DevRel Weekly - Issue 128 - Breathe in, Breathe out.

Welcome! 👋

I'll be honest... this week was exhausting in a soul-heavy way. So many friends are going through difficult times. So many people are at their breaking point. And it's difficult to keep pushing through. The newsletter didn't go out earlier this week because I finally admitted I simply couldn't keep working on it in the evenings after my day-job was done. Then I found this article and felt like someone had taken a peek inside my soul.

Fatigue is when a muscle or the mind has been used almost to the point of failure and it requires rest to recuperate. Contrastingly, depletion is when our inner resources of energy have been drained... The way to treat depletion is with restoration, not with relaxation... This is why I think we are in the toughest phase of the pandemic, because we aren’t just exhausted — we are depleted. We are depleted because our usual channels of restoration are not readily available to us anymore.

Whew. Take a few deep breaths, friends. I'm right there with you.

This tweet from Dylan Gafner seemed particularly relevant right now as well:

Empathy can be a Community Managers greatest strength, but it can also become overwhelming. If you aspire to be a CM someday, make sure to invest in your mental health and happiness. Develop internal tools to de-stress and detox in moments of weakness. Never forget to breathe.

Breathe in, breathe out. Take a minute to settle into those emotions if you need to. It's been a rough 12 months, friends. Do what you need to take care of yourself, please. ❤️

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

DevRel Advice Column

It's been a little while since we've had a good "advice column" here! Click through to give your own answers and see what others are suggesting as well

What's your favorite developer experience (#DX) metric?

I'll start - zero result search or no result search rate 🤩

-Amara Graham

If you could give ONE piece of advice to those just starting out building community, what would you say?

-David Spinks

Core DevRel Skills

Looking to get into #DevRel? Some skills you'll need that aren't related to code or content:

💚 Empathy
🏗️ Managing multiple projects at once
📚 Learning new skills quickly
🔋 Knowing your capacity
🚫 Knowing when to say "no"
☎️ Communicating clearly

-Sam Julien

Community is EVERYTHING

Community reaches across your entire business.
Community isn't marketing.
Community isn't support.
Community isn't sales.
Community is community.
Community is EVERYTHING.

-Holly Firestone

Metrics Aren't One Size Fits All

What is the best way to measure community success? Do you need tons of members, or a smaller amount of fully engaged members? It depends on the objective of the community. Make sure your metrics are aligned with your strategic goals.

-Crowdstack

Combine Superpowers to Have Greater Impact

The pressure / expectation to be a social media superstar is destructive to the DevRel field.

Everyone has their own superpower that can serve developers, that should be enough.

Besides, not all developers spend time on Twitter or other sites.

Instead, meet developers where they are, on their terms.

That is how to best serve and help the community.

As a DevRel team, combine the superpowers to have greater impact.

In my team, I'm the writer & social media expert. Another is the video guru. And another is the cross-team collaborator.

Combined we make for a better whole and create better outcomes.

-Mark Birch

Wait for it to Compound

If you’re just starting to build a community, you’ll need to give it 6-12 months before you start to see business results.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is the results are compounding, and in a few years it’ll surpass everything else.

-David Spinks

Tangibles 🤓

The 2021 Community Industry Report

The 2021 Community Industry Report from CMX Hub is out, which means it's an exciting day for the industry! They've listed their key takeaways in a short summary or you can choose to download the full report. Here's a sneak peek at what they've found:

Community teams are growing and maturing
Community is becoming critical to business
Community saw more investment through COVID
Measuring value is a top frustration
Virtual events are here to stay
There's more work to be done to foster inclusion

Creating Better Content

There were a handful of articles this week that touched on how to create better content. I've included my favorites below:

How to Design an Effective Audience for Your Content - Jono Bacon emphasizes the importance of knowing who you're writing for before you start writing.
Creating Better Community Content - This short list of tips from Rich Millington is focused on sourcing topics from the community,

The 7 steps to Validating your Community

As the idea of "creating" a community becomes even more popular, how do you as a DevRel professional know whether you're heading in the right direction, or just following along with the crowd? Rosie Sherry has put together a "community building validation checklist" -- things you should do or at least think about before starting a community.

Community Benchmarks - What You REALLY Should Be Looking At

If you're looking for a deep-dive into setting benchmarks for an online community, Adrian Speyer helps you identify which phase of the community lifecycle you're in and how to achieve the next step in this article. It's a powerful tool for figuring out how to bring your community to the next level!

Changing The Onboarding Trigger

This article raises a fascinating question: When is the right time to walk someone through an onboarding experience? Is it the first time they create an account? Or, in the case of an online community, perhaps it's after they've asked their first question (which is likely why they created their account in the first place). By making sure you choose the right time to introduce someone to the benefits of your community (or product), you're more likely to retain them as long-term customers.

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

I get it, a lot of us still don't travel for events right now, but it doesn't mean there aren't great events happening. Check out the Developer Relations Events collection. You never know, you might find an event you'd like to attend!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

Developer Advocate wanted to help us help data scientists! Here at Iterative, we make open source tools for machine learning, like DVC and CML. We’re seeking an expert technical creator and communicator to help us sustain and grow our active, worldwide community!

Developer Evangelist

Apply to be the sole Developer Evangelist for GitKraken, the most popular graphical user interface for Git. Be at the forefront of growing our community of millions of software developers and building product/brand advocacy through events, content creation, and community engagement.

Developer Advocate

StackHawk makes it simple to run automated application security tests in CI/CD. We are hiring our first Developer Advocate to engage with the developer community on application security testing. Drop us a line at [email protected]!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Have you or someone you know been thinking about applying for a new job in DevRel? Check out the DevRel Weekly Raindrop Collection for inspiration!

Looking for a particular type of role? Just put the hashtag followed by the job category in the "🔍Find a bookmark in collection..." search bar to see what shakes out.

Individual Contributor Roles
Technical Community Manager Roles
Senior Individual Contributor Roles
Manager Roles
Dev-Rel Adjacent Roles