A presentation at API City Conference in in Seattle, WA, USA by Mary Thengvall
Crisis = Opportunity Mary Thengvall Founder, Persea Consulting @mary_grace
Who Am I? @mary_grace I like to say I’m a journalist turned community advocate, who is using my feature-writing and storytelling abilities to show the business value of building developer communities. I started out as a budding journalist, right around the time when all of the newspapers were starting to let go of their reporting staff. So you can see how well that worked for me! I switched into Public Relations — still related to writing, but in a slightly more copy-editing and technical writing sense — and landed a job at O’Reilly Media, where I stayed for 8 years. I put my journalism skills to use learning about each of the topics that I was writing press releases about, and once I got tired talking to people and not with people, I talked them into letting me try this emerging thing called “Community Management.” I eventually built up a community team there, and then went on to work at Chef (an open-source back-end infrastructure) and then SparkPost (an email API). These days, I’m running my own business, Persea Consulting — providing resources and education about Developer Relations and Community Management both for those who are practicing in those areas as well as the business decision makers who are trying to figure out what in the world those terms mean.
Who Am I? • Journalist • Teacher • Cruise Director • Translator • Liaison • Moderator • Advocate • Performing Artist @mary_grace I like to say I’m a journalist turned community advocate, who is using my feature-writing and storytelling abilities to show the business value of building developer communities. I started out as a budding journalist, right around the time when all of the newspapers were starting to let go of their reporting staff. So you can see how well that worked for me! I switched into Public Relations — still related to writing, but in a slightly more copy-editing and technical writing sense — and landed a job at O’Reilly Media, where I stayed for 8 years. I put my journalism skills to use learning about each of the topics that I was writing press releases about, and once I got tired talking to people and not with people, I talked them into letting me try this emerging thing called “Community Management.” I eventually built up a community team there, and then went on to work at Chef (an open-source back-end infrastructure) and then SparkPost (an email API). These days, I’m running my own business, Persea Consulting — providing resources and education about Developer Relations and Community Management both for those who are practicing in those areas as well as the business decision makers who are trying to figure out what in the world those terms mean.
@mary_grace So in short… what DO those words mean? My friend Emily Freeman said it well: <quote tweet> I like this definition, because we often don’t have control or a lot of power, but we DO have the ability to influence change when crisis strikes, which is our topic for today. Quick show of hands: how many of you are in Product or Developer Relations? How many full-time developers or engineers? Great! That helps me know what to expect and how to set the stage a bit better for today. For those of you who aren’t in Product or DevRel, don’t worry — what I have to say is still relevant, and actually might even be MORE relevant for you, because it involves things that you don’t think about on a regular basis!
@mary_grace So let’s dig in… what are we going to be talking about today? The crux of it is being prepared for likely scenarios that may pop up at your company… like any good Scout…
@mary_grace …or Wilderness Explorer!
Today’s Talk • Interactive! • Practical @mary_grace I have two objectives with today’s talk: - make it interactive and memorable - make it practical, so that you can head back to work with tangible ways to apply the principles we’re talking about here. There are three scenarios that we’ll run through, and each of these scenarios that I’ll be referencing are pulled directly from my experience at various technology companies. While these are specific examples, my hope is that all of them will have applications that can you can take back to your company. So… you ready to help me answer some questions?
Scenario #1: The competition goes under. @mary_grace
Teamwork @mary_grace Just like a game of chess, it can’t be won with only one piece. It’s a joint effort and requires coming together with a common goal.
Scenario #2 You release breaking changes… without notifying customers. @mary_grace
Communication @mary_grace Simple communication can go a long way in this situation… knowledge of what’s happening when, and what the impact will be. —> Example from SP (but don’t mention company name) — say it was one of my clients? Build up a process around tickets that are customer-impacting and have a team that works through the process every time.
Scenario #3: Lottery Factor @mary_grace Instead of bus factor… I prefer to think of it with a positive spin. If someone at your company won the lottery today and decided to quit… how would you compensate? Could you survive? There’s a little bit of chaos engineering theory in this… take out one essential person to see what falls apart. BUT there’s also a reality revealed that I think is crucial: how much of what we do is documented to a point where someone else would pick up our process flawlessly?
Documentation @mary_grace A big part of this scenario can be resolved through making documentation a regular part of your job. And not just documentation for customers, but internal documentation. How do you do that thing that you do every. single. day but no one else seems to know how to do? People worry about working themselves out of a job by documenting too much, but in reality, it only saves you from desperately working ahead of schedule when you want to take a long vacation, or a miserable last two weeks when you decide to finally quit but not have to document everything you’ve ever done.
• Teamwork • Communication • Documentation @mary_grace
Creative Commons Photo Credits • rawpixel, Unsplash • Viktor Gurniak, Wikimedia • Randy Fath, Unsplash • James Benet, Videoblocks • Jewel Mitchell, Unsplash • Jason Leung, Unsplash @mary_grace
Contact Info @mary_grace
Contact Info • mary@persea-consulting.com • @mary_grace • marygrace.community • DevRel Weekly newsletter: devrelweekly.com • The Business Value of Developer Relations: pre-order on Amazon now! • @ember_dog @mary_grace
You never know what tomorrow may bring your way. As the Boy Scouts say… always be prepared! After 10+ years of working with developer communities, I’ve learned you can always turn a crisis into an opportunity. Whether it’s an unhappy community member, a failed plan, or an unexpected announcement from a competitor, with a bit of patience and hard work, you can not only survive, but thrive.
In this talk I’ll share how I’ve run into these “crises” at various companies and how you can turn these challenges into opportunities by being transparent, listening to your community, and cultivating flexibility in your teams.
for free. You
can too.