A presentation at SCaLE 17x in March 2019 in Pasadena, CA, USA by Mary Thengvall
@mary_grace Developer Relations: The Good Kind of Fat Hi everyone! My name is Mary Thengvall and I’m here today to talk to you about Developer Relations. How many of you are familiar with the term? Great! Today… we’re going to approach it from a slightly different angle. I’m going to be explaining the business value of Developer Relations using the fruit famous throughout California: the avocado.
@mary_grace Why Avocados? Why avocados, you might ask? Besides the fact that they’re amazingly delicious (I can say that… I liked them before #avocadotoast took over our world), Developer Relations has become known as “the good kind of fat” within tech circles. This was an analogy that picked up steam 4 years ago while I was working with the Developer Relations team at SparkPost, an email API service based in San Francisco. It all started because one of our Project Managers had a hard time saying “Developer Advocate” when she got to talking quickly. Instead, it often came out as “Developer Avocado.”
Given how much my co-worker Aydrian Howard loved avocados, he took on the mantle of “Developer Avocado” without much prompting. @mary_grace Why Avocados?
@mary_grace Why Avocados? …and as the team grew, we became known as the “Developer Avocado team.” We decided to own this title — not only internally, but externally as well, and pretty soon, an analogy was born… one that I’ll be explaining in depth today.
But for those of you who don’t know me… you may be asking, who am I, behind the admittedly kind of creepy avocado face? @mary_grace Who Am I? (Pre-Avocado)
Who’s the Dog? @ember_dog Who Am I? (Pre-Avocado) Well… hold up. I know that before I get into my actual content, I should introduce someone else, because let’s face it, I won’t have your attention until I do. This is Ember Dog — full name EmberDog Pups McGee Captain Underfoot III — you can follow him on twitter at @ember_dog — you’ll see I’ve changed the Twitter handle on the upper right hand corner of the screen there. He’s a medical alert service dog for me — I’m a T1D and he lets me know when my blood sugar is starting to get low. But that’s a whole other talk about monitoring and performance… not for today.
@mary_grace Who Am I? (Pre-Avocado) As for me… I have a journalism background, but I entered the journalism world right as most newspapers were laying off their writing staff, which wasn’t ideal. So, like most tech companies, I pivoted! I’m now using my feature-writing and storytelling abilities to show the business value of building developer communities. I’ve personally worked with various developer communities for more than 10 years now at companies like O’Reilly, Chef Software, and SparkPost — some of you here today know me because of the time that I’ve spent at SCaLE teaching workshops and running the booth presence for these companies! — but my favorite thing about working with communities has always been figuring out what makes each of them “tick” as well as how to find the best solutions for the problems they’re facing.
@mary_grace And as I worked with all of these various technical communities, I found myself going back to my journalism training, recognizing patterns, drawing conclusions, and telling stories about how these communities were not only beneficial for technical folks who were trying to understand a new concept or product, but also beneficial for the companies that were taking the time to invest in them. It started to become clear to me that while some companies could absolutely succeed without a community behind them, the best companies… the most successful… the ones whose communities were loyal and consistently praising them (without any type of bribery!) were the ones who took the time to invest in the technical communities around them. But I also started to realize that most companies didn’t understand what the true value of Developer Relations was, and for the most part, community teams were underestimated, underutilized, and overworked. We also lacked the resources to know how to make things better on our own. So I left the corporate world and started out on my own in 2017, with this mission:
@mary_grace The mission of Persea Consulting is to provide resources about Developer Relations & Community Management for those who are practicing in those areas as well as business decision makers who are trying to understand the business value of these initiatives. In doing so, we move the entire industry forward. I want to create resources about Developer Relations and Community Management, educating and providing professional development opportunities for those who are practicing in these fields, as well as their managers and stakeholders who are trying to figure out what these terms mean and how they fit into the rest of the business. My hope is that by providing resources and working with companies 1:1, the industry will slowly start to understand the business value of Developer Relations and the tremendous advantage that connecting with a technical community can give them in this day and age.
@mary_grace The logos on the screen are a handful of the resources I help to provide as a part of this goal. The most relevant one for today is the book on the far left up there: The Business Value of Developer Relations. A lot of what I’ll be speaking about today is also covered in the book in far more depth. I’ve got a few copies of the book with me if you’d like to come talk to me after this talk, and I’ll have a discount code up on my last slide. All this to say… I do a lot and have a lot of side projects and am very involved in a lot of things. but most importantly, I’m incredibly passionate about driving the Developer Relations industry forward and working with companies just like yours to make sure that both the communities that you’re building and the Developer Relations professionals that you’re employing are set up for success.
