A question can be a very powerful thing!
Take this one for instance:
“Anyone in #barnsley got a building going free for an #umbraco mashup day?”
Matt Watson
What is so special about that question? Well, that was a very innocent tweet I sent in November 2011 that set off a chain of events that led me to quitting my day job, running several large scale web events, and co-founding the (WordPress not Umbraco) web agency Make Do.
%[https://twitter.com/mattwatsoncodes/status/136197032837783552]
You see the summarised chain of events that occurred after that question goes a little bit like this:
- Mel Kanarek from the Barnsley DMC offered to help out with some space.
- After a conversation with Mel, we decided to open up the space for all things web.
- I asked Kimb Jones, a long standing friend, to help me put something together. Him being the founder of WordPress Sheffield, he was my first point of call.
- The Digital Barn was born.
- It was so successful we had a Digital Barn 2, and a Digital Barn 3.
- We decided our next event would be slightly different and would be called MAKE DO (see where we were going with this).
- We had the Make Do Hack Day!
- During this time, Kimb and I, both web developers, him front end, and me back end, decided to do some agency work together.
- We decided to form a company together as we were getting more and more requests for work. We struggled for a name, then realised we liked the one we already had. Make Do!
- We were heavily involved in the running of a WordCamp.
- We wanted to keep events at the heart of what we did, and after a false start with Digital Barn 4, we created Front End North.
- At Front End North (FEN), we met Dave Green and after a short while, Make Do employed him.
- We had another Front End North in Sheffield City Hall!
- We hired Charlie Tapster, a wonderful Designer at Make Do.
- We hired again, and again…
- We outsourced some non critical services.
- At the time of writing this were one week away from another Front End North, again in Sheffield City Hall
- I founded Wholesome Code
A question certainly is a powerful thing. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask one today!
Afraid of Asking Questions
I was always afraid to ask questions. Impatient people might have got angry for me asking them, or people may have laughed at me because I didn’t understand something that they knew already.
Thinking about it now, it is these people who had the issues, rather than me.
Another reason is I thought they made me look foolish. This changed when I discovered this small piece of advice:
“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
Perhaps you have made people foolish in the past when they have asked a question? I know in the past I certainly have been guilty of this. So try to keep in mind that if you do this, it is you who is the fool.
Be Foolish
So be foolish, for a minute, and ask that question and change your life! I did.
Or, to quote one of the modern greats:
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish”