Why do we need a Social Network for Software Developers?

What is Social Network for developers?

Millions of people learned to code as aspiring software developers in the last decade. The trend is only going north year over year. Coding is one of the essential skills for developers, but in the current era of product development and software business, learning to code alone is not enough.

As a developer(or the one aspiring to be), you need platforms to represent yourself, talk about your work, show your progress, share ideas, content, engage with communities, learn from the experience of others, shine, find jobs, get paid, and more.

The modern era of work culture has also made its shift. We love to work remotely, create freelancing opportunities, contribute to open source, create content, provide consultation to growing startups. We can not get the most out of it by being the coder who codes and create things in silos.

The Social Network for developers is a platform specifically built for the developer community to interact, learn, share, find opportunities, and grow. It enables the coders, the software developers, to represent themselves with their work and get the most value out of the platform.

What Options do we have?

Fortunately, we have established platforms for developers to address most of the needs we have discussed so far. However, the downside is that too many such platforms are scattered around. For example,

• LinkedIn is a great platform to represent who you are as a professional. However, you still need to develop a portfolio or resume/CV to represent yourself separately as a developer. It isn't their fault as they focus on all professional categories, but we need something more for software developers.
• GitHub is the go-to application to store source code as repositories. But, we need to include this repo information in our Portfolio, resume, or any other platforms too to stay connected. It's also hard to have conversations and engage with the community directly.
• There are various platforms available for creating and managing content. Hashnode, Dev, Medium are fabulous platforms for technology bloggers. But again, they represent the content creator side of you, not the full holistic view of who you are as a software developer.
• We have communities on Twitter, Reddit, and other platforms with their limitations with engagements, involvements, and interest - pseudonymous, most of us are introverts, 280 char limit etc.
• Last, there are platforms to sell what you create and get sponsorships and tips for your work.

So it is evident we have various valuable options already. However, they are scattered across. Also, having accounts with multiple platforms and keeping all relevant details in sync is a big nuisance for developers.

What if we envision getting all these under one roof, one application, one account?

Meet Showwcase

Showwcase is a community-first networking platform for developers. It focuses on three primary needs,

• Developer Representation
• Building Tech Communities
• Finding Opportunities

Fulfilling these needs enables the developers to connect, learn & share, live their passion, create opportunities, and get paid for their best work.

Not on Showwcase yet? Get on board with a few simple steps: https://www.showwcase.com/

The following sections of this article will take you through some pretty cool features of the Showwcase platform that I have found very valuable. I hope you find them helpful.

Developer Representation: Build Your Identity

As a developer, your profile is your identity. It must contain information about you, your tech stack, experience, work history, open-source contributions, content you have created, people you have collaborated with, credentials.

Showwcase allows you to capture all of these in one place in the most presentable profile format. It publicly demonstrates your abilities in front of the world.

Let's take a look at some of the crucial sections of a developer profile page of Showwcase.

About

The about section represents you with information like,

• Cover image
• Profile Image
• Your name
• Location
• A short bio
• Tags to represent yourself
• All social handles in one place

Tech Stack

The dedicated tech stack section of your profile page shows your technical abilities and experience with them. Showwcase allows you to categorize the tech stack information to make it logically grouped for anyone to relate to and understand better. You can also feature the technologies you want to highlight in your profile.

Positions

If you are an experienced developer who climbed the technical ladder to play various roles in the past, you can add them in chronological order on your profile page. It helps the recruiter to understand your professional journey with a single view. I also think it's cool how I can add the tech stack I used at each professional position I had.

Repositories

As a developer, you may contribute to, maintain public projects on GitHub. Showcasing your top or most important project repositories on your profile page is important! Showwcase integrates with Github, so selecting the repositories you want to highlight on your profile page is easy.

Shows

It is something quite cool if you create different types of content like blogs, videos, podcasts, products and more. A Show on Showwcase is a basic building block for you to showcase any work you've done. And depending on the type, you can just tag the Show as such. Look at how I tagged my Shows as Blogs below. You can also feature the most valuable shows on your profile page.

