DevRel Weekly - Issue 132 - Anniversaries, Celebrations, and Resources Galore

Welcome! 👋

It's been quite a week, DevRel fam! I hope you're all doing well.

Earlier this week we celebrated International Women's Day and CMX released a special collection of resources created by amazing women. Carve out some time this week to watch these awesome conference talks, listen to the podcast episodes, and read the articles by some incredible Developer Relations and Community professionals.

For many of us, this week also marked the one-year anniversary of lockdowns, or perhaps arriving home from the last major trip you took. Be kind to yourself this week, friends. These anniversaries will often trigger grief over people, events, and opportunities lost over the last year. By taking care of ourselves, we can be better equipped to take care of our community members.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

The Business Value of Online Communities

If there was any doubt about the business value of online forums and public communities, read this thread from Richard Millington. His team deindexed the online community from search engines for 4 months and not only did the number of visitors decrease significantly, but the number of year-over-year support tickets increased by 58%. 🤯

Similar, but Different

Developer Relations is all about helping developers. However best you can. It's the one thing that makes #DevRel different from marketing, sales, product, engineering — and at the same time alike.

-Ahmad Awais

Tangibles 🤓

Before You Run Another Community Member Survey, Read This

If you're thinking of running a community survey, keep in mind that there are times when asking what our community members want is exactly the wrong thing to do. Carrie Melissa Jones shares her wisdom regarding creating quality surveys in this recent post.

Telling your Story through Developer-facing Content

Looking for ways to attract developers through content? Adam Duvander has some suggestions on how to find the right people in the right places, target the problems they're dealing with, and then measure your success. While we tend to focus on the Getting Started content (which is valuable!) there's a lot more to a developer's experience than just their first touch. I love this quote from the article:

Getting a user through the “first run” experience is just one step. It’s the equivalent of teaching a pianist to find Middle-C, or play a scale. There’s a lot before a pianist gets there, and a lot of room to continue to learn.

p.s. Want to listen instead of read? Check out the video interview at the end of the article.

My Top Ten Tips for Surviving and Thriving in Developer Relations

These 10 tips for Developer Relations professionals are spot on! From reusing content to knowing stakeholders and so much more, I highly recommend you read these (and then bookmark them to read again later).

How to Help People in Community Forums Like a Boss

Whether taking care of your community forum is part of your day job or just a place that you poke your head into every now and again, these tips from Ricardo Ferreira will help you take even better care of your community members. My favorite tip is remembering to follow up after you've provided a solution. Whether that means checking back in with the community member to make sure the solution continued to work, writing a blogpost in order to help others solve this specific problem, or working with Engineering to update the documentation, follow-through is a huge part of serving our community.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

The Care and Monitoring of You with Mary Thengvall - Educative Sessions (video)
Community Moderation, Content Quality and Community as a Support Pillar - Peers over Beers
5 Reasons Your Organization Needs an Online Community Now with Carrie Melissa Jones (video)
Post, vote, comment, ask a question, answer a question, or attend a user group - In Before the Lock
How do you define "meaningful engagement" in your community? with Carrie Melissa Jones - Content Meetup (video)
So you want to be a Developer Advocate? with Maricris Bonzo (video)
Building Community at Nike, Reddit, WeWork, and Teal with Erik Martin - Masters of Community
After Pulse: Hiring and Recruiting in the Modern Era - Community Pulse
Conversations on Community with David Spinks - Chaordix

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

What professional development events are you signed up for? Got anything good on your calendar? Whether you do or do not, you should check out the DevRel Weekly Events Collection and see if there's anything you're missing. Hope to see you there!

Jobs 👩‍💻

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

If you haven't seen jobs available in DevRel, then you haven't seen the DevRel Weekly Jobs Collection. Check it out today and let us know what you find!