A presentation at DevOps Zurich Meetup by Mary Thengvall
Hi everyone! My name is Mary Thengvall, and this is a snapshot of my community. I’m a people person. I love connecting people, both personally and professionally. And these people you see on the screen are all part of the greater tech community. But have you ever known without a shadow of a doubt that you belong — truly belong! — in a community. That these are YOUR PEOPLE! And yet not feel accepted by them because they don’t truly understand what it is that you actually do? Welcome to Developer Relations.
@mary_grace Developer Relations 2 How many of you are familiar with this term? How many of you are familiar with the debates about Developer Relations that have been happening on Twitter over the last six months or so? For those of you who aren’t familiar with these debates… congrats on staying out of the drama!! But let me show you a bit of what’s been going on and what people — people, who, mind you, aren’t in Developer Relations — have been saying about this industry. These are real quotes from Twitter and Reddit, but I’ve removed the names and changed a word or two to protect the innocent.
@mary_grace Developer Relations involves being a social media influencer on behalf of big corporations — without being honest about that fact. Unfollowing DevRel folks here has been a good move. 3 Developer Relations involves being a social media influencer on behalf of big corporations — without being honest about that fact. Unfollowing DevRel folks here has been a good move.
@mary_grace There should be no full-time DevRels. They should all rotate, working on real code and real products half of the time, especially those in dire need of what they are preaching. 4 There should be no full-time DevRels. They should all rotate, working on real code and real products half of the time, especially those in dire need of what they are preaching.
@mary_grace Am I the only one to whom “developer advocate” sounds like a career path that’s a bit like “dermatologist”? …in the sense that it’s people who went to medical school but didn’t quite cut it as REAL doctors? 5 And lastly… my favorite: Am I the only one to whom “developer advocate” sounds like a career path that’s a bit like “dermatologist”? …in the sense that it’s people who went to medical school but didn’t quite cut it as REAL doctors?
@mary_grace 6 These quotes, and so many others, are just another example of people not understanding what Developer Relations is and the value that we provide to… our company, sure, but more importantly… the value we bring to YOU — our technical community that we so desperately want to connect with, NOT so that we can sell you on our product, but so that we can empower you to do your jobs better. Because what most people don’t understand is that Developer Relations isn’t just coding… it’s not just folks like me giving talks at conferences or meetups… it’s not sales… it’s not really even marketing (tho it has some similarities at times)… it’s not quite engineering or even product.
@mary_grace 7 As Roach says… Developer Relations involves a lot more than writing code. DevRel is: - building relationships and fostering trust. - Collecting and relaying feedback to other teams - Helping people work through challenges - Inspiring people to build - Building tools to empower - and… - Mentorship
@mary_grace 8 Greg Bulmash puts it this way: Developers are like Microsoft or Amazon. What THEY do is well-known. Advocates, evangelists, and community managers are like a Series B startup… well-regarded in their niche, but harder for people outside it to understand.
9 @mary_grace How Why Where When What Who And this is why I’m here today… to help you understand the essence of Developer Relations. CLICK The who, what, where, when, why, and how of this largely misunderstood industry. My goal is to not only answer your questions about Developer Relations but to help you understand why Developer Relations professionals are so passionate about you and how we apply that passion toward empowering you.
@mary_grace Who Am I? 10 But first… for those of you who don’t know me… you may be asking, who am I, and why am I here today? 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 technical communities. I’ve personally worked with various developer communities for more than 10 years now at companies like O’Reilly, Chef Software, and SparkPost — but my favorite thing about working with technical communities has always been finding the best solutions for the problems that you’re facing. 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.
@mary_grace Who Am I? 11 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, DevRel 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 a mission of providing resources for the Developer Relations industry — essentially building the content I wished had been there when I started my own career.
@mary_grace Who Am I? 12 These days I’m working for a company called Camunda, leading the Developer Relations team and continuing to build out resources for the DevRel community.
13 @mary_grace How Why Where When What Who I’m also still working to make sure that you, the technical audience, understands the true value that we bring to you… which brings me back to my topic for today.
