Developer Relations: Who, What, and Why

@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

@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

@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 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

@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 Why What Do We Do? • Advocate • Transmit Feedback • Create Content • Research Good Practices • Amplify Your Work 42

advocate on your behalf for product issues, features, and improvements. - take good, bad, and ugly feedback to the product, engineering, marketing, and sales teams to help them understand what you’re actually looking for and the pain points you’re facing, as well as where we’ve screwed up along the way. - write content, make tools, and create sample applications to help you better understand what our product is and how you can use it to make your work-life easier. - research and write about good practices in our particular niche of the tech industry… again, in hopes of helping and empowering you. - amplify YOUR work — your code, your blogposts, your conference talks, you name it — the content that YOU are producing, both internally to our coworkers and externally to other community members.

@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 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

Be patient with us. We’re advocating for you internally at our companies and those conversations sometimes take longer than we’d like them to, but trust me when I say that you’re always on our minds and we want to find a solution for you as soon as possible. - Understand that we don’t know everything (especially if we work for a big corporation). There may be times when we say “I don’t know!” but that doesn’t mean we aren’t technical, tech-savvy, or capable of helping you get to the bottom of your question. It simply means that we want to build an authentic relationship with you, and in order to do that, we can’t lead you astray by guessing at answers or giving you incorrect information, so instead, we’re choosing to be upfront and honest about our limitations, and committing to work with you to find the answer. - Know that we’re advocating our hineys off for you each and every day. You are absolutely our top priority and we will continue to fight for you, even when it makes our jobs difficult.

@mary_grace How How Can You Help? (the active version) • Flood us with feedback. • Tell us what you need. • Involve us in conversations. 48

Give us honest, authentic, genuine feedback — all of it, even if it’s not the best news about the product or company or PEOPLE we work for and with. We can only do better with your help. - Tell us what you need — what would help you thrive in your professional life? — even if it isn’t directly related to our product or company. Chances are we know of a tool that could be beneficial or we might be able to introduce you to someone else who can help you more directly. - Lastly, involve us in interesting conversations you’re having in your communities. We love to hear about new tools and concepts just as much as new pain points and issues, and all of this information helps us understand you better and allows us to be more effective at our job — helping and empowering you.