I moved to New Zealand in 2014 without speaking English and started a career in tech with no previous technical background, after 20 solid years in Communications. Almost everything that happened after the first meetup I went to shaped my life: mentors I found because I asked, a community I helped build because none existed yet where I was, and connections that filled the gap when a stalled job search could easily have made me quit.
In this session, I'll walk through how tech communities (AWS User Groups, internal company meetups, open source, and everything in between) actually develop skills and accelerate a career, not as a concept, but through specific people and specific moments that shaped mine both technically and personally. I'll cover how I went from attending to organizing, how that opened real mentoring opportunities on both sides, and what I'd tell anyone still deciding whether showing up is worth it.

Technical requirements: standard screen-share or projector setup