It starts with a single brick

I spent the weekend at Manchester Bricktastic Lego show (supporting my wife who was displaying her Lego zoo) and it was a wonderful event for many reasons. “So what?” says you. “You had a nice weekend, that’s good but hardly relevant for LinkedIn, right?”. Well, yes but I do like a good metaphor…

There are a three lessons I’ve been able to take from Bricktastic. Three things that I knew but should think about more often. Firstly, that everything starts from a single brick. Every fantastic model of a zoo, a fairground, reconstruction of a famous building or futuristic cyber-scape starts from a single brick. You never quite know exactly where the second, third or 450th brick might take you.

On reflection this feels a little bit like a career in tech. I thought I knew where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do and built my career brick by brick, experience by experience, technology by technology. University gave me a foundation of bricks (now-a-days you can get that in loads of different ways) and you pick up extras along the way. But then Lego give you a new type of brick. You’ve not seen it’s like before. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It's the same with technology with the tech shifts from web, to mobile, cloud and now with Generative AI. They're the new lego models but they're all built of bricks, some old, some new. If you keep collecting them, you end up with an amazing set of bricks and your career looks a little different from what you expect but, I’d like to think, your life is enriched, right?

Another aspect of the Lego show I loved was how willing everyone was to talk about their Lego models (or MOCs, My Own Creation). How they’d built some of the tricky bits, some of the cool bits, some of the cool mechanisms or how they’d simulated the impression of a realistic landscape with a handful of small, regularly shaped plastic bricks. This willingness to share techniques and cross-pollinate ideas benefits everyone. You learn a new technique, a new way of using a brick or a new composition of bricks that will move your MOC to the next level. It’s rare that one person creates something insanely great without standing on the shoulders of others. Collaboration and sharing lifts everyone from the super experienced to those starting with that single brick. Again true in software engineering. Seniors helping juniors, domain experts helping those without that domain expertise, colleagues on a project using each other as sounding boards. This always, always, always makes things better, you better, the project better, the output better. Everyone likes better!

The final things I noticed at the show were how neuro-diverse everyone was and how accepting everyone was of everyone else. Everyone could be who they were, ask what they wanted, act as they wanted to (within the bounds of legality!), and geek-out of the things they wanted to geek-out about, kids could be kids, adults with specific interests could be adults with specific interests. It was an insanely safe psychological environment. I would say there was no fear to ask a question but I’m sure the fear was there but it was lessened because you could guarantee that you’d be treated kindly and courteously. This environment helped enable the learning and creativity I’ve just discussed and drove a positive experience for everyone (I hope). When you’re in a positive mind set, the fear is lower, the collaboration is greater and stress is much reduced.

So, my tl;dr; summary from the weekend was pretty much this:

Stay curious, dive into new technology, keep building your career and skills, ask stupid questions, ask for help, help colleagues unstintingly, share your ideas, learn new uses for the bricks you have, treat everyone how you’d like to be treated and keep things positive and accepting. Keep building your MOC!

Essentially be good to each other and seeking knowledge and I’d like to think you’ll go far achieving what you want to achieve with the help of your colleagues and friends while doing your part in creating an environment that people will want to work in.

(P.S. If you want to see my wife’s zoo it’s on instagram: @elm_zoo & Bricktastic are at @_bricktastic)