A Blog by Scott Isaacs

Tag: GiveCamp MKE

Finding Passion

Passion is elusive.  It’s sneaky and slippery.  It hides and taunts you.  For those lucky enough to have found it, you are truly fortunate.  For years now, I’ve been looking for something to be passionate about.  Something I could really devote myself to.  Something I would be willing to do even if I wasn’t being paid.

All this time, I’ve been looking in the wrong place.  I’ve been hunting passion at work; that’s not where it is.  I’ve tried devoting myself to the job, making sacrifices and working hard, but I always felt like something was missing.  It’s been such a struggle for me that I’ve seriously been thinking about finding a new career.  The problem is that I just don’t know what else to do.

As it turns out, the passion has been just off to the side, right in plain view, but not where I was looking.  I’ve always enjoyed working with the WI .NET Users Group and wished that I could do it for a living somehow.  Now while working on GiveCamp MKE, I think I’ve found the passion I’ve been looking for.  There’s something about organizing something with the sole purpose of benefiting someone else that satisfies me.

The really cool thing, though, is that once you find passion, you can take it with you where ever you go.  I can now feel passionate about work as well (working at a great company helps by the way).  Things are different all around once you’ve found passion.

If you are feeling unmotivated and complacent, keep looking.  Passion is there — just maybe not where you think it should be.  Maybe in a few months I’ll have to write about Maintaining Passion?  Let’s see how successful I can be at that.

GiveCamp MKE

I’m very excited to announce that we are planning the first ever GiveCamp in the Milwaukee area: GiveCamp MKE.  In fact, it’s one of the first GiveCamps anywhere.

"What’s a GiveCamp?", you ask.  In short, it is an opportunity for developers, designers, DBAs, project managers and anyone else involved in the software development process to give back to the community.  And we do it by doing what we know how to do best — building software.  We will soon be accepting applications from various charities for software that they need.  It could be anything from a website to a data collection app to a mailing list manager or anything else.  For more information about the whole GiveCamp concept, and to see what other communities have had (or are planning) GiveCamps, please visit the official GiveCamp site.

We’ve been putting a lot of time into this over the last couple weeks, but we’re still not quite there.  Please bear with us as we continue to finalize things, including the website itself as well as more info about the GiveCamp MKE event.  Rest assured that we will be making regular updates to the GiveCamp MKE site, so please check it often or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss anything.  I’m sure I will also post major updates here as well.

I am very excited about this, and how things are shaping up.  Remember that conference call I wrote about a couple weeks ago?  That was about this.  I just wish I could put all of the things I want to say into words tonight before I fall asleep, but that might take me a couple hours.  :)  So keep checking back here and at the GiveCamp MKE site, and I’ll eventually get it all out there.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to let me know, or to use the contact form on the GiveCamp MKE site.

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