DevRel Weekly - Issue 155 - Scaling, Budgets, and Dev-Friendly APIs

Welcome! 👋

Happy middle of August, everyone! I've been writing "May <insert date>" for the past few weeks in my notebook, so I figured maybe if I actually wrote out the proper month, it would stick better in my brain 😆

I've been highly enjoying a leisurely week at a cabin in the middle of nowhere, on a 5-acre plot of land where my pup is living her best life and the mornings start with coffee on the porch. Next week I'm off on a camping trip, where I'll endeavor to continue the relaxation vibes that I've experienced this week.

I'll be taking a few weeks off of the newsletter as well, enjoying these last few weeks of summer as they bleed into fall here in the northern hemisphere. I'll see you all again on Sept 13 with a recap of the previous month and a look ahead at what 2022 might have to offer!

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Scaling Isn't Only About the Numbers

Scaling a community does NOT mean you were initially perfect and that all you need to do now is grow in size.

It is a process of knowing what you could do better, become more efficient and provide the right value that will achieve your business goals.

-Pixie Cigar

Does Your Community Bring Unique Value?

With everyone building communities now, it's never been more important to build communities that bring unique value.

People don't need yet another community if it's not going to make a meaningful difference in their life.

-David Spinks

Encourage Two-way Communication

By encouraging authentic two-way communication between your organization and your community members, you demonstrate that you listen and care about what they have to say on a human level.

-hivebrite

Tangibles 🤓

Case Studies for Designing Developer-Friendly APIs

If you're working to improve the developer experience of your API, you'll want to check out these two articles. They highlight a variety of ways companies have improved the look and feel of their developer-facing product, creating better, stronger, more useful APIs in the process.

Hold Attention on the Virtual Stage

Something many of us (myself included) have struggled with over the past 18 months is keeping a virtual audience engaged while giving a talk. Lorna Mitchell advocates taking a slightly different approach:

How do I ensure that I keep my attendees’ attention when I’m presenting virtually? I don’t.

Instead, she creates space for those attendees who want to be fully engaged, inviting and encouraging them to pay attention, and then rewards them by delivering high-quality content.

Budgeting Tips for DevRel Team Managers

I'll be diving head-long into 2022 budgeting when I return from vacation at the end of August, so I'm particularly grateful for this thread from Shannon Emery, who's sharing knowledge gleaned from Marjorie Anderson and others. If you're facing the same decisions within the next few weeks, be sure to check it out!

Storytime 📚

Dev Spotlight

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Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Early Approaches to Community & Content with Matt McClure, Peggy Rayzis, Mary Thengvall, and Patrick Woods (video)
What Is Developer Experience and Why Should We Care? with Deepu K Sasidharan - Polyglot
Developer Advocacy or Engineering? with Anaïs Urlichs - DevOps Paradox
Meet the Camundos: Rin Oliver, Technical Community Builder - Camunda Nation
Presenting a Business Case to get More Headcount For Community - Peers over Beers
Fostering Resiliency for Community, Moderation, Trust, and Safety Pros with Adelin Cai - Community Signal
The Power of Content with Tanay Pant - DevRel Scribbles (video)

Events 📆

DevRel Events

It's been a little quiet lately but that's about to change soon. Lots of great events are scheduled to start in the next couple of weeks including CMX Summit starting on Aug 31 and Swarm Conference on Sept 5. There are many more to put on your calendar too -- be sure to check our collection to see them!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

Aiven provides managed open-source data technologies on all major clouds. We are looking for Developer Advocates, Developer Educators and Technical Writers to join our DevRel team. We have offices in Helsinki, and Berlin, however we are hiring for this position remotely in several countries all over Europe additionally to Germany and Finland. You will be empowering and enabling developers everywhere to take advantage of the best open source database technologies, preparing and delivering content for industry events, meetups, our own webinars and creating engaging demos and documentation. Contact us for more details!

Developer Advocate

At Stream, our DevRels combine engineering excellence with community outreach. If you’d like to join our growing team of talented engineers, check out our open positions.

Developer Relations Engineer - Croquet

The job will involve writing sample apps, troubleshooting the work of our customers, and providing general developer support. The ideal candidate has professional experience with JavaScript coding and the wider JS ecosystem. They are familiar with web development tools and bundlers, and they understand what’s required to release production-quality web apps.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Curious about the DevRel jobs that are out there? Check out our list of available jobs to see the latest postings. There's tons to choose from!