@mary_grace But really… why Avocados? So you now know where all of this “Developer Avocado” thing started… and it’s only grown from there, as you could probably tell from my company logo and a few of the resources I provide. But what does it mean for you, today?
@mary_grace In short, it means that I understand the confusion around Developer Relations first hand. These days, most companies have Developer Relations on their checklist — it’s the newest fad — but when confronted with the “why”… they can’t give a good answer beyond, “everyone else is doing it” and “our main audience is developers.” I’ll be the first to tell you — DevRel isn’t an easy, one size fits all, silver bullet to fixing your business and getting all developers everywhere to suddenly join the ranks of your customers. It also doesn’t fit within most of your typical “business value metrics.” But I do know that with patience and by asking the right questions, Developer Relations can be an incredibly valuable asset to your business, and can sometimes even be the difference between success and failure. The principles that I’m going to be presenting today will not only illustrate why Developer Relations is like avocados, but will also show you that by applying these principles, Developer Relations can be a valuable and healthy part of your business.
@mary_grace Community: But before we jump into the principles… I firmly believe in making sure everyone’s on the same page with definitions. First off: What do I mean when I use the word “Community”?
@mary_grace Community: A group of people who not only share common principles, but also develop and share practices that help individuals in the group thrive. Community is a group of people who not only share common principles, but also develop and share practices that help individuals in the group thrive. How you define who falls into the realm of community at your particular company will depend on what your intentions are (we’ll get to that in a moment), but in general, “community” includes your current customers, as well as prospects, and anyone who could in the future be interested in using your product.
@mary_grace Developer Relations: So how does this fit into Developer Relations? First of all, Developer Relations isn’t just another name for Developer Advocates. Developer Relations is the umbrella term for the team whose primary responsibility is building a community both online and offline. This includes Developer Advocacy, developer event management, community management, etc. It can even go so far as to include roles like documentation and training at some bigger companies like Twilio. At its foundation, the purpose of Developer Relations (or DevRel) is to build relationships with and enable our technical communities. DevRel professionals act as a liaison between their company and the technical audience—typically the end users of the product. While most professionals have the best interests of the business at their front of their minds, driving their dayto-day decisions, DevRel professionals have the best interests of the community as their driving factor. They of course care about the success of the business as well—it is, after all, what pays their bills—but they understand that if the community is happy and successful as a result of using the product, the business is far more likely to succeed as well.
@mary_grace Developer Relations: To the community, I represent the company. To the company, I represent the community. I must have both of their interests in mind at all times. I like this mantra to explain that symbiotic relationship: To the community, I represent the company. To the company, I represent the community. I must have both of their interests in mind at all times. In order for the DevRel team to succeed, however, they must be fully supported by the company. From having a clear set of business goals and expectations to the right tools for the job, they need to know that their work is seen as valuable and is therefore not only allowed but actively encouraged by the stakeholders in their company. This brings us back to why I’m here today: helping you understand the value of developer relations via the analogy of avocados.
@mary_grace Principle #1: Avocados are the good kind of fat. So here we go! Principle #1, which you might have guessed from the title slide… Avocados are the good kind of fat. DevRel tends to be a bit of an expensive, or “fatty” department, between the conferences they sponsor, the swag they give away, and the open source projects that they support outside of your own software. However… used at the right times, in the right ways, with the right combinations of items, Developer Relations can have amazing health benefits for your company as well as your community. So what are some of those right times, right ways, and right combinations of items? Things like talking to developers about product feedback while at various conferences and events around the world like this one; having 1:1 conversations with top community members and being the bridge between those community members and your product and engineering teams; and creating open source tools and documentation around your product to make the developer’s lives easier.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. DevRel Qualified Leads I call the connections made while doing this liaison work “DevRel Qualified Leads.” What do I mean by that? Well… you’re all familiar with Marketing Qualified Leads?
