Years ago, I wanted to learn to draw better.
I laid out this very straightforward, simple plan how to do it and shared it with the people in my project group (my community) so they knew my plan and knew what I was striving for.
One piece of feedback I received was – “How are you going to share it with everyone else?” – to which my answer was, why do I need to do that? Who else cares?
What the real question was – “How are you going to keep yourself accountable” – and the follow-up – “Can a hashtag do that for you?”
There are many examples of community sharing across the internet – #100DaysOfCode – being a very popular one and one that I’m running through again twice. Quite hard to do every day, especially during holidays (I missed a few days). If I were to tweak the name I’d call it #100DaysOfLearning – because that’s what it really is.
I have met a few people through it, but more than anything, it keeps me accountable, to showing up every day, to learning, to growing, to wanting to get better.
Now #100DaysOfCode is quite different than an Idea, the original idea was the program but now it’s in place and people are working on different ideas to get better at. The hashtag itself has grown beyond measure.
But it started with an idea, an idea that was shared out and slowly adopted by a community that continued to grow.
But it started with getting an idea out there.
