Dennis Chavours
EGL 101-04
Elliott
30 July 2020
Growing With Google
On a cold Indianapolis morning, I arrived at where the GPS said the event was at. I entered the building and was greeted by a woman, she gave me a pamphlet and told me that meetings were the events were at. I said okay and headed to the next event.
I walked forth towards the atrium and saw a wide expanse and almost a sight from a movie. In front of me, I saw hundreds of people gathering, talking. I saw lights hanging from the ceilings, there were plants placed about, the choice of wood was exquisite, all the furniture matched and went well together. They designed the trash bins with cloth covers to cover the harsh grey plastic of the bin. For me, up until that point, I had yet to be in a setting with so much refinement and class. You can tell a lot of time and money was put into the gathering. Considering the net worth of everyone in the room, I could see why they would invest the resources in the decor.
The next event was, “HTML: For Beginners”. I filed into the classroom and observed the instructor’s lesson. On everyone’s desks were laptops provided by Google to help with the lesson. As the teacher was talking I became bored with the class as I had learned HTML at a young age, by the time I was a Junior in high school. I looked around and it seemed not everyone was having an easy time digesting the lesson. The teacher would say something and the rest of the class would pause for a second. Many of the people stopped listening and hoped the presentation would end soon, so they could do something else they weren’t beginners at.
When the tutorial was finished I walked out of the room. When I exited the room, I saw a Googler who was helping with the lesson, we started talking about the curriculum of the lesson. While I was making my observations about the class, a crowd started to form to hear me speak.
A few people started asking me questions. One, an African American man, a similar height to me, 6’3, and a Euro-American male named Aaron. I answered their questions and then pretty soon it was just the three of us talking about tech.
I mentioned my skills at the time. I was making money online, selling phone cases and I built up my site to sell such cases--think FashionNova but for phone cases. My limited knowledge of coding gave me this ability to create an e-commerce website.
I thought these accomplishments were something to be marveled at. That was until I found out what my new found friends were up to.
One of the one attendee's Desmond, the African American one, told me about the work he had done for a Real Estate business, run by his Uncle.
“I made a database to track claims,” Desmond said.
“Oh, I saw that that was in PHP. Did you use MySQL?” replied Aaron.
“Yes, the backend was MySQL ran on an Apache server,” said Desmond.
“What’s a database?” I said inquisitively.
“Oh it’s a place where queries are stored, it stores information from the user to be
presented on the webpage.” replied Desmond.
“Oh..“ I said puzzlingly.
The two went back and forth understanding precisely what they were saying. It was clear that they were experts, they had spent most of their free time studying technology becoming experts at their craft. They were both in their early 20’s and I was 19 at the time. They were a few years ahead in coding comprehension. I had yet to see someone, much less a pair of people with such coding prowess. They were talking about things pertinent to coding and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was obvious that I still had to study my craft and true expertise was hard to come by. I was inspired.
I then showed the pair my website and the success it was having, Desmond was impressed. This was because he didn’t know the ins and outs of social media marketing and the e-commerce process. It was then that Aaron told us that we would work well together. My familiarity with internet marketing and his knowledge of coding, we agreed and exchanged information about our interests and skills.
We then made our way downstairs, to discuss further. We were sitting in chairs talking and working on our laptops when all of a sudden about 30 people came into the atrium dressed in suits. Then, four individuals took the stage that was in front of us.
“Thank you, Google for providing such a gracious event.” Said one of the jacketed speakers.
“We are here on behalf of the Indianapolis legislature and are Senators representing the great state of Indiana.” Said the Senator.
“I look around and see young men and women, working together in tech. It is truly inspiring to see such cooperation amongst you.” said the Senator.
“Over the last few years, we have seen tech companies after tech companies call Indianapolis home. Becoming a tech hub for the Midwest. ” another Senator said.
While the Senators were saying these comments. I looked around at the audience and they were all listening intently to the politician's speech. At the same time, a few of the Senators started to look familiar. I had seen them in the class I just took, the “HTML: For Beginners”. They weren’t having the easiest time deciphering the code. Yet, they had the ability to command the room with ease. With experience in Public Speaking and legislation.
(That’s me in the grey jacket in the front row, the individual in the green hoodie is Aaron)
“I just recently took the “HTML: For Beginners” class, although it didn’t make much sense to me.” The audience laughed.
“I looked around and saw many of the younger attendees easily going through the course and that’s what really matters. Our youth is taking interest in this field and have a much easier time at it than the some of us and that’s perfectly fine.” said the Senator optimistically.
The senators finished their lecture about Indiana and tech. After that, my new found friends and I went to the conference. We saw people and overheard their conversations, they ranged from business to mentorship to charity. Then I realized why Google was having this conference, Google was trying to build around them, not the other way around. The conference wasn’t one huge effort to convert the population into coders. Rathers, Googlers speaking with professionals to build products around them and the services they use for their small business.
What does this have to do with you and me? The best thing you can do is focus on one thing and become very good at it, like the professionals at the conference. Take for instance, can a boutique owner, “write and execute native C++ on a mobile platform and circumvent what would be exorbitant Java code?” No, more than likely, no. Could someone interested in only computer code really talk to someone about how the difference between wool and linen fabric makes them feel? Probably not, if that was me in that situation I would say their identical fabric and have little to no interest in continuing. Yet, the boutique owner would use her skills and experience to provide the best fit and fabric.
We all have different interests. What's important is that we pursue those interests and become the best we can at those things that interest us. Not, what’s trendy or what pays the most. Because you won’t pursue that one thing whole-heartedly because it does not interest you. This is why I want my peers to find what they're interested in and be an expert in that thing they find interesting.
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