@mary_grace 14 But before I move into answering these questions… I have to say that I had a lot of help from folks on Twitter and The Practical Dev for this talk as you can see from this slide. So many DevRel professionals were passionate about sharing why they love their job and what they wanted all of you to know about Developer Relations! I’ll be quoting from a few of these comments throughout my presentation, but the thread is also linked in the blogpost that includes my slides and a written version of this talk which is linked at the end of this talk: https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2019/5/22/what-is-devel oper-relations-and-why-should-you-care
@mary_grace What 15 So… let’s get started. The first question I want to answer is “WHAT.” I’m starting here because I firmly believe in making sure everyone’s on the same page with terminology before you dive into an important conversation. So before we even get to Developer Relations… let’s define Community.
@mary_grace What Community A group of people who not only share common principles, but also develop and share practices that help individuals in the group thrive. 16 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 we define who falls into the realm of community at a particular company depends on the company’s goals and intentions, but for our purposes today, “community” includes a company’s employees, current customers, as well as prospects, and anyone who could in the future be interested in using the product… which is a fairly broad group of people that could include many of you here today.
@mary_grace What Developer Relations 17 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 Experience, Events, Community Management, Content, etc. It can even go so far as to include roles like documentation and training at some bigger companies like Twilio. In other words… it’s a big umbrella, like one of those huge golf umbrellas that your parents used to have when you were a kid. You might feel like some of the things that I’m talking about today are reflected in your own roles as well — the tasks that DevRel is responsible for aren’t limited to the DevRel team. They can often reach into a variety of teams around the company… we’ll touch on more of that in a bit.
@mary_grace Where Developer Relations 19 I’m going to take a quick detour into “Where” for a moment… because for those of you who have been in tech for a while, particularly open source tech, this might all be sounding very familiar. So where did this term come from? You’ll hear some folks say it’s brand new. Others say that it’s been around for decades. And in some ways, they’re both right. The term “Developer Relations” is relatively new — the earliest searches for it that I can find are 2012. But “Developer Evangelists” first popped up at Apple in the 80s thanks to Mike Murray, Guy Kawasaki, consultant Terri Lonier, and others on the Macintosh team. However… Open Source or Technical Community Management has been around for decades, since Open Source began in the 1950s and 60s, and broader “community management” in the sense of community organization and forming groups of like-minded people has been around for centuries. I believe that Developer Relations is, at its core, community management for a technical audience, which of
course has some nuance to it and a few more technical roles, but at the end of the day, we’re not reinventing the wheel… we’re at best trying to improve it. In other words, it’s nothing new — it’s just new terminology. Language is fluid and just like data scientist is the new trendy name for statisticians, Developer Relations is the new trendy term for Technical Community Management.
@mary_grace What Developer Relations 19 Which leads us back to the “what” — what IS Developer Relations? 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 day-to-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 What 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. 20 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. We’re the connective tissue between the company and community as well as the connective tissue at our companies, connecting product & marketing, sales & engineering, customer support & product, and more, all for the sole purpose of serving you — our technical communities.
@mary_grace What Developer Relations 21 So if Developer Relations is the name for the industry or the team of people at a company… who makes up this team? We’ve got Developer Advocates… we’ve got Community Managers… we’ve got Technical Evangelists or as I prefer to call them, Technical Ambassadors… you might also find a Developer Experience Manager within this group, as well as an Events Manager, Project Manager, and even a full-time engineer or two. So what are all of these roles? Here’s your TL;DR:
@mary_grace What a. Developer Advocate 22 A Developer Advocate is someone who likely has some sort of coding experience… whether that’s an official CS degree, code school experience or been a developer in a past life. They’re often building sample apps, live coding, or giving demos, and engaging with the community on a technical level.
@mary_grace What a. Developer Advocate b. Community Manager 23 A Technical Community Manager may not have this coding background — tho they could! — but they will absolutely be tech-savvy. They need to be able to carry on conversations that take a fairly deep dive into where your product fits within the broader technical market as well as answer questions about the technical aspects of your product.
