There’s a proverb that goes thus, “don’t throw stones into the market, it may hit your mother.” In other words, if it is bad for one it is bad for others. Whenever I hear this adage I imagine a playful child throwing a stone vertically upwards to the sky and it coming down to hit the mother’s head. It’s a nice way to teach people Karma but it focuses solely on the negative which can stifle action and growth. So in my own version of the popular proverb I add, “…but you can throw roses instead, if it hits your mother, she will love it.” That is way more empowering and liberating because it makes people think more about what value to give and opens a door for people to explore their creative intelligence. It says be remarkable.
Be remarkable.
Before I continue, I guess it is safe to state that although I have a Computer Science degree, as at when I coded the Woocommerce Nigeria States Plugin I was more a Digital Marketer and Design Thinker than a developer who just happens to have a Stack Overflow account and know how to Google. The point is that coding was not my first love or top skill as the case may be but I get to code especially if a solution I need is not readily available and if it is within a reasonable scope I can handle, e.g. developing extensions, microservices, tweaking re-purposing of codes.
Generally, I love learning about how the web works and advocating its literacy so I have a bring-it-on approach to web app development problems.
although I have a Computer Science degree, as at when I coded the Woocommerce Nigeria States Plugin I was more a Digital Marketer and Design Thinker than a developer.
I wrote the WooCommerce Nigeria States plugin over 3 years ago in trying to patch the codes for a WordPress website I was working on, that little change I made will end up improving UX (User Experience) for Nigeria based customers buying from a WordPress site (WordPress is a framework used for building websites really fast and easy) uses the WooCommerce plugin (WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that adds eCommerce functionality to your website. In other words, it makes it possible to have a shop on your WordPress site). The code is a simple array based code but I decided to contribute it to the WordPress Repository for the sake of other Nigerian Merchants who use WordPress and WooCommerce to sell their products and services online but can’t write codes to enhance its functions.
I had written the code made it public and forgotten about it and even after 3 years, I was still getting thanks for it.
The stats from that single act of sharing that piece of code has been amazing so far. Aside from making a number of friends and business associates, the code is actively serving over 400 businesses across the globe and that’s not the best part of it. Interacting with people and businesses who use the plugin has given my team and I access to learning their challenges and needs and that singularly has been a major contribution to building an agile digital tool that is based on continuous feedback loop, a tool that will help new businesses and brands find their place, scale quickly and grow. The digital tool, though still in its Alpha stage is proving to be all we hoped it should be in terms of usefulness I’m not yet convinced it is ready for public access so we’re still testing it with a small group of people making sure the great results are sustainable.
The internet is really so verse and powerful and only those who recognise and use it as the platform of the future are positioned to win in the long run. The good thing for many of us which we sometimes take for granted is that the internet is free and open in the sense that anyone can do almost anything with it. The internet can be said to be the single greatest technology of our time because for the first time in history we can all individually contribute greatly to the advancement of mankind and humanity by sharing our gifts, talents and solutions with others.
If what you have is good for at least one person chances are it is good for many others. There’s so much to gain by doing this.
Throw your good out there, the internet is your hand.
If it is good for at least one person chances are it is good for many others.
StartupYou. Be Legendary. Anyone Can Rise.
