Issue 142 - Speaking from Experience and Looking Ahead  May 20th 2021

The Accidental Public Speaker or How I Got Over My Fear of Public Speaking

Public speaking often goes hand-in-hand with being a Developer Advocate, but just because it's part of the job doesn't mean the nerves go away! Alex Lakatos recently wrote about his experience with overcoming his fear of public speaking. Hint: a lot of it has to do with simply getting out there and doing it!

medium.com  

Classifying Communities with the 3Ps: Product, Practice, and Play

Recognizing that there are different types of communities is the first step in understanding how to best serve your community. Patrick Woods tackles this topic in a recent blogpost and explains why knowing which type of community you're building (Product, Practice, or Play) can impact your strategic goals.

orbit.love  

Et tu, booth?

I have mixed feelings about this controversial blogpost from Colm Doyle, but I'll admit that I've been mulling it over since first reading it a week ago, so there must be something here 😉

Whether it's worthwhile to sponsor huge tech conferences has been a topic worth debating for years now, certainly long before COVID complicated matters. But as we're going back to in-person events, perhaps it's worth considering whether the money spent on a booth presence could be better spent in another way.

I will say, I'm not completely sold on this idea -- I just sent off a few possible in-person conference sponsorships to our events team this week, in fact! -- but I do agree that with every activity we engage in, it's important to make sure it's the best possible way for us to connect with our specific community members.

I'm curious to hear what you think! Let me know.

cdoyle.me  

Community Manager Salaries (and Why You Should Probably Be Earning More)

If you've been following this newsletter for a little while, you know that I asked you all to participate in a DevRel Salary Survey toward the end of 2020. While the results from that survey aren't quite ready for prime time yet (they're in the works!), the folks over at Commsor released results from their 2020 Community Job Survey this past week, and there are some overlaps you might be interested in hearing about! While this survey spans Community Management as an industry (not only developer-first companies) -- there's some interesting data here that might help you with your job search or promotion.

commsor.com