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads Let me put it this way… how many of you got your badge scanned at a booth this week? Bingo! You’re most likely now a Marketing Qualified Lead for some company out there. In other words, you’re a person who may at some time become a customer of that company, because Marketing got your information and then handed it off to sales for them to handle down the road. Marketing has now done its job of filling Sales’ pipeline.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. DevRel Qualified Leads I came up with this term after meeting with yet another team who had metrics traditionally given to sales (how many people signed up for an account this month?), recruitment (how many applicants did we get this month?), or marketing (how many leads did you get at that conference?). These are all things that DevRel and Community Professionals have zero control over. Who knows whether the person you met at the most recent conference will even apply for the job, let alone whether the hiring manager will hire them. Maybe their application won’t make it through the system because of the one quirky thing about their education, or perhaps they don’t click with the hiring manager. Whatever the case may be, you can’t be held responsible for whether or not that individual got hired… you have no say as far as salary, compensation, or any number of other negotiating factors go, or whether they’ll be a good fit with all of the other team members. So what does this look like? <CLICK>
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Sales: Potential customers • Recruiting: Potential new hire Maybe you’ve encountered someone who’s answering questions on your forum consistently and has obviously had a very good experience with your product. They might be a good contact to pass off to Marketing for a Case Study. Or perhaps they’d be interested turning some of their longer forum pieces into a blogpost.
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Sales: Potential customers • Recruiting: Potential new hire If you’re getting exceptional feedback from a technical individual, passing them direct to Product might be a good idea. They’ll be able to have a longer-form conversation with them and parse the important pieces rather than you playing messenger. Or if you’re getting close to rolling out a new feature that a handful of community members have been asking for for some time, perhaps you pull them in before it’s released to the public for beta testing.
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Sales: Potential customers • Recruiting: Potential new hire Or perhaps a community member has stumbled on a particularly hard-to-solve bug and is willing to help your engineering team reproduce it and get to the bottom of it.
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Sales: Potential customers • Recruiting: Potential new hire Maybe you’ve run into a Developer Advocate at another company who’s willing to help build out an integration that will help customers use your products in tandem. Your Business Development or Partnerships team would be more than happy to handle that conversation going forward.
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Recruiting: Potential new hire • Sales: Potential customers On occasion, we’ll come across community members who just get it. They click with everyone at the company. They understand the product. They’re passionate about the cause. They’re already contributing during their free time anyway… so when a position opens up, they’re a perfect person to pass off to recruiting.
@mary_grace DevRel Qualified Leads • Marketing: Case study or guest content • Product: Feedback & beta testers • Engineering: Hard-to-solve bugs • Biz Dev/Partnerships: Integrations • Recruiting: Potential new hire • Sales: Potential customers And of course, sales. Depending on the person you’ve met in the community will determine who exactly in sales you pass them off to— whether you start with the solutions architect or solutions engineer — typically the technical side of sales — or go straight to the enterprise sales team, will depend on the need and (usually) the community member’s title. Sometimes, the handoff won’t be with the community member you’ve engaged with, but with their manager or the lead of the team that they report to. You get the idea… these connections are incredibly valuable and might not have ever happened were it not for the Developer Relations team’s direct involvement in the community who now knows and trusts them.
Business Value These DevRel Qualified Leads are incredibly important to keep track of for a number of reasons, the most obvious reason being, of course, that it’s a definitive way to attribute value to the activities that the Developer Relations team is involved in. Additionally, in aggregate, it’s a valuable way to see which activities overall are more effective than others in the long run as well as track themes throughout the industry.
Community Value They also contribute community value. Because as you’re making these introductions between community members and your coworkers, you’re also making introductions between community members. And this leads us to my favorite analogy for DevRel, thanks to my good friend Amy Hermes: Developer Relations and Community Management is a pseudonym for cruise director.
@mary_grace How many of you here have been on a cruise? You know the person who makes sure that you have everything that you need… that you’re not feeling left out… that you have someone to talk to and relate to, so that you’re having the best possible experience? We’re the cruise directors of the technical world.
