DevRel Weekly - Issue 130 - Empathy, Resilience, and Representation

Welcome! 👋

Another week, another DevRel Weekly! I hope everyone's feeling ready to tackle your projects this week. We're halfway through the quarter here at Camunda and I'm simultaneously amazed at the fact that it's still February (I just rechecked the calendar to make sure 😅) and also stunned that March is just around the quarter. Somehow that paradox seems about right for this year. 🤪

This week saw a lot of conversations around empathy, building more resilient systems around online communities, and how to best represent our community members internally at our companies. In other words, some of my favorite topics around Developer Relations are discussed below!

As always, if you happen to see an article, tweet, or podcast I should feature in an upcoming newsletter, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. In last week's issue I mentioned a tweet which linked to a variety of resources for Texas residents who were dealing with a catastrophic winter storm. However, I failed to mention Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as other states which were dealing with exceptionally large and unexpected winter storms of their own and who desperately need our help. While it's not an exhaustive list, this article covers additional ways to help storm victims in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Feel free to send other resources my way via Twitter and I'll help to amplify them.

Tidbits 🕔

Empathy is Table Stakes

Empathy is absolutely necessary for DevRel. It's the core of it.

Empathy is more than emotionally intelligent communication. It enables understanding of the developer experience, and improves the intellectual capacity to synthesize.

Table stakes.

-Jordan M. Adler

Saying No is a Skill

How to Say No to Requests without Feeling Like a Jerk

Be sincere (no flattery/bs).

Be direct.

Be kind.

If you can, point them in a helpful direction (article, Discord server). Don't refer a person w/o asking!

-Sam Julien

Be sure to check the full thread for more tips!

Quality over Quantity

To grow communities, I prefer to grow slower with “quality” members vs. quantity. Quantity is just a vanity metric, quality is what will generate value over time. Sounds obvious, but I see so many groups accepting anyone without considering if they are the right fit.

-Carmen Taubman

Tangibles 🤓

Product Development & Communities

If you've followed my work for a little while, you likely know how strongly I feel about the relationship between Developer Relations and Product Development. If product feedback, follow-through, and connecting community members with your colleagues aren't a part of your core tools for advocating for your community's needs, I'd highly recommend you read the two articles I've linked below. They lay out the importance of gathering and filtering through feedback, being transparent with your community about changes that are coming down the road, and having a steady line of communication open with your top community members.

Building better online communities: Resilience in 2021 and beyond

Resilience continues to come up as a theme for communities and those of us who are building them. How we create a healthy community for our members is definitely a concern, but maintaining the health and wellness of those overseeing the communities is even more of a pressing issue. Safety Tech Innovation hosted a recent panel on this topic and recorded the major takeaways. If you (or your staff) are responsible for an online community, you'll definitely want to read these key points.

How to Pitch Yourself as a Speaker

Half the battle of speaking at a conference is actually getting your talk accepted. In this recent article, Charley Mann breaks down some of the techniques that will help you get past the scrutiny of the agenda committee and give you an opportunity to shine on stage.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

DevRelCon videos - A new wave of videos from DevRelCon London 2019, DevRelCon San Francisco 2019, and DevRelCon Earth 2020 were just released!
Tech Support to Dev Advocate to Keynote Speaker with Kelsey Hightower - Develomentor
How to Treat Developers as Customers with Gail Frederick - APIs Unplugged
Is Clubhouse the New Thing? - Peers over Beers
The Goals and Future of Developer Events with Jana Boruta - Under the Hood of Developer Marketing
Technical Principles of Developer Experience by Shodipo Ayomide (video)
My First 90 Days as a Developer Advocate by Amruta Ranade (video)

Events 📆

Google Open Source Live

This month’s Google Open Source Live will highlight the Bazel Open Source build system along with multiple sessions presented by Bazel team members and the Bazel community. Join us to understand different approaches to building and creating large Open Source code bases such as Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) as well as packaging Bazel Open Source for Debian. Throughout the event, our speakers will answer your questions via the Live Q&A Forum. We’ll wrap up the event with an After Party on Google Meet for an opportunity to connect with the speakers and other attendees.

Event: Bazel day on Google Open Source Live

Date & Time: March 4 (Thu) 9 am - 11 am Pacific Time

Register: Register here to reserve your spot!

Events 📆

DevRel Weekly Events

Here's an event, there's an event... what type of training are you looking for? Be sure to check out this month's Google Open Source Live while you're deciding what you'll attend next.

p.s. Know of a community-related event that should be on here and isn't? Drop me a line!

Jobs 👩‍💻

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

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 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 👩‍💻

DevRel Weekly Jobs

Ready for the next step in your career? Check out this collection of jobs to see if your next big opportunity is available now!