Starting a developer book club

Book clubs can be a effective way to stay up to date with latest technologies and best practices and learn with your friends/colleagues in a safe environment

For me, constantly learning new things is what makes programming so interesting and I’m always looking around for new tools, techniques, and languages to make programming even more fun. Some examples of how I stay up to date are by following knowledgeable developers on Twitter, reading blogs, subscribing to newsletters and going to meet-ups/conferences. These have always been great ways to find new tools, techniques and languages which you can then practice with afterwards – but I feel that reading books related to development, software organisations and tech in general give different and very valuable insights as well.

Motivation

Most developers I have met agree that learning new things and constantly improving your skills are a big part of what makes being a developer so much fun. Finding new and better ways to solve problems, constantly feeling that you are improving – is a great feeling. I find that learning together can be even more fun and can help all involved parties grow by sharing insights and information. At my current job we have bi-weekly discussions and knowledge sharing sessions for this reason. During these sessions developers can present & discuss anything they have found helpful or interesting during their development work.

Lately, some of my co-workers and friends have been discussing various books related to development & the tech industry, suggesting titles and discussing the learnings/insights from the different books. As we talked more and more about books, we came up with a structure and kicked off our book club for (mostly) development & tech-industry-related books.

So far, I have found this to be a great way to gain new insights in programming-related topics – but also in many other topics that help make a good developer like communication-skills, business knowledge and management & leadership topics.

Structure

As a start, we created a Slack-channel for our book-club. People are using this channel to recommend books to each other, have discussions about the contents and it’s a great way to stay in touch not only with current co-workers but also ex-coworkers and fellow developers outside your current organisation.

Besides this, we also have a bi-weekly meet-up where we discuss some of the titles we have read.

Talking about the learnings from these books creates the opportunity to get to know your team better, and what areas they want or need to grow in. Also, know that there’s always the next book. You can rotate between different topics and types of books.

Staying connected during COVID-19 lockdown

Another advantage of creating a bookclub for me has been that it helped to stay connected with the team by stimulating social contact and learning together. Besides, I am listening to a lot of the books as audiobooks – which means I often go for walks during my lunch-break listening to a good audiobook, which is great!