Shared effort to make the island thrive — Jairzinno Henriquez on starting a GDG chapter in Aruba
Meet Jairzinno Henriquez, software engineer based in the Netherlands who decided to honor his roots and start a GDG chapter in Aruba to help the island thrive.
Tell us your story — what’s your background and professional focus?
A: I was born in Aruba, my parents moved to the Netherlands when I was one. Before getting my bachelor’s degree in software engineering, I completed training in IT support and maintenance. In the beginning of my professional career as a software developer, ten years ago, I specialized in mobile development. Shortly after that I connected with The Dutch Android User Group. Some colleagues of mine were attending the group’s meetups at that time. I saw they were learning new things there and seemed very content with it. It inspired me to join the meetups as well — first just as an attendee, but I soon grew to be an organizer myself. And that’s how it goes — I’m still engaged in the dev community and still working on mobile apps with Flutter.
And in my spare time — besides being a community organizer — I work out a lot, cycle and run. I’m also a huge coffee enthusiast and a home barista. I’m lucky to live near a very good coffee roaster, so each week I try whatever new they have. And barbecue! I love a good BBQ.
Let us elaborate a bit on joining the developer community. What do you think one can learn in such an environment? What are the benefits of joining a GDG?
For me the coolest thing about being a part of a community is connecting with a group of people who share the same passion for technology. Also it’s reassuring to know that other members of the community are eager to help you with whatever tech issue you might have; and if they don’t have the answer to your question, they’ll help you look for it.
But learning about technology is not the only benefit of joining a group like GDG — you’ll also enhance your soft skills, learn how to cooperate with others and take the initiative. We call it a community, but some people I regularly meet became my close friends. Between them, I feel like I belong. And it’s been that way since 2013.
And now you’re building a brand new GDG chapter in Aruba. How’s that going?
Well, it’s still a bit slow. But as a person from Aruba, initially I felt a bit alone in the IT industry, especially when I just started learning and exploring. I was looking for people with the same background, but I didn’t meet anyone till 8 years later. It took me 8 whole years to find someone from Aruba! I’ve stayed in touch with this person — Jean Pierre — ever since. Just before the pandemic hit we started to talk a bit about the developer community in Aruba. We wanted to see if we could bring people together. At the beginning, we launched a Slack channel to give them a space to chat and get to know each other. One thing led to another and we even had conversations with a local political party to bounce some ideas off them. All in all, we decided to stick together, form a group and see if we could do things together.
We kicked off a nonprofit organization; my experience from the Dutch Android User Group showed me that having a legal entity like this really helped with sponsorships, budgeting and official dealings.
The idea of starting a GDG came to me quite quickly after that. The GDG team and our Regional Lead encouraged us to apply and start a new chapter. We’re very excited we got accepted, but things are going slow in Aruba — we’re now waiting to host a social kick-off. We’re also looking for a venue to host our Code Club meetings — with this initiative we teach local children the basics of coding and it’s going very well.
Everything is a bit different than what I’m used to in the Netherlands, so it’s a valuable lesson for me.
What are the developers in Aruba focused on? What’s the community like there?
A: From what I’m gathering so far — things are a bit scattered. The dev community in the Netherlands is pretty advanced, but also diverse — people are focused on one technology or another. The community in Aruba is obviously much smaller, but also scattered — the developers are not using just one technology, they’re doing a bit of each. It’s quite cool we get to meet all the different professionals and we’ll see how the situation changes over time.
I see that technology-wise, some companies operating in Aruba could use more recent, up to date solutions. The cool thing is that we can help them skip all those points in the middle and go straight to those modern, handy solutions.
I also want our GDG community to be truly inclusive. I hope participants won’t be afraid to speak out loud and ask questions. It may be a cultural thing — some people are afraid to ask for help and this shouldn’t be the case. And I believe the ability to collaborate is more important than the technology itself. When a community comes together, all kinds of problems can be solved quickly and easily.
Will opening a GDG chapter in Aruba help the local community or economic development of the region?
A: I really hope it will, that’s our ultimate goal. I want local developers to know that there’s a group of professionals they can join to exchange ideas, learn from each other and build something together.
A lot of people ask on Twitter if there are any developers in a place they’re traveling to — and they always get answers, local communities across the world are there to meet and host them. The community is alive. I want the same for Aruba.
I believe starting a community like this will affect people. We see that when it comes to technology, some things still can be improved — we hope that when we get this group to come together, people will learn new things, make use of that knowledge and help the local business grow as well. Growing business will influence the whole island. That’s also why we decided to teach children how to code — to ensure the development goes on across generations. We hope to see Aruba thrive thanks to that.
What exactly are you doing during the Code Club meetings? Are the children eager to learn?
A: We started with a course from Codecademy. Now we’re planning on creating our own curriculum in Google Classroom. The idea is to teach children things that would be useful to them, things they can implement in their environment. We’d like to watch them grow over the years. We don’t want just a short program of a few weeks.
We’re starting with a weekly workshop and will grow from there. We’re really excited to watch them learn new things and succeed.
What are your plans for next year?
A: Personally I’d really love to host and attend offline events again — this has been hard because of the pandemic. Meeting people in person — both in Aruba and in the Netherlands — will help me understand their needs and make the community grow.
Besides that, it’d be amazing to organize an event where young children and young professionals could come together and learn from each other. Those two groups could really come up with something unique.