Community Value Those people who all mentioned the new topic that they were pursuing? I, as the technical cruise director, am responsible to introduce them… to foster that relationship… to make sure that they’re not only pursuing that topic and reporting back to me interesting tidbits, but that they’re enjoying doing so, and part of that is building a community around it, which requires other people. So Marie, let me just introduce you to Bob over here, and the two of you can chat about the latest doodads and thingamabobs that you’re looking into, and let me just fade into the background while the two of you get more and more excited about this fascinating topic.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. So why does this matter? It matters because of the definition we started with for Developer Relations: At its foundation, the purpose of Developer Relations (or DevRel) is to build relationships with and enable our technical communities. And this enablement is beneficial for both the community and the company. I love this quote from Zan Markan’s recent blogpost: <CLICK> Enabled developers are productive, less likely to churn, and better suited to champion our products and services inside their teams, organisations, and wider networks.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. Enabled developers are productive, less likely to churn, and better suited to champion our products and services inside their teams, organisations, and wider networks. -Zan Markan Developer Relations is Developer Enablement bit.ly/2TM4dbf So why does this matter? It matters because of the definition we started with for Developer Relations: At its foundation, the purpose of Developer Relations (or DevRel) is to build relationships with and enable our technical communities. And this enablement is beneficial for both the community and the company. I love this quote from Zan Markan’s recent blogpost: <CLICK> Enabled developers are productive, less likely to churn, and better suited to champion our products and services inside their teams, organisations, and wider networks.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. Our job is to inspire and equip developers to build the next generation of amazing applications. This means understanding what they are trying to do, pointing them to tools and training, and generally helping them be successful. -Twilio’s Developer Evangelism Team Mission Twilio’s Developer Evangelism team puts it this way: Our job is to inspire and equip developers to build the next generation of amazing applications. This means understanding what they are trying to do, pointing them to tools and training, and generally helping them be successful. Is this an inexpensive endeavor? No! But is it worthwhile? Signs point to yes! When Twilio was first founded, they were told they didn’t stand a chance with a developer-focused strategy, but they went on to land a 1 million dollar seed round from a group of angel investors including Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor, and one VC. The first full-time employee that they hired, Danielle Morrill, built out what is now acknowledged as the startup world’s most effective developer marketing program and is now an investor and startup founder in her own right. Now, with customers like Dell, Twitter, Lyft, Salesforce, Hulu, Twitch, Intuit… the list goes on… they continue to cater to developers and build out what is now known as one of the top Developer Relations teams in the entire industry. Twilio has invested a significant amount of money into something that they were told would never make them successful, because they understood the true value of Developer Relations: if you can prove to developers unequivocally that you not only want, but will listen to and implement their feedback, you will gain their loyalty.
@mary_grace Principle #2: Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. Principle #2! Avocados tend to take on the flavor of things around them. There was a time when I didn’t understand the appeal of avocados. They were somewhat mushy, somewhat bland, somewhat odd-looking fruits that masqueraded as vegetables. And then one day, my aunt introduced me to the wonderfully simple lunch of a white cheddar rice cake, avocado spread on top, and a slice of havarti cheese to top it off. I later experimented, added a fried egg to the top of this, and turned it into a breakfast delicacy. I then realized that avocados were a wonderful agent of flavor. And now that I’ve made you all hungry… what’s my point? In the same way, Developer Relations teams tend to take on the flavor of the product that they’re working with. They can be fluid in goals, what department they’re in, and what the group looks like, depending on the needs and goals of the company.
@mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. What I’m saying is, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. What has worked amazingly well for Twilio and Github may or may not work well for you!
@mary_grace This meme, popularized by Matthew Revell of Hoopy, illustrates this point well…[READ] And while this is funny… it’s also unfortunately what happens far more often than you might think! When you look at someone else’s strategy with Developer Relations, you’re looking at a plan that they’ve developed over the months and years, which is specific to their audience, with their company’s strengths in mind. It’s likely not going to work for you!
This tweet from CMX Hub founder David Spinks says it well: Don’t replicate how a successful community looks today. Replicate how they started (small and focused). @mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them.
@mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. The key here is figuring out what will work for your community, both the community you have right now as well as the one you’d like to grow into. There are two questions that can help you figure out what your company will actually benefit from at this moment in time. • Why do you want a community? • What do you hope to accomplish with a community?
@mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. The key here is figuring out what will work for your community, both the community you have right now as well as the one you’d like to grow into. There are two questions that can help you figure out what your company will actually benefit from at this moment in time. • Why do you want a community? • What do you hope to accomplish with a community?
@mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. • Why do you want a community? The key here is figuring out what will work for your community, both the community you have right now as well as the one you’d like to grow into. There are two questions that can help you figure out what your company will actually benefit from at this moment in time. • Why do you want a community? • What do you hope to accomplish with a community?