@mary_grace What a. Developer Advocate b. Community Manager c. Developer Evangelist (aka Technical Ambassadors) 24 Next up: Technical Ambassadors, aka Developer Evangelists… renamed due to religious arguments within the developer community. These are the folks who excel at promoting the importance of this particular product within the larger technology industry.
@mary_grace What a. Developer Advocate b. Community Manager c. Developer Evangelist (aka Technical Ambassadors) 25 All of these roles play a part in accomplishing a singular goal: Enabling our technical audience — the developers and ops folk — YOU! — who use our product to be the best that you can be at you jobs. When led by an experienced manager who believes in the business value of Developer Relations and has the ability to create a strategy that will set both the team and the company up for success in the eyes of the community, there’s no end to the value that this team can provide! PAUSE So that’s most of the popular titles that you’ve likely heard throughout the industry. But there’s one more thing I want to clear up… because I know if I don’t, I’ll get questions about it later.
@mary_grace What WTF is a Dev 🥑? 28 WTF is a Developer Avocado? Why are there personified avocados on the screen and on the cover of my book, what does this little emoji mean, and why has it taken over Twitter (besides the fact that avocados, have in general, taken over the millennial generation of tech professionals). This all started over 3 years ago when I was working with the DevRel team at SparkPost. 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 we all loved avocados, we took on the mantle without much prompting, and soon came up with an analogy for it that helped our coworkers understand our jobs: You see… DevRel is often referred to as the “fatty” part of the business given that we usually ask for a fairly large budget for our community endeavors, speaking engagements, and conference and open source sponsorships among other
things. But we believe that used in the right ways, at the right times, with the right combination of items, we can contribute to the health of the company as well as the overall community of tech professionals.
Therefore, DevRel is, officially, “the good kind of fat.” @mary_grace What 27
@mary_grace When 28 Now some of you may be wondering… Can’t engineering and product collect their own feedback? Why do I have to talk to this intermediary group that I don’t really understand in order to get information back to the engineers? When is DevRel actually necessary? 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:
@mary_grace When But we could do this with Product or Marketing… When is DevRel necessary? 29 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? It’s just a mindset, right? Which leads us back to this mantra from the beginning of the talk:
@mary_grace When 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. 30 What sets DevRel apart… what 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. It’s not just a mindset for us — it’s not just a set of skills — it’s the continuum of skills and approaches that are impactful, maybe even moreso than the term itself. This focus and attention gives us the opportunity to build up trust among the community. When you know that we’re asking you for feedback so that we can advocate for your needs internally, you’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. Which means the Developer Relations team is the only one that has your best interests at heart 100% of the time.
@mary_grace Who 31 So now that you have a basic handle on “what” DevRel is and some of the terms it includes, as well as “when” it’s necessary for tech companies, let’s move on to “who.”
@mary_grace Who 32 First of all… we are among you. There are many of us here at this conference. We take part in discussions in your community chat rooms. We watch the conversations happening on Stack Overflow, Reddit, The Practical Dev, and other public forums.
@mary_grace Who 33 On a serious note though, we hang out in these places not to be creepy or to ferry company secrets back to our coworkers, but because the better we understand your pain and the problems that you’re facing, the more equipped we are to help. But why do we care about this? What’s our motivation? Let me share a few things that I heard from the DevRel community…
@mary_grace Who 34 We live for the moments when someone tells us that our work has helped them. I’ve had a “wins” folder for years that has traveled with me from computer to computer that has screenshots of emails, tweets, DMs, and more from community members who have sent me thank yous for the work that I or my team has accomplished.
@mary_grace Who 35 We also want to make your jobs easier which means hearing ALL of your feedback… not just the happy bits. As you can see from Ken & Greg in their tweets, we want to make your lives easier because we genuinely care about people and as I mentioned in the previous slide, we live for your “a-ha” moments. Even having to take hard feedback to the team is worth it because we feel your pain. We’re just as frustrated (if not moreso!) when things don’t work right because we want to do better by you.
@mary_grace Why 36 All of this background information leads me to the core question that I’ve heard from so many technical folks: Why should I care? After all… DevRel professionals are simply folks that travel to a whole bunch of conferences, give talks, host parties, and complain (or humble brag) about how hard it is to be on the road all the time… right?
