I've been lucky to be part of communities for most of my adult life, or at least since my last year of high school. I've built some, joined a ton, grown away from quite a few, and tried to support as many as I could. Sometimes that meant giving my time or my skills, and later, when I was in positions that allowed it, it meant bringing sponsorship, knowledge or experts into the room. These communities have come from very different worlds. I started with women's empowerment in my hometown in 2011 and 2012, right after the worst of the drug war in Mexico, and from there I went through water scarcity, poverty alleviation, social entrepreneurship and eventually women in tech and cloud communities.
The funny thing is that no matter how far apart those causes seem, the communities around them end up gravitating toward the same things. They all need events where people can network, meet, learn and celebrate each other. They create content and share knowledge, mostly to advocate for their cause and to find people who think like them. They look for funding so their ideas can actually happen. They build spaces to stay connected between gatherings, like forums and group chats, and at some point they all start reporting on what they've done.
I could talk for hours about any of those, but today I want to write my heart out on events, because I just got back from a really inspiring week in Buenos Aires at Nerdearla.
Nerdearla
If you haven't heard of it, Nerdearla is the largest Spanish-speaking developer event in Latin America. It's free and open to everyone, which already checks most of my boxes, but what I love the most is how much of a community it is. You notice it as soon as you walk in. People are welcoming, there are builders everywhere helping each other out, and the whole thing is honestly a lot of fun. Spending the week there reminded me why I like working so close to communities, and it got me thinking again about the things that help them thrive.
I have a TON of respect for the organizers behind Nerdearla. Putting together something this big every year, in multiple countries, keeping it free, and still making it feel this personal takes a huge amount of work, and you can tell it's done with a lot of love. I've been very lucky to witness what they've been doing for a while now, and getting to be a small part of it these past years felt really special.
We came back as one of the main sponsors again this year, and our AWS Dev Lounge ended up feeling like the home base for the AWS Community at the event. It was full all day with sessions, fireside chats, and content creators and builders stopping by, plus a lot of swag that I personally loved (and I hope everyone else did too). Seeing the lounge that full after all the months my team spent planning it was one of my favorite parts of the week. By the end of each day I was exhausted, but I somehow left with more energy than I arrived with, which is my favorite way to leave an event.
Side projects que por fin hice deploy
One of my highlights was the session I gave with Ana, called "Side projects que por fin hice deploy." We talked about the one-person app and the builder mindset, and the idea we kept coming back to is that today, one person with a clear problem and some curiosity can build and ship something useful on their own.
My own example was Closet Genius, a wardrobe assistant (and my baby) that I built because I always overpack when I travel. It helps me plan outfits for a trip so I only bring what I'll actually wear. A big part of building it was learning to right-size AI. I didn't need the biggest or most expensive model for this, so I used Amazon Nova Pro and Haiku, which kept it fast, cheap to run and easy to keep iterating on.
If there's one thing I'd want people to take from that session, it's that at this point the best thing you can do with that idea you've been sitting on is to try it and go build it, even if it's small and "only" solves a problem for you that might not even be a huge problem, and sometimes it's just a fun one (like mine). There's a lot more to tell about how Closet Genius came together, so I'll save that for its own article.
What's next
That's one of the parts of my job I appreciate the most. I get to work with communities, support them in practical ways, and then watch them grow from one year to the next.
Over the next few weeks I'll be at a few more events: the AWS Community Day Peru, then I'm heading back to Buenos Aires for Ekoparty (yes, I'm already excited to be back), the Student Community Day Mexico, JSConf Mexico, the opening of the AWS São Paulo Builder Loft, and many many others.
It's a wild moment to be in tech, when pretty much anyone can build whatever they can imagine, and I hope the people I meet along the way leave as inspired as I did this past week. Looking back, that's been the common thread in every community I've been part of since high school, whether it was a group of women in my hometown or a booth full of developers in Buenos Aires. People show up for each other in a shared space and leave with more than they brought. I hope to meet you at one of the next ones.
-N