DevRel Weekly - Issue 197 - Evaluating strategy and considering the community's needs

Welcome! 👋

This week brings a lot of tips and tricks from experienced DevRel and Community professionals, including how to build up proper strategies, how to handle reduced engagement in your community, and whether travel is an essential part of a DevRel career (my opinion: it shouldn't be).

As we come up on the mid-point of summer in the northern hemisphere and I prep for a vacation from my day job as well as the newsletter, I'd love to hear from you about which topics you're looking for more information on. I plan to spend more time on "Best Of" issues starting this fall and want to know what would be most valuable for you!

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Consider the Community

When creating an event, conference, or meetup, consider the community you are building it for, not the product you build.

Companies are caught up in branded conferences. We recommend against this as it’s not showing the community what they want & need, it’s only advertising.

-DevRelate

What would a recession mean for Community Strategy?

A recession doesn't mean you should be less ambitious with your community strategy, it just mean the timeline might change.

If your strategy is validated through testing, driving business goals, and efficient, it's still valuable in a recession.

-Evan Hamilton

Repurposing Content

You need to scale your content by distributing it on many platforms, mainly because different people learn in different ways. For example, some prefer written content, others prefer video, and so on.

-Victor Fawole

Based on Experience...

Piggybacking on last week's discussion about community building tips, Shannon Emery kicked off a fantastic discussion on Twitter this week:

What are the things you know as a #cmgr because you have the experience vs learning?

Click through to read a variety of responses and leave your own tips!

Tangibles 🤓

Is Travel Optional?

This conversation started last week with a statement from Tessa Mero and continued this week with a discussion led by Anaïs Urlichs:

Is it ok to not want to travel as a Developer Advocate?

Click through to read my opinion as well as many others!

6 Steps to Developing Your Community Strategy

Building a strong community or developer relations strategy takes time and effort -- it's not something that can be done in a single week or even a "once and done" project. This resource from Noele Flowers is an excellent starting place. From establishing why a community strategy is essential to step-by-step guidance on how to build one, I highly recommend following along, whether you've built a community strategy before or not.

Most Companies Are Doing DevRel All Wrong

Whether you're looking to build a new DevRel team or have years of experience, this article from Robert Kane is a good refresher on the common pitfalls of DevRel.

Storytime 📚

Dev Spotlight

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Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

The Power of Storytelling When It Comes To APIs with Raymond Camden - Breaking Changes
Developer Relations Misconceptions with Sean Falconer and Jason Yee - Community Hour (videos)
Content, Culture, and DevRel with Colby Fayock - Guidance Counselor 2.0
Community Secret Superpower with Sean Falconer - Community Hour (video)
V2 of the Community Builder Guide with Jephtah Abu, Ronald Williams and Jay Elango - Peers over Beers
How to fix a community that has turned into a ghost town by Jono Bacon (video)

Events 📆

DevRel Events

More events are popping up for Fall, but in the meantime there are some meet-ups and workshops just around the corner. Come and see!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Now Hiring: Developer Advocacy Manager

Camunda is the leader in process orchestration software. Our software helps orchestrate complex business processes that span people, systems, and devices. With Camunda, business users collaborate with developers to model and automate end-to-end processes using BPMN-powered flowcharts that run with the speed, scale, and resiliency required to compete in today’s digital-first world.

As the Developer Advocacy Manager, you'll be the direct people manager for a team of 4 Developer Advocates, responsible for career growth, performance evaluations, setting of priorities, and overall strategic guidance. You'll also be responsible for strategic planning for the Developer Advocacy function, including quarterly OKRs and annual goals as well as documentation of team responsibilities, goals, and success metrics.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Job hunting is hard; take the first step and start here to see a massive collection of open roles. Maybe you'll be just the right person to fill the job!