@mary_grace Avocados take on the flavor of things around them. • Why do you want a community? • What do you hope to accomplish? The key here is figuring out what will work for your community, both the community you have right now as well as the one you’d like to grow into. There are two questions that can help you figure out what your company will actually benefit from at this moment in time. • Why do you want a community? • What do you hope to accomplish with a community?
@mary_grace WHY do you want a community? First up… why do you want a community? Now you’ll notice I didn’t say “do you have a community?” Whether you’ve spent the time to build up a community, every product has a community of customers, both current and potential. It’s simply a matter of whether you choose to be an active participant in fostering the community that already exists. Your “why” determines how you choose to interact with this community. If you’re familiar with Simon Sinek, this question won’t be news to you. For those of you who aren’t as familiar, you may be asking why it’s important that we start with this question rather than diving right into how to accomplish our goals. Here’s the thing: Our “why” drives how we respond to people, which drives what we actually say. This will also drive the structure of who handles and is responsible for which aspects of the community initiatives, how we respond to community members, where we send people for more resources, etc.
@mary_grace WHY do you want a community? So… why do you want a community? The “why” doesn’t have to be quantitative metrics—it can be abstract ideas—but it should be aligned with the organization’s goals and explain the purpose behind each community-related endeavor at the company. You’ll also want to make sure your “why” is driven by a reason, not a result. For example, “to make a profit” is a result of growing relationships, nurturing leads, and having a great product, not a reason to do what you’re doing. Your reason for establishing a community might be generating engagement, making a better product, or customer retention. The RESULT of that reason may be those DevRel Qualified Leads that we touched on earlier — opportunities to further product feedback, pass along possible recruits, facilitate a sales opportunity, or more. But your ultimate WHY needs to be the reason… your motivating factor.
@mary_grace What do you hope to accomplish with this community? The next question that will help us figure out what Developer Relations looks like at your company is this: What do you hope to accomplish with a community? This question helps you determine whether you’re trying to create a community of customers, or simply define a market. You might be looking for a core group of customers to get periodic feedback from; or hope to set yourselves up as thought leaders in a new space; or perhaps you want to follow trends within your niche in technology and are relying on your connections in the community to keep you apprised of these developments. The answers to this question can help you determine now only how to best serve your community, but also what department is the best fit for your DevRel team. Are they mostly writing content and creating resources for community members? Maybe they fit best under Product. Are they speaking at events and educating people about the importance of the overarching topics? Maybe Marketing is a good fit. If they’re working on sample apps and developer experience, perhaps Engineering is a good fit. But placement of the DevRel team is a whole other talk… the key here is figuring out what will not only allow your team to succeed, but make the most sense for the community.
@mary_grace But we could do this with Product or Marketing… Why do we need DevRel? So let me play Devil’s Advocate for a second, because there’s a somewhat valid question here if you aren’t familiar with the value that Developer Relations brings to the table: Why do we need a DevRel team to get this feedback and improve the Developer Experience? Couldn’t this be done with a combination of Product or Marketing surveys, engineering support, and a technical writer hired to write a good blogpost or two or improve the documentation? Which leads us back to this mantra from the beginning of the talk:
@mary_grace Developer Relations: To the community, I represent the company. To the company, I represent the community. I must have both of their interests in mind at all times. To the community, I represent the company. To the company, I represent the community. I must have both of their interests in mind at all times. What is it that sets DevRel apart… that makes us uniquely able to fulfill the relationship-building and listening and understanding that goes hand in hand with building a community of loyal customers, is that our primary focus and our goals are first and foremost based around the community. This focus and attention gives us the opportunity to build up trust among the community. When they know that we’re asking them for feedback so that we can advocate for their needs internally, they’re far more likely to be honest with us. Authenticity breeds authenticity, and while it’s entirely possible for Product & Marketing Professionals to have this viewpoint as well, their priorities are split between feature releases and lead generation, respectively.
@mary_grace Principle #3: Avocados go well with many different cuisines. Principle #3! Avocados go well with many different cuisines. From Mexican dishes, to omelets and scrambles, to the classic BLT, you can find avocados in all sorts of cuisines today. This couples nicely with the previous point, that Developer Relations teams take on the look and flavor of the company that they’re at — it’s not going to look or feel or taste the same at each company. Not only can DevRel goals and the department they report to be different depending on the company, but the tactics that they use to build a community changes depending on the circumstances and the type of product. Just like a good chef experiments with different combinations of flavors, so Developer Relations teams figure out what works best for their community by pulling a variety of levers and observing the outcome.
