DevRel Weekly - Issue 156 - Data Privacy, Moderation, and (Virtual) Event Strategy

Welcome! 👋

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled DevRel Weekly, everyone! Did these last few weeks speed by for you just like they did for me? I hope you found some good resources while I was away. I spent a few hours this weekend sorting through the dozens of links that my team collected for me, and there's SO much good content... buckle up! 😁

To start things off, I'm willing to bet you'll appreciate this Inception-based thread from Ricardo Ferreira if you've ever struggled to explain what it is that you do. Take a look before diving into the other resources I've linked below.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Don't Forget About the People

Powerful results in the #cmgr world happen w/member focused strategy & knowing your tools.

Otherwise you got a really nice set of tools & nice view from the plateau you find yourself on when things aren't movin' & groovin' in the #community.

It always comes back to the people.

-Shannon Emery

The Key to Success

The key to making any community successful is to make the leaders within the community successful.

Give them the tools and resources they need, remove obstacles from their path, then get out of their way.

-David Spinks

Share the Wins and Soften the Losses

if you want to create a community, you have to actually give a shit. you're not supposed to use a group of people to monetize—you're supposed to be sharing the wins and softening the losses, lifting up those who need a voice, and providing resources to build an equitable platform

-Emily Fang

Do You Have a Shared Purpose?

The difference between audience and a community is shared purpose.

Audiences consume, all with different reasons for doing so, never connecting with each other.

Communities seek to accomplish something together and connect with each other.

-Carter Gibson

Be Open & Honest About Everything We Do

Ethical #DevRel goes beyond admitting when there is something we don’t know (always be willing to) - it incorporates being open & honest about everything we do with any Community.

-DevRelate

Tangibles 🤓

Why aren’t more community managers talking about data privacy?

If you're not already thinking about data privacy, Jamie Langskov encourages you to do so!

As stewards of customer and community member information, including profile names, contact methods, and more, we need to be careful to protect this information and comply by GDPR in addition to several state-wide laws enacted in the US.

Measuring Developer Relations

This blogpost from Swyx is definitely controversial at times, but he makes some good points with regard to measuring success based on the type of Developer Relations you specialize in. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

(Virtual) Event Season is Here!

Conference season is here once again! How do I know, you ask? For one, I'm looking at a multitude of blogposts and tweets about how to organize a stellar virtual event, all posted within these past few weeks! As Malin Liden said on Twitter, virtual events are here to stay, even once we're past the pandemic, so it's important that we begin to adjust our expectations and strategies. To help us with that, I've gathered a few of the best links below:

Veronika Stanitz brings us 3 stellar articles:

In other news, CMX's Twitter Survey says breakout rooms are the best way to keeping attendees engaged, and Jono Bacon suggests playing music when people first join your online event to raise energy levels and make it feel more like a real event.

Devoting Time to Maintenance Work

Sometimes taking care of your community means doing the mundane tasks to keep the lights on and make sure your community is having the best experience possible. Some people call this "housecleaning," others call it "maintenance," but either way, it's a necessary part of the work we do. Here are two resources that talk about this part of Developer Relations work:

Developer Relations: Devoting time to housecleaning by Doug Sillars
"Maintenance Mode" DevRel Work - a thread from Rachel Nabors

Storytime 📚

Refreshing Old [Technical] Blog Posts

At Draft.dev, we write a lot of technical blog posts. We know how important it is to refresh them from time to time. In this article we'll dive into the why and how of Refreshing Old [Technical] Blog Posts.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

There are so many great podcast episodes and videos that were released while I was on hiatus! I've highlighted a handful of them below:

Wesley Faulkner: The Path to Developer Relations - We Belong Here
The Secrets of Well-Governed Communities with Venessa Paech - Masters of Community
How to get started in Developer Relations with Phil Leggetter - The Scrimba Podcast
Advocacy in DevRel without code - Do you need to code to be a Developer Advocate? with Heidi Waterhouse - Developing Communities
Community Goes Both Ways with Lauren Clevenger - The Community Corner
Making Sense of the Community Boom with Brian Oblinger - Masters of Community
Virtual Events and ROI - Are We Getting Our Money's Worth? with Matty Stratton and Ben Lloyd Pearson - Community Pulse
Community Marketing: The New Growth Driver with David Spinks - The Growth Leadership Show
Developer Relations vs. Developer Marketing with Paige Paquette - Build with Blake Bartlett
Getting into DevRel with Martin Woodward - Cloud with Chris (video)
Rebuild Local: The importance of local technical communities with Gen Ashley, James Parton, Vicky Twomey Lee, and Neill Gernon (video)

Events 📆

Defining Success & Metrics | Episode 3 | October 6 @8am PT

This year’s Future Developer Summit explores what does the future of DevRel hold? Enjoy the benefits of remote and be part of the industry discussion together with the thought leaders. This event’s agenda is tailored for each, from CXO Pioneers and program leaders to professionals and enthusiasts in DevRel, Advocacy and Evangelism.

In Episode 3, we will discuss how to define and measure success of your DevRel efforts. Industry leaders will share their success and failure stories as well as what comes after you achieve your metrics.

Grab your free Community Pass or request an invite for a richer experience with a full-access Thought Leader Pass at futuredeveloper.io.

Events 📆

CMX Summit Event Recap

So much good content came out of CMX Summit! If you missed it, no worries -- the videos will be released toward the end of September, and in the meantime, you can catch some of the gems in the Twitter hashtag.

This tweet captivated much of the CMX Summit spirit for me this year:

Be sure to advocate not only for the community but for yourself as a #cmgr. You are in the community too! Your voice matters majorly in how things happen and change, alongside the members you're trying to advocate for.

-Amanda Roberts

DevRel Events

Conference season is here! Some great ones have already passed, but more are coming up soon. More events have been added to our Event Collection, come and see what new and coming up.

For those of you who are moderators of online communities, there are two new trainings I wanted to bring your attention to:

Reddit's new ModCertification programs - The tooling portion is specific to Reddit, but the principles are univeral!
ACM Defamation Training - If you're based in Australia, this training is important for you to better understand the new defamation law and regulations.

Jobs 👩‍💻

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 Advocate

To achieve our mission: make communication between humans and machines universally accessible and natural, and eventually get to AGI - we’re looking for a Developer Advocate to help grow our values-driven, all-remote team. Reporting to the CEO, you’ll define and build out our developer evangelism program to support and grow Dasha’s community, connecting with developers through content, social channels, events, and contributions to the open source ecosystem. If you always wanted to build Jarvis from Iron Man - join us!

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

If it's been a while since you seen our Job Collection, come take a look and see what's new.