DevRel Weekly - Issue 214 - Industry Surveys, Participation, and Goal Prioritization

Welcome! 👋

I feel like a bit of a broken record, but where did January go and how are we already in February? 😅 I hope everyone's doing well as the year continues to pass us by.

This week brought us a number of gems on Twitter as well as a handful of thought-provoking articles. I'm really enjoying the depth of conversations that are happening about Developer Relations these days. There are still a number of basic topics being covered as well, which is good for the newbies in the industry, but I'm glad to see the more advanced articles as well! I hope you enjoy them as well.

I'm still on the hunt for ways to find additional information as people continue to move off of Twitter and onto other platforms. If you've found a particular site to be helpful, please let me know or simply send along the links! I appreciate your help as we navigate this new social media landscape together.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. My amazing Content Assistant will be out for about 2 months in March-May as she welcomes her new little one to her family. I'm looking for someone to help out ~10h/week during that time. If you're interested, please shoot me an email!

Top News of the Week 🗞️

Industry Trends

Two things popped to the top of my "DevRel industry trends" search this week:

CMX launched their Community Industry Report 2023 survey this week. I've already taken it and it was relatively painless, even on my phone! I'd encourage you to go through the questions this week if you haven't already -- the information that comes out of this survey helps shape our industry for years to come.
Hoopy and Common Room have partnered up to launch three new series: DevRel origin stories, case studies, and resources and templates. Be sure to check out the announcement.

Tidbits 🕔

DevRel Advice Column: Internal DevRel

I'm looking for any resources/experiences regarding building an internal #devrel program. I would love to know about what initiatives and activities you run and what metrics you are tracking.

-Daniel Afonso

Goal: Represent Developers and Make Their Life Easy

DevRel is never about being the main character. You are here to represent developers and make their life easy. They are your main character.

You need to constantly wear their shoes and think what’s best for them, not for you or your organisation.

-Reet Batra

Don't Just Moderate... Participate

Getting community members to share stuff that's actually deep and valuable, vs. only the transactional stuff ('hey x is broken') is truly all about modeling.

You have to participate in the community like your very best member would, not like an admin, in order to do that.

-Noele Flowers

Our Goals are Sometimes at Opposition

As a Developer Advocate, you advocate for:
- your users' safety and joy
- your engineer colleagues' peace of mind, work-life balance and sense of purpose
- your company's success
- your product's success
- your own boundaries

All of them can stand in an opposition to each other.

-Sylwia Vargas

Tangibles 🤓

The DevRel influencer trend. And why DevRel != tech influencer.

I haven't been able to get this article from Divya Mohan out of my head since I first started reading it earlier this week. The debate of "advocate vs. influencer" has been an ongoing one for years now (a tweet from Emily Freeman that Divya references in the article is from 2019), but I've rarely heard it explained so clearly. As Divya says, when the focus of Dev Advocacy turns from actual advocacy into pure marketing and awareness,

Eventually, what could have been a positive learning journey in fostering relations for the individual and the company they work for, in general, ends up being driven by the wrong metrics.

Five Techniques to Evaluate a Community

Data-driven decisions are necessary in order to gain the respect of your stakeholders and help them understand the value of your community efforts. In this thread, Richard Millington details five different ways you can evaluate your community programs or platforms.

Tangents 🐰

How to Get Sponsorship for an Event: A Step-By-Step Guide

Whether you're spinning up an industry conference in your own free time, running meet-up groups for a particular tech niche, or supporting your community members who are running their own independent get-togethers, this article from Ana Levidze is a good starting place. In it, she explains some of the key mistakes as well as how to pitch a sponsorship.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Technology Integration and Optimization for Online Communities with Adam Ballhaussen - Community Conversations
6 Definitions of DevRel and Developer Advocacy - DevRel Unlocked (video)
Events Industry and Community with Zee Kesler, Carolyn Zick, and Adrian Speyer - Community Manager Live (video)
Work With Me (Day in the Life of a Developer Advocate) with Ale (video)
Demystifying DevRel - The DevRel Show (Twitter Space)

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Things are pretty calm right now, so take some time and enjoy a smooth start to a new month, but be sure to check back here to see what's coming up in the next few months!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

The year is still new and lots of new jobs are being posted! Come see what we have in our collection!