DevRel Weekly - Issue 222 - AI, Developer Experience, and more DevRel Trends

Welcome! 👋

This week's issue contains a lot of content around the promise (and chaos) of AI, the next steps for Developer Experience, and the longest list of videos and podcasts that we've had in a while! 🤩

It's been a busy few weeks of travel for me, which has been equal parts fun and exhausting... how did I use to do this all the time? 😅

I hope you all are staying healthy and excited about the work that's ahead of you. And if you happen to find yourself needing a little motivation... maybe this week's content will help with that.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Developer Relations is Bi-directional

good developer advocacy is bidirectional. it’s a cycle:

you learn from the team how to use something, and teach that to users

you learn from users what sucks about it, and teach that to the team

a good DA is essentially a product owner. they’re involved in the design.

it’s interesting some people read “advocate” as “advocate for the product” and some as “advocate for the users’ needs”. it’s really both. sometimes you need to convince the people, sometimes you need to convince the team. the job is to make sure the story makes sense.

this is why you won’t have effective developer advocacy until your developer advocates are actually part of the design process. they need to have a seat at the table, to be able to question decisions, direct the team’s attention to pain points, look for compromises.

it also goes the other way around. a good DA doesn’t overindex on the user feedback (“our users say we should add X!”) but focuses on the problems (“here’s what our users are running into”). they equally respect the users’ concerns and the team’s philosophy and help align them

-Dan Abramov

Your Community Exists Already

"What platform should we host our community on?"

Simple rule:

If you don’t have an audience, go to where people are (slack, fb, discord, whatsapp)

If you have an audience, keep them with you (circle, mighty, discourse, khoros, vanilla, etc)

-David Spinks

Tangibles 🤓

The role missing from the tech company C-suite

This article from Alessandro Cauduro makes a compelling case for "a voice that advocates for developers at the executive level." In other words, where's the C-suite position for Developer Experience (or Developer Relations, assuming it includes developer experience under its broad umbrella)? The fact that this piece appeared in Venture Beat makes it even more compelling!

Looking for other Developer Experience-related content this week? Here are a few other links I found:

Derick Sozo Ruiz gives Twitter's latest README a facelift to provide a better developer experience
Bill Doerrfield brings helpful API documentation best practices to light
Aja Hammerly talks about how to improve the developer experience

What does ChatGPT have to offer communities?

With all of the talk around ChatGPT lately, it's been interesting to see the hot takes (some of which I agree with) and observe the trends. This week's links brought a few twitter discussions my way which I thought folks might find interesting:

Ben Greenberg has been experimenting with ChatGPT and has a few pieces of advice
Cat McGee talked about the impact of AI on DevRel & Web3 with a handful of guests and distilled the observations into a Twitter thread
David Spinks is curious how various community professionals are using AI or bots to help them do their jobs

What Community Professionals Need to Do to Weather These Hard Times

With new layoffs still being announced seemingly every week, Evan Hamilton's article from a few weeks back still rings true as DevRel and community teams try to figure out how to prove their value in this difficult economy. Evan mentions focus, experimentation, and internal promotion, among other items, as tactics to bring attention to the good work you (and your team members) are doing.

On Tech Communities

If you're struggling to help your stakeholders understand why being involved in meetups and local tech gatherings is important, this article from James Seconde might come in handy! In it, he talks about the business reasons to support local communities, from brand awareness to recruiting and more.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

After Pulse: Suddenly Unemployed with PJ Hagerty and Wesley Faulkner - Community Pulse
From High School Educator to DevRel - AMA with PJ Metz (video)
Should You Build Your Community on Higher Logic Vanilla? (The FeverBee Verdict!) by Richard Millington (video)
Human Routers with Jason St-Cyr - Fireside with Voxgig
Exceeding the Expectations of the Customer with Corneil du Plessis - Between Chair and Keyboard (video)
Roadmap to Learning Web3 Developer Relations with Khadijah Amusat - Women in Blockchain Africa (video)
Developer Advocacy and Crafting Your Career with James Quick - Educating in Tech
Developer Content That Lives Through the Seasons with Jason Alba - DevEducate: The Art of Teaching Developers at Scale
Valuing Non-Code Contributions to Open Source by Barsha Das - Dublin DevRel Meetup (video)
One DevRel Hat and 500 Devs to Wear it by Alena Osipova - DevRelCon Prague (video)
Your Job Doesn’t End (Or Start) With Your Talk by Joel Lord - DevRelCon Yokohama (video)
From Spare Time Content Creator to Internal Developer Advocate with Dillion Megida - DevRel Origin Stories (video)
Highlighting the Power of Communities with Jono Bacon - The Remote Work Tribe Podcast
Marketing web3: Audience, Community, More with Amanda Cassatt and Kim Milosevich - web3 with a16z
Community-Led Marketing: A Powerful Tool for Growth with Sarah Stockdale, Gesche Haas, and Vincent Boon (video)
Getting your first DevRel job with Kelley Hilborn, Bekah Hawrot Weigel, and Phil Leggeter - DevRel Roundtable (video)
How to build buy-in for your ideas - the 5 step Buy-In Flow by Jono Bacon (video)
Should you code as a Devrel? by Francensco Ciulla (video)
Community Tools with Catherine Hackney - Community Conversations

Events 📆

DevRel Jobs

I'm a big ToDo list person. Occasionally, I'll add interesting or educational things to it to keep myself challenged and entertained. Check out our Event Collection to see if you should add any DevRel Events that are coming up!

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

You may not know what you're looking for until you see it. Take a look at the DevRel Weekly Job Collection and see if anything interests you. You never know, you may find the job you seek!