DevRel Weekly - Issue 160 - Content, Scaling, and Creating Value

Welcome! 👋

hi DevRel Weekly fam! Somehow we're already halfway through October 😳 This year seems to keep speeding up, no matter what we do 😅

I'm heading to All Things Open today -- I'm on my flight right now, in fact! -- which is a bit surreal. Jason Yee's tweet resonated with me this morning as I've been thinking a lot about the difference between online and in-person events as well as what these events will look like in the future. As he says, if we go back to "normal" we're missing a huge opportunity. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as well!

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. If your work includes writing documentation, be sure to take the salary survey from Write the Docs this week! The information they've published in past years has been incredibly beneficial and contains important insights that are important to continue gathering.

Tidbits 🕔

Help Developers Help Each Other

To build a developer audience, you help people. To build a developer community you help developers help each other.

-Amarachi Azubuike

The Difference between Moderation and Community Management

Moderation: reacting to behavior/language

Community Mgmt: creating prompts and rewards for desirable behaviors

One is tactical, the other is strategic.

Related: you can pay a bit for #cmgr on the front end - or risk paying A LOT for moderation later

If you invest in great #cmgr the community self-moderates and people opt out before you have to moderate their behavior.

If you don't invest in community management, culture can get so out of hand it is impossible to rein in, even with a lot of moderation (see: Facebook)

-Rachel Happe

Learn more from Rachel Happe in this article about moderation.

Don't Rush to Grow

Don't rush to grow your community!

Being small is a critical stage where you get to be hands-on with forming the culture.

When new members join, they'll see the existing example of how to act in the community and will replicate it.

It's vital that you set the right example.

-David Spinks

Let Them Tell Their Stories

Want to know the value your #community is creating?

Create spaces in your community to let them tell their stories.

-Mike Washburn

Tangibles 🤓

The Scientific Method and Community Metrics

While I often talk about "pulling levers" and trying different tactics within Developer Relations teams in order to figure out what will work best for your community, I've never made the connection to the scientific method. I appreciate that Jamie Langskov did in this recent blogpost!

How I gave my first tech meetup talk 🎤

I love hearing stories about "firsts" -- your first talk, your first job in DevRel, your first conference sponsorship -- especially when it includes tips and tricks for others who might be concerned about their own "first." This post from Andy Haskell checks all of those boxes.

How to Persuade a Software Engineering Team to Write 26 Blog Articles in 12 Months

Struggling to get your engineering team to write blogposts? This post from Patrick Brandt details his experience in motivating 21 engineers to contribute content which would eventually turn into an engineering-specific blog.

Storytime 📚

How to Write Better Technical Content

In this post, we share our tips for technology professionals looking to write better content. Most of these tips will apply to anyone interested in writing, but they are especially geared towards software developers.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Bringing Engagement Back with Unconferences [Workshop] by Jessica Falkenthal (video)
Contributing to Open Source Communities and Building Developer Tools as an Advocate with Liran Tal - Developing Communities
Shifting Revel, a Community for Women Over 40, from In-Person to Online Overnight with Alexa Wahr - Community Signal
Empathy is the Most Important Leadership Skill According to Research by Tracy Brower
Meta-Observability – Observing the Observers with Jordan Chung - Observy McObservface

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Looking for a Community, DevRel, or DevEx event? You're in luck! There are a handful of them coming up! Come and see what's happening!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

We believe the future of software security depends on enabling and empowering all developers to impact security, in collaboration with AppSec teams and not in conflict with them. As r2c's first Developer Advocate, you’ll increase awareness, understanding, and adoption of r2c’s vision and products among both the AppSec and developer communities. You’ll design and create a brand new developer relations program that empowers the Semgrep community to achieve great things!

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 Educator - PostHog

PostHog is a highly transparent open-core company building an open-source product analytics platform. We're looking for a person who loves being at the intersection of technical content, data science and analysis, open-source, and community. Someone with a passion for enabling others to succeed through the creation of educational resources and the engagement and support of communities. Apply today!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

We continue to be amazed at just how many jobs are coming in every week! Whether you are looking for a Developer Advocate position, Community Manger role, Technical Writer job, or something else in the industry, there's plenty to choose from in our collection!