@mary_grace Why 37 This meme went around Twitter a few years ago and it’s right in some cases… I’ve lost track of the number of flights that I’ve fallen asleep on (or tried to). But it also shows a very, very narrow view of DevRel, which is a problem that I think we’re somewhat to blame for ourselves… and one that I’m working to fix.
@mary_grace Why 38 This tweet from John Cavnar-Johnson sums it up perfectly: “Most devs undervalue the skills and commitment DevRel brings to the table… change that by doing more talking WITH and less talking TO.” And while I recognize there’s some irony in my saying that from up on this stage where there’s not Q&A happening when I’m done with my talk… I’m hoping all of this context will help you better understand the value that Developer Relations has, not for their company, but for YOU, the technical audience we’re trying to serve.
@mary_grace Why Dev Advocates ha ve technical skills; w e don’t just give talk s. 39 We are not talking heads. Traveling a nd shows can actually be grueling and brutal. I think it’s worth noting that out of the several dozen responses that I got from Developer Relations professionals when I asked this question — what do you wish developers knew about your job? — the only ones that mentioned anything about conferences and travel were statements like these: - Dev Advocates have technical skills; we don’t just give talks. - We are not talking heads. - Traveling and shows can actually be grueling and brutal not fun.
@mary_grace Why 40 Daniel Appelquist put it well in this tweet: DevRel is not just about talking to devs about “some technology” — it’s also about participating in, building, and maintaining community and ecosystem.
@mary_grace Why 41 So if our jobs aren’t made solidly up of travel, conferences, and speaking, despite what it looks like on our Twitter feeds, what is it that we do? And again… why should you care? Here’s a small glimpse into what we do that directly impacts you.
@mary_grace Why What Do We Do? • Advocate • Transmit Feedback • Create Content • Research Good Practices • Amplify Your Work 42
@mary_grace Why 43 Also, we talk about you. All. The. Time. like… ALL the time. It’s almost embarrassing.
@mary_grace Why 44 So, why do we do all of these things? Because we value people first and technology second. This may seem backward… after all, we work for tech companies, the success of whose products pay our bills. But here’s the thing… we all know that the best sales people, the best marketing folks, the best… well… PEOPLE — the people we most enjoy being around! — prioritize people over product. This is just another reason how Developer Relations is related to product, marketing, even sales, but isn’t quite the same.
@mary_grace Why 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. 45 But this takes me back to the mantra I’ve referenced twice now in this talk… Again, this is the core of Developer Relations, because when we have both of these goals in mind, we are able to not only help the community by providing relevant content, but we’re able to provide valuable feedback to the company, which, in turn, should help you as well. This is a difficult balance to maintain, but it’s crucial for a successful DevRel team. Why? Because we recognize that if we put the community first, above our company, and above the technology that we’re working with, we help the community to succeed. But we also know that when the company makes a decision that sets the community up for failure, there’s often no coming back from that mistake, which of course impacts the company, but also impacts the community, because you all now have to find a new solution for whatever problem we were solving.
@mary_grace How 46 So we’ve covered What, Where, When, Who, and Why. All that’s left is How… and this is where I’m going to ask something of all of you here today. You now (hopefully) understand the value of Developer Relations as it relates to you, our technical communities. But how can you get involved as a developer or ops person? How can you help us help you? There are a few key ways.
@mary_grace How How Can You Help? (the passive version) • Be patient. • Recognize that we don’t know it all. • Know that you’re our first priority. 47
@mary_grace How How Can You Help? (the active version) • Flood us with feedback. • Tell us what you need. • Involve us in conversations. 48
Developer Relations is an industry known by many different names. Developer Advocacy, Community Management, Developer Evangelism, and even, for some (seemingly odd) reason, Developer 🥑. You’ve likely heard these terms being used over the last few years and there’s a high chance that someone you follow on Twitter just announced that they joined Microsoft or Google’s “Cloud Developer Advocate team.” This talk will help you understand not only what all of these terms mean — Developer Advocate, Evangelist, even Avocado — and more importantly, why, as a developer or ops professional, you should care.
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