Turning internet strangers into real-life friends
Ops Hacks had our first In-Real-Life meet up in Toronto this week.
Six internet friends got together and had a good chat over dinner and drinks.
It felt almost surreal to meet members of the community in real life. Almost after 6 months to the day that I started the Slack server, the community came together and it felt pretty special.
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Some of you know that I started my career in investment banking. I started right after the financial crisis, when new graduates were having a hard time finding a job, let alone in finance. I wasn't great at my job but I was doing alright. And I was definitely getting paid extremely well considering my lack of experience. But after 3 years, I couldn't take it anymore. I quit.
My family, friends, and colleagues all questioned my decision. But I wanted something that I couldn't get in banking.
Impact.
I just couldn't see the impact of my day-to-day work on everyday people. I wanted to work on something a bit more tangible. (By the way, this is not a knock on people who are in banking; My personal experience is not representative of the industry nor the people who work in it.)
Since then, I've chosen to work at companies and on projects in the B2C or SMB space where the impact of my work was more tangible - whether it be helping Korean taxi drivers earn a higher wage by helping them up-skill to drive premium taxis or equipping local mom-and-pop merchants with same-day delivery to compete against Amazon and big box retailers.
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I'm sharing this anecdote, because the Ops Hacks meetup felt like the perfect embodiment of that tangible impact.
Bringing together and connecting folks who would have remained strangers had it not been for the community - helping build human relationships - it felt so impactful despite the fact that it was only six people 😅
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There's clearly still a long way to go. My vision is for Ops Hacks to become THE place for early stage operators to be, to connect with and help one another.
And as you can see in the picture, I could do a whole lot better from a diversity perspective. (More to share on this, hopefully soon 🤞).
But the meetup this week was a great moment of validating what we're building at Ops Hacks and why.