Welcome! 👋
My RSS feeds were full of people telling their career stories this week, from "starting DevRel during a pandemic" to "six months as a Dev Advocate" memoirs, and more. It's so encouraging to see even more people joining the DevRel industry and discovering the joy of enabling their communities.
I'm also excited to see new folks publishing content about what it's like to start speaking (thanks, Pachi!), livestreaming, or producing content! So often, we assume that the best content is created by people who have been in the industry for a long time, which keeps newbies from putting content out there. But honestly, some of the best content comes from people with a fresh, new perspective (aka newbies 😊).
So if you're feeling unsure about publishing that piece of content (for whatever reason!), let me know. I'd be happy to give it a quick read or include it in a future issue of DevRel Weekly!
Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon
Tidbits 🕔
How to Choose Your First Community Members
Looking to start a customer community to facilitate feedback loops? Jill Ross has some important tips to keep in mind, including the fact that you need to find the right points of contact within those customer accounts. You'll also want to find individuals who are voicing constructive criticism as well as those who are singing your praises to make sure you've got a well-rounded group of individuals giving feedback. Read the full thread here.
twitter.com
Don't Forget Your Internal Community
twitter.comCommunity isn’t just the external folks striving toward the same goal. It’s also the folks internal to an organization.
Internal community is a microcosm of the external community. If you seek a diverse, equitable, and inclusive external community, seek the same internally.
New Communities Need Breathing Room
twitter.comIn a new community, it's tempting to answer every question immediately, set up lots of events, and bombard new members with prompts & requests. Like building a campfire, just strike a match, light the kindling, then blow gently. Too much oxygen will make the fire go out. Resist the urge to smother members with too much oxygen (content, instant responses, and requests for attention).
Stick With It!
twitter.comJust the way Rome was not built in a day, It takes years of perseverance to build a thriving community. Just stick to it!
Tangibles 🤓
How to Conduct Community Member Research Interviews
Getting feedback from community members happens on an almost-daily basis, but how do you make sure that the information you're receiving is useful? While conducting systematic interviews might seem like a daunting task, it's a way to more closely connect with your community and as Carrie Melissa Jones says, these interviews can also give you vital insights that will help you better advocate for your community. Here are five tips from her that will help you go about these interviews in a productive way.
vanillaforums.com
5 steps to secure internal buy-in for a new online community
Getting initial buy-in for your online community can be an intimidating process. Lisa Agic breaks it done in this recent article. And don't forget to stand confident in your decision at the end of the day. As Lisa says, "you've done the groundwork, you've built your case."
australiancommunitymanagers.com.au
Tangents 🐰
The Dangers of Chasing After Social Engagement Metrics
Are you an "earnest content creator" or a "vanity metric chaser"? Daniel Rosehill explores the idea behind these two philosophies and why only chasing engagement metrics can lead to arbitrary KPIs rather than creating content that truly matters. There is a time and place for tracking these early engagement metrics, but if they're driving your entire content strategy, you'll risk losing track of the actual audience you're wanting to enable.
medium.com
Storytime 📚
DevRel Podcasts and Videos
- Which characteristics or traits developer advocates need to have? with Anna Tsolakou - Under the Hood of Developer Marketing
- What Is A Developer Advocate? with Debbie O'Brien - Decoding the Code (video)
- Developer Advocate Stories with Isabel Huerga Ayza, AWS
- Building developer relations and organizing conferences with Floor Drees - Deep Collaboration
- Community Building For Business with David Spinks - Keep Connected
- How to soft launch a new community in 3 steps (without the stress) with Jono Bacon (video)
- A Community Management Pioneer at Microsoft with Alex Blanton - Masters of Community
- How to grow your community by with social media content with Jono Bacon (video)
- Developer Advocate Stories with Nicolas Frankel, Hazelcast
Events 📆
DevRel Events
New events keep popping up so be sure to always check out our ongoing collection!
raindrop.io
Jobs 👩💻
Developer Advocate
StackHawk is a developer-first application security company, helping teams automate security testing in CI/CD. Join the team as a Developer Advocate to write, speak, and engage with the community on automated application security testing. Drop us a line at [email protected]!
stackhawk.com
Developer Advocate
The WordPress project is supported by a vibrant community of volunteers who are passionate about open source technology. We are growing Automattic’s team dedicated to bidirectional advocacy between WordPress Core and the broader WordPress community. Your focus will be communicating with community developers about WordPress, Gutenberg, and the surrounding ecosystem to build positive and sustainable relationships with WordPress developers and reduce barriers to Gutenberg adoption.
greenhouse.io
Head of Developer Relations
Dremio is a next-generation data lake engine that liberates your data with live, interactive queries directly on cloud data lake storage. We're hiring for Head of Developer Relations to build and lead a team of developer advocates here at Dremio. You will be growing awareness, adoption and community engagement through active participation across various channels, and create/promote fresh content for new releases and capabilities in open source projects such as, Iceberg, Nessie, Arrow, Arrow Flight, etc. Apply directly or send your resume to [email protected]!
dremio.com
Jobs 👩💻
Developer Relations Jobs
We've added lots of new jobs lately, come take a look!
Entry-Level Roles
Individual Contributor Roles
Senior Individual Contributor Roles
Manager Roles
DevRel Adjacent Roles