, and Facebook to help get as many eyeballs on your work as possible. Ultimately think of this as a way for you to demonstrate your skills, knowledge, and understanding of a topic on something that you contributed on without having to talk about it from paper or a whiteboard in a stressful interview environment.

The Outcome

Our goal with the Demo Days event is to help broadcast to the world the talent, and efforts of those working on our project while showcasing that the Rebuild Black Business web-app is rapidly growing to help meet the needs of the black-owned business community. If I can help someone in need of a new career, or role in the process, or grow their communication and demonstration skills during this, then that's also a win for the impact we're looking to create within the world. I hope to see everyone on September 8, 2020 from 1 to 3 PM EDT at the event, or in our Discord group participating with the remaining issues across our business, design, and engineering teams.

Notes, Contact, & Engagement

There are issues across all of our teams including business, design (graphic art/print), and engineering within our project. Feel free to join and see how you can land your next opportunity with our recruiting partners by participating.

Is your business actively recruiting talent and want to participate in finding new talent, or do you just want to lend us your time or resources to help? Email us!

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