@mary_grace Avocados go well with many different cuisines. We use our super powers to help Keen IO grow into a sustainable business by supporting other teams within the organization (our internal community) in accomplishing their missions and helping our customers, partners, investors, advisors, fans, friends & family, etc (our external community) be everything they dream to be. -Keen Community Team Mission This is something that the community team at Keen knew and understood well. Their team mission from a few years back makes it clear that they want to do whatever they can to support both their internal community — the business organization — as well as their external community — their customers and community members. And again, more often than not, this success is achieved through connections. If you’re looking for a silver bullet… one simple principle that you can take back with you today, this is it: Developer Relations can fall into SO many different departments and be useful in SO MANY different projects.
@mary_grace What is it that only DevRel can do? So here’s the important question: What is it that only DevRel can do? There’s a reason why you’ll find DevRel teams all over the organization — Product, Engineering, Marketing, etc… it’s because there’s a LOT of overlap. But the thing that DevRel really excels at is making connections. Remember what I said early about being cruise directors? We’re the people who are able to take a step back, observe the conversations that are going on around us, and then make connections, whether community member to community member, or community member to company employee. But then we make sure to follow up with those folks — is there anything else we can help with? Anyone else we can introduce them to? Any other way that we can help solve the problems they’re facing? And in doing so, we become the hub of the wheel — absolutely essential to keeping that wheel of progress turning, but also the connection point between all of the departments — the internal community — as well as the external community members, and between those two segments as well.
@mary_grace Principle #4: Avocados take a long time to ripen Principle #4: Avocados take a long time to ripen. It’s an even longer process if you take into account that it takes 5 years for an avocado tree to be fruitful. But once the fruit is ripe, it’s not only delicious, but yields a good profit for the farmers. If you haven’t guessed it already (or if you didn’t hear me say it earlier), Developer Relations is not a quick fix if you’re looking for your product to take off and be the most popular thing on the market. It’s a long game. It’s not something that often has an immediate impact on sales. However, with a good upfront investment and careful nurturing, the final harvest can be incredibly rewarding.
@mary_grace Avocados take a long time to ripen. So you might be asking… if it’s a long tail game, that’s fine, but what do we track? CLICK The logical place to go to is work output — that’s what’s tracked by many other departments, right? How does your work input impact the bottom line? But please… for the love of all things tasty, like avocados, PLEASE don’t track work output for your DevRel team.
@mary_grace Avocados take a long time to ripen. So you might be asking… if it’s a long tail game, that’s fine, but what do we track? CLICK The logical place to go to is work output — that’s what’s tracked by many other departments, right? How does your work input impact the bottom line? But please… for the love of all things tasty, like avocados, PLEASE don’t track work output for your DevRel team.
@mary_grace Avocados take a long time to ripen. Work output So you might be asking… if it’s a long tail game, that’s fine, but what do we track? CLICK The logical place to go to is work output — that’s what’s tracked by many other departments, right? How does your work input impact the bottom line? But please… for the love of all things tasty, like avocados, PLEASE don’t track work output for your DevRel team.
@mary_grace Avocados take a long time to ripen. Work output The problem with only tracking work output for DevRel is that there’s typically so much that goes into each single “achievement” (a conference talk, for example), that it can look like your DevRel team isn’t getting all that much accomplished on a day-to-day basis. Because a conference talk isn’t just a conference talk. It’s researching the right conferences… finding the ones that are the right audience, the right location, the right impact, and then cross-checking that list with the conferences that are still accepting CFPs. Then you write and revise your CFP. Then you hope and pray that the CFP gets accepted. Then IF you’re one of the lucky ones that gets into the conference, you actually have to write the talk. And practice the talk. And depending on your company, get the talk approved by corporate communications. And then book travel. And then travel to the conference. And then give the talk. And THEN you can say “I spoke at a conference!” and check that off on your list of goals. And then if you’re lucky (and only if you’re lucky) no one asks you what impact that had on the bottom line for the business… but typically, people start to see you as the person who spends a lot of money flying around the world to exotic locations like Pittsburgh, Raleigh, and Pasadena, CA, partying with the community and not actually accomplishing anything. See the problem? DevRel needs business alignment to have the ramp-up time to succeed on these longer commitment timelines, which building a community frequently requires.