Guestbook

We all grow with the help of constructive feedback. It is a fun little feature where anyone who visits your profile can leave a nice message about you. Feel free to write something on my Guestbook if you like my blogs and content.

Custom Domain

When you want to share your profile page publicly, you can do it in three ways,

• Share a URL of this format: https://www.showwcase.com/[username]. For example, my profile page URL is https://www.showwcase.com/atapas398. Here atapas398 is my username.
• Alternatively, your profile page is also available as a subdomain of showwcase.com, like this, https://[username].showwcase.com. For example, you can also access my profile page using this alternate URL: https://atapas398.showwcase.com/
• Finally, you can use a custom domain. Both the above options don't make it feel that you own your profile page entirely as it is under the Showwcase domain. However, mapping it to your custom domain gives you that feeling of ownership of your profile page.

I'm using a custom URL for my profile page as https://shows.tapasadhikary.com/

Building Tech Communities: Grow with Like-Minded

As developers, you need to hone your skills constantly. You need to know the latest and greatest technology trends so that you stay relevant to them. You may want to interact with other experienced professionals, provide or get mentorship, collaborate, and meet like-minded people.

The Showwcase platform got you covered with fantastic features to grow with like-minded.

Communities

The technology communities are the place to get all that. Showwcase provides you with the perfect platform to be part of the communities of your interest. If you don't find the one you are looking for, you are most welcome to create one. Learning from someone's experience will only accelerate your journey as a developer.

Today, Showwcase has communities around all major technologies and domains like JavaScript, Python, Machine Learning, React, Android, Open Source, Java, and many more.

Threads

Threads are ways for developers to communicate, engage, learn, share, talk about their work with other members on the Showwcase platform. You can create threads for a community or openly without linking it to any specific community.

Circles

When you learn, share, and grow as part of communities, you gradually find like-minded people close to your skills, way of working. These are the people you can vouch for, want to collaborate with.

Showwcase provides you with the opportunity to create your circle with them or be part of the circle you are interested in. You can easily find other developers who are open to collaboration.

Finding Opportunities: Jobs and More

When you create a strong developer identity, start collaborating with people, be active in communities, a natural progression is about finding opportunities.

While the active community members have higher chances of various collaborations, freelancing opportunities, we can not deny the need for a focused platform for finding us jobs. Showwcase helps you with a dedicated job search feature and more.

Jobs

On the Showwcase platform, you can search for jobs specifying the criteria that suit you the best. The job search wizard lets you set your job preferences like industry, salary range, culture, and location to help sort out which jobs fit you better. If you see a job you like, you can always bookmark the jobs you are interested in and track them once you've applied.

When you are on the platform, it also suggests the job positions that are most likely to match your skills/preferences. If you are a recruiter who wants to post a job on the Showwcase platform to be visible to others, you can do it with a few simple steps.

Resume 2.0

Ask a developer what do you hate about job searching? I bet the answer will be creating and keeping the resume up-to-date. Developers still need to build an A4 resume, including who they are, work experiences, passion, projects, and other details. There are existing platforms and tools to help you create a resume, but you need to manage and maintain all your details separately on those platforms.

Showwcase is coming up with a feature called Resume 2.0 to bring an end to your worry of creating and maintaining a resume manually. It will build a resume for you with all the relevant details. You will be able to apply for the job directly on Showwcase with your resume 2.0.

I'm told that anyone on Showwcase can download this page as a PDF with all the links and attachments included as if it was a live profile. I can't wait for this to be released!

Conclusion

We, the developers, are living in an exciting time. In today's product development and software business world, we have a plethora of opportunities to grow.

It is possible when we represent our skills, identity, passion in the right way. We need to follow role models, collaborate, contribute, emerge as role models for others by participating in community building. Our passion, work, collaboration should take us to the door of opportunities we always dream for.

Showwcase is the developer platform with a vision based on three pillars,

• Developer Representation
• Growing as part of Communities
• Connect, Collaborate, and Job Opportunities.

I hope you find this article insightful and try out Showwcase. I'll leave you with this thread from the Showwcase CEO to learn more about what he envisions about the platform in the coming days.

Happy Showwcasing!!!

Before We End...

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