The simple change of a letter
I have a personal issue (meh, it is not a real issue but I would like to share it with you, folks). I changed so many times my career in the past years and another day, talking with my dad, he asked me “Hey Jorge, what do you exactly are you doing in your company?” 🤦♂️. That question made me think, lately, I did several changes in my professional path and, that same could happen to a few people around me, so, I think it is a good exercise (for myself as well) share with you what is exactly, I am doing with professional life right now.
Why so many changes? I am co-founder at 47 Degrees with a group of friends (Justin, Nick, and Raul) and because we are partners, we push ourselves to adapt us to the requirements of the company in each season of the growing. So, I started doing Software Development (my last code wrote was doing Front-end and iOS.), then, I jumped to Sales when we expanded our company in Spain, following that, I did UX on projects and product design (like 9 Cards). I have always enjoyed creating new concepts and now… I am doing Marketing.
But, Why marketing?
Those past years, I did my best. I was working tight with our engineering teams giving the product and the design direction but I also I have pretty involved in our community strategy. In fact, in those years we were turning out in a success two of our host events (LX Scala and Lambda World), and we created a new “department” called Events and Community to manage our community efforts (conferences, Meetups, talks, etc.). At the same time, I was very involved in other branches of works (Communication, content, and design). The point is, if we put in a shaker all those ingredients, the cocktail is called Marketing Department.
So, The Marketing department
It’s complicated to talk about departments in a company of 35 people, because Its a word so big that can be only a few people behind, for example in Marketing we are Maureen Elsberry, Benjy Montoya, Israel Perez and me, but, in a strategy we have to think in bigger to build flexible foundations.
What do we do exactly?
- Content: This is one of the most active areas of our department. We help to our engineering teams to show all the good work they do and to figure out different ways to show up and write about the job we are focus on.
- Communications: We love to share the things we are doing through videos and images, its one of the best way to spread the word about our work. BTW, take your time to take a look to our way to spread the Functional Programming word into the community with our videos about Arrow.
- Design: We are believers that design is a must for any of Open Source library (It’s a pity because many times we see into the dev community that poor websites, logos or graphical identity, takes off visibility to awesome projects). From our marketing department, we shout out loud that a clear interface, documentation, and design is one of the things most useful to get users and contributors that trusting in your code.
- Events and Community: In 47 Degrees, we love the community, we are a community. A very important part of our DNA is the supporting efforts and try to help to Communities, Meetups, and Conferences around the world. Bringing the gaps between communities and spreading the love of the Functional Programming paradigm.
This Marketing department is the most significant goal we have this year on the table. We have to focus on the methodology and to work together to row everyone in the same direction. Between hundreds of more things, we have our firstly global Lambda World project. Lambda World is getting bigger with an North American edition (in Seattle) and an European edition (keeping Cádiz).
It may seem a little change but makes me think I am in the place I want and at the moment in my life that I was preparing to.