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. So what is the better metric? Tracking connections, or… say it with me… — CLICK — DevRel Qualified Leads. Because here’s the deal - when your DevRel team is out at that event that they’ve spent so much time preparing for, they’re going to be meeting customers. They’re going to meet potential customers. They’re going to meet influencers. It’s what they do! It’s what they’re good at — making connections, being those technical cruise directors that I mentioned before. And if you encourage them to then pass those people back into the company — making the appropriate connections to Sales, Product, Marketing, Engineering, etc. — AND if THEY know they can trust the rest of the company to handle those connections with the appropriate amount of respect and attention, then you’re enabling them to do what they’re best at… what only they can do… and turning that into a metric that directly proves just how valuable they are to the company, while allowing them to continue serving the community in the best way possible. And then when these opportunities DO ripen down the road — when the developer who’s currently at a tiny startup that has no need for your product switches to a huge enterprise company, that developer knows and trusts both your DevRel team as well as your company, and suddenly their new company becomes your biggest customer. But if you put a metric of sales, or recruiting, or any ROI goal that needs to prove an immediate return, they’re going to fail, because they won’t be able to do what you’ve hired them to do -CLICK
@mary_grace Avocados are the good kind of fat. DevRel Qualified Leads So what is the better metric? Tracking connections, or… say it with me… — CLICK — DevRel Qualified Leads. Because here’s the deal - when your DevRel team is out at that event that they’ve spent so much time preparing for, they’re going to be meeting customers. They’re going to meet potential customers. They’re going to meet influencers. It’s what they do! It’s what they’re good at — making connections, being those technical cruise directors that I mentioned before. And if you encourage them to then pass those people back into the company — making the appropriate connections to Sales, Product, Marketing, Engineering, etc. — AND if THEY know they can trust the rest of the company to handle those connections with the appropriate amount of respect and attention, then you’re enabling them to do what they’re best at… what only they can do… and turning that into a metric that directly proves just how valuable they are to the company, while allowing them to continue serving the community in the best way possible. And then when these opportunities DO ripen down the road — when the developer who’s currently at a tiny startup that has no need for your product switches to a huge enterprise company, that developer knows and trusts both your DevRel team as well as your company, and suddenly their new company becomes your biggest customer. But if you put a metric of sales, or recruiting, or any ROI goal that needs to prove an immediate return, they’re going to fail, because they won’t be able to do what you’ve hired them to do -CLICK
@mary_grace Avocados take a long time to ripen. To the community, I represent the company. To the company, I represent the community. I must have both of their interests in mind at all times. … represent the company to the community, and the community to the company. If they’re responsible for the success of other departments’ metrics they’ll be too focused on their goals to be able to effectively pay attention to the industry patterns and important changes, and they’ll be too worried about losing their job because they can’t make their “numbers”, which never should have been given to them to begin with. But by focusing on these DevRel Qualified Leads, you set both the DevRel team AND your community up for success.
@mary_grace So to recap… we’ve covered 4 principles today: Avocados are the good kind of fat — used in the right ways, at the right times, with the right combination of items, they can be healthy for your company and your community.
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@mary_grace Bonus Principle: Avocados are good for your heart. Avocados are good for your heart. The more that we learn by researching and collecting data about avocados, the more we’re realizing just how good they are for us.
@mary_grace Avocados are good for your heart. A happy community and a healthy product are good for the heart of every company. Likewise, with more research and data around Developer Relations, you’ll realize that it’s not only good for your business, but in many cases, essential to maintaining a healthy product. And no one can deny that a happy community and a healthy product are good for the heart of every company, just like avocados.
@mary_grace Questions? Mary Thengvall Founder, Persea Consulting persea-consulting.com The Business Value of Developer Relations: Apress.com 20% off - DevRelSCALE @mary_grace mary@persea-consulting.com Thanks so much for having me here today. I’ve got my details up on the screen and information about my book in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. As always, I love chatting about Developer Relations — particularly the topic of how to set a team up for success. If you have in-depth questions about your particular company, I’m more than happy to continue the conversation via email or a short video call. I have a few copies of the book up here if anyone’s interested in one, but in the meantime, I think we have a few minutes for questions…
