Reflecting on Djangonaut Space Session 4

I’ve been on the internet since I was about nine years old. I’ve understood that I’m interacting with people around the globe, but I’m not sure if I fully registered the weight of it. As I’ve become more involved with the Django community, I’ve become more aware of the numerous connections I’ve made.

This past session of Djangonaut Space (Session 4), I was helping out with the team working on the Django Debug Toolbar (Team Neptune). I wasn’t the navigator or an organizer this go around, but I still attended several of the team meetings that Matthias led. I realized that the team (besides me) were all non-native English speakers, and we were all from various parts of the world. We had people from Canada, India, Korea, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United States. We were all meeting to discuss how to improve the Django Debug Toolbar because we all wanted to learn, grow, and share. Thank you to Abdulwasiu, Felipe, Luna, and Prashant for being a part of a welcoming and positive environment!

Mind you, this was more than just comments on a screen. We saw faces and listened to voices; there was body language! We could see each other’s excitement and confusion. We drew energy from the smiles and warmth we brought.

It’s wild for me to consider that this is where my life is. I have more friends beyond the borders of my country than I have in my current city.

For a little context, my parents come from families of six and seven kids. Out of those 13 families, 10 of them lived in my hometown of 20,000 people for the first 20 years of my life. I went to high school, being related to at least 10 people in the building each of the four years.

To now be regularly chatting, connecting, and forging meaningful relationships with people around the globe is wild to me.

I’m a firm believer that traveling opens your mind to alternative ways of thinking, but traveling is expensive and not accessible to everyone. While open-source collaboration isn’t an immersive experience, it can provide powerful connections with people who have dramatically different circumstances. Through those, it’s possible to find new ways to think about our local problems to provide a better global environment.

These global friendships are opening my mind. I have open-source software to thank for that, and specifically the Django community. Djangonaut Space was created with an intention to connect people and help them become better.

It has clearly done that for me.

If you’d like to learn more about Djangonaut Space, visit us at djangonaut.space and review our program documentation. We’d love to have you participate or get involved!