DevRel Weekly - Issue 109 - Ethics, Principles, and Engagement

Welcome! 👋

Hey everyone! It's been a tough week but the good content keeps on coming, so the newsletter is still full of great links. Special shout-out to my right-hand people: Kate & Kristen, who make it possible for me to curate the hundreds of links that come through every week.

Keep your head up high, know that you're not the only one struggling, and if you need a little extra smile today, I hope Ember's sweet face will help you through!

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

DevRel Advice Column

Looking for advice from DevRels, Tech Writers, and whoever manages content.

What is your content strategy? How do you keep it updated and cover 360-degree views to your product/platform/APIs?

-Raviraj Subramanian

Goal: Accessibility & Enablement

For me DevRel is the mirror image of product marketing. If PM aims to make your product more accessible to sales/marketing, DevRel aims to make the product more accessible to devs - by ensuring an excellent developer experience, tooling (docs, demos..), & constant feedback loops.

-Sharone Zitzman

Engagement (Not Numbers) is what Matters

There's a difference between having 100K followers with only 1% engagement and only 1000 followers with 100% engagement.

-Kelly Mahoney

First, Gather Information

Advices for #DevRels : Read & Reflect. Listen actively. Sometimes people don't invest time thinking how their strategy is aligned with their company goals. Don't take marketing strategy for granted. Look for preset assumptions. Once you understand them, you can easily work together

-Jorge Barrrachina

Challenge the Norm

As someone who has worked in evangelism and developer relations for the past 13 years, I can tell you that the most valuable role I play at my company is that of the "outside skeptic." I tend to challenge "that's the way we've always done it" consistently with data and logic.

-Jeff Blankenburg

Tangibles 🤓

The Value of Ethical Thinking

Don Goodman-Wilson has long been a proponent of practicing ethical developer programs and his recent post delves into what this means specifically for Developer Relations teams. His summary at the end of the article is spot-on:

...taking an ethical approach is a recognition that communities require maintenance, they must be cared for daily in order to thrive.

4 Wheels That Run an Engaging Community

I've seen a lot of blogposts that attempt to show how to best create engagement in an online community, but this recent post from Shubham Upadhyay is one of the best. In it, he walks through the 4 "wheels" that drive community engagement:

Rituals
Weekly Sessions by Industry Experts or Influencers
Events (Offline & Online)
Community Catchups

There may well be other things that are working for you as well, but I'd encourage you to look at this article for additional ways to engage and draw your community in.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs - Oh My! with Donovan Brown and Patrick Collins - Community Pulse
The Why and How of Developer Advocacy and Tech Community with JJ Asghar - DiscoPosse Podcast
Developer Advocacy (and Kafka Summit) in the Pandemic Era with Tim Berglund and Gwen Shapira - Streaming Audio
Developer Relations with Mandy Waite - Google Cloud Platform podcast
How To Get Members To Stay Engaged In An Online Community (video)
Creating a Career Path for a Community Team to Drive Productivity with Mary Thengvall - Masters of Community
Fighting for What is Right and the Balance of Working from Home vs. Working in an Office - Peers over Beers
How Developer Advocacy is Changing with Joe Karlsson - Productivity in Tech
Co-creating Business With Your Community with Vincent Boon - Cohere

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Conferences, meetups, and webinars, oh my! Check out this list for a bunch of upcoming events you don't want to miss!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

Our Developer Advocate will continue to foster LogRocket's relationships within the web development community, keeping tabs on what product teams need to improve customer experiences. The Developer Advocate will help users understand LogRocket’s benefits and value proposition by contributing regularly to the editorial calendar. Topics will have a broad scope, from educational content creation (resources, tutorial), to thought leadership and some product marketing.

Developer Relations Engineer

The Developer Relations Engineer is responsible for ensuring App partners, including SaaS companies and independent developers, build and publish innovative solutions using the ActiveCampaign platform. This individual will be the first DevRel Engineer in the organization. They will have an opportunity to build/mold what DevRel means at AC.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Looking for a job is like the year 2020; it's not easy. We here at DevRel Weekly hope that the jobs we've collected make it a little easier for you folks looking for a Developer Relations job. Best of luck to everyone who's searching. We're with you.