What do you do if you're a programmer trying to foster professional connections in a remote work environment?

Virtual events are the one of the best way to network with like-minded professionals in an evolving remote-work world today. So many firms and organisations now hold their conferences virtually, also webinars. To network effectively, attend these events and ensure you actively participate in the activities. Echo your voice during interactions, answer questions where opportuned, and voice your insights in open conversations. By doing these, you might get feedbacks and further discussion from fellow professionals that eventually leads to fostering professional relationships.

Content creation goes a long way in expanding your social media visibility in today's world. If you are considering making professional connections through Social media, create contents from your learning and work. Share your insights through contents, and also engage with other programming content creators. While doing this, You might get personalized messages from other professionals in the field, asking for virtual chats or even projects collaboration, and that's a good way of fostering professional relationships.

Collaborating to open source projects is a very good way to connect with like-minded professionals and build a relationship with them. Platforms like Github gives you a plethora of projects you can work on and collaborate with other developers. Read through the contributing.md file and understand the requirements for working on the project. Thereafter, you might need to a reach out to a contact managing the project, make known your intentions and start working with them. By being collaborative, you continue to forge strategic professional relationships.

Open source projects will not only improve your technical abilities, but also keep you accountable for what you do. As a result, you will learn faster and better. Moreover, most of the tools, from git to CI/CD are also employed in the industry, being part of the standards for software professionals. So, whether you are starting your career, or want to improve/grow, open source contributions will help you build a good portfolio to showcase to your existing or next employer. As I like to stress when coaching my mentees, or talking to colleagues, most of the issues we encounter when building software come from its inherently collaborative aspect. Software will always be a human problem. The more you collaborate the more you will absorb.

There many free and paid courses on different platforms to foster your continuous learning. Such courses, self-paced or with a fixed scheduled, will allow you to have clear goals: - LinkedIn Learning, for Premium subscribers, is enhancing the quality of their content, and I would recommend to invest on Premium as part of your learning journey. - Coursera presents free (whether in full or as auditor) or paid courses by top professors/instructors from either Academia or Industry, e.g. Google, Amazon. - Udemy includes a mixed quality set of courses, but you can find quite good courses on sale. All the sites above encourage some form of interaction with fellow learners such as forums, discussions groups, or simply starting a post on LinkedIn.