DevRel Weekly - Issue 192 - Be the Bridge Between Company and Community

Welcome! 👋

This week is all about building bridges. I'm at our company retreat in the beautiful Poconos in Pennsylvania (which I'll admit is a bit of a stretch energy-wise post-Covid, hence the late newsletter this week and the lack of newsletter last week 🥴). It's such a treat to see people in person and I'm grateful for the opportunity to get to know other coworkers that I don't naturally work with on a daily basis.

There were a number of conversations online these past few weeks about building bridges as well, both between teams (cross-team collaboration is the best!) as well as community members to coworkers.

Being the "connector" or "cruise director" as my friend Amy Hermes always says is one of my favorite things about developer relations, so I appreciate the emphasis that others are giving it as well.

Speaking of making connections, if you haven't already seen the DevRel salary survey that Common Room has released this past week, be sure to check it out. It should only take about 5 minutes for you to fill it out, but it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to the whole industry!

With that... I'll let you dig into the rest of the resources I've collected from the past 2 weeks.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Be a Bridge

A developer advocate bridges company and community.

They help the community learn to max their value from the tech. They help the company how to best meet the community’s needs.

The DAs I know crushed it as engineers before entering DevRel.

-Pandy Knight

Dev Rel for me is about context - we tell technology stories not just about the how but about the why. The why often has to involve knowing what went before and what might come after, which is why our field is so diverse - experience is valuable.

-Matt Jarvis

Community works like the middle ground for marketing and customer success. It has the potential to maximise customer retention and reduce churn rate, making it the ideal investment for customer-targeted activities.

-Glynk

Find mentors outside of DevRel

Find mentors and people to talk to OUTSIDE of the community world.

I know, gasp, but we are cross-functional people & getting their insight brings you a different perspective that can help you grow.

-Shannon Emery

Customer Zero

One of the many things I like about my role as a Developer Advocate is that I'm often the zero user to use the product. So not only am I the first one to use a feature, but also the first one to give feedback that potentially benefits the final product :)

-Atulmaharaj

DevRel Advice Column

DevRel hivemind, how do y'all keep track of/vet the events you are interested in going to?

I'm hoping for an answer other than "spreadsheets" but if that is your answer please reply so I know I'm not alone

-Mason Egger

People who do public speaking, especially those in #devrel, how do you decide which ones to say 'yes' to and which ones are a 'no'? What criteria do you use?

-Tanya Janca

What is some advice you would give to someone who wants to become a developer advocate? I am asking because I’m considering in applying to dev advocate roles since based on the description it entails everything I love from community to mentoring etc.

-Joshua Berrios

Connection is at the root of community building.

How do you help members create relationships within your community?

-Orbit

Tangibles 🤓

Have You Prepared Your Community For These Powerful Trends?

While DevRel as an industry is relatively new, the concepts of community building have been around for centuries, yet we often fail to pay attention to the trends that would help us better serve our communities today. Richard Millington has gathered some of the most recent trends as well as how these arcs have played out in the past in this article. You can also find an abbreviated version on Twitter.

What's a good First DevRel Hiring Process?

The number of companies adding a Developer Advocate role or a whole Developer Relations team has grown significantly in the past few years, but as you may know, sometimes it's not as easy as simply putting a job description up on your careers page. Lucky for us, Shawn Wang published an in-depth article walking through the process from A-Z, including deciding what role you actually need, the ideal interview panel, and how to write a job description that will attract the right candidates.

Looking for more? This interview with experienced DevRel professional Lorna Mitchell has a lot of good tips as well.

Storytime 📚

Replayable - Desktop Instant Replay

Don't spend time trying to explain or reproduce bugs in your product. Capture them the first time with desktop instant replay. The Replayable desktop app records your screen in the background so you can embed instant replays in Jira, GitHub, Slack, and more. Join our beta today!

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

So Long, SJ, and Thanks for All the Quips with SJ Morris - Community Pulse
How I Became a Developer Advocate with Kris Jenkins and Danica Fine - Streaming Audio
Introducing the DevRel Book Club with Matthew Revell and Ramón Huidobro
Building community through Engagement, Content, and Key Stakeholders (Twitter space)
The Community Management Jobs You Turn Down with Ryan Arsenault - Community Signal
Community-Led Growth, is it just another buzzword? Yes, yes it is, but... with Dani Weinstein - Peers over Beers
Getting Started in Community (Twitter space)
Marketing a technical product to a technical audience with Emma Paajanen - Humans of Martech
Scaling Developer Success with Nnamdi Iregbulem
Small Group Networking, Events at Calix with Allison Boudreau - Peers over Beers
What the &@%# is Developer Advocacy? by Kate Strachnyi (video)
DevRel Situation in Japan by Atsuhi (video)
Community Ambassadors: What They Do and Why You Need Them with Sarah Rapp, Tessa Kriesel, and Lucia Manzo (video)
How To Build Developer Communities with Marlene Mhangami (video)
Big Events, Small Events and How Slack Communities Play a Role with Elizabeth Kinsey - Peers over Beers (video)

One from the Archives 📰

Community leadership: how can I uplift the voices of members while still expressing my own vision?

Balancing your own vision with that of the community can be difficult at times, but finding this balance is essential in order to truly create and facilitate a culture that benefits the company as well as the community. Fabian Pfortmüller has some tips on how to create this balance as well as why it's so important in this article from a few months ago. If you missed it the first time, it's definitely worth looking at now!

Events 📆

DevRel Events

It's been a busy season of events! In case you missed Orbit Nexus last week, there were some great discussions happening on Twitter so you can catch up after the fact.

There are still a couple of events happening soon, so check out our Event Collection to see what's next and what we might have added recently.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Senior Developer Advocate

With the explosive growth of data and the accelerated movement to digitization, data has become the lifeblood of businesses. But these businesses are unable to build delightful data-driven experiences fast enough. Join us in our journey early-on and help shape the future of data infrastructure! At Tigris Data our Developer Relations team is tasked with building awareness and adoption of Tigris database platform.

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

Have you been in your job for a while and looking for something new? Are you ready to push yourself and level up? Come see all the new positions just waiting for someone; maybe it's you!