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Happy... Monday?! I'm sure I'm not the only US-based person who's had a hard time keeping up with what day of the week it is given the recent 4th of July celebrations. So if you've been wondering where the newsletter has been, don't fret. The newsletter is certainly not dead, and neither am I! I am, however, feeling the type of tired that only exhibits itself after you've wrapped up a few big tasks. As many of you know, there have been a few major projects on my plate lately. Between pieces of these projects wrapping up and my automated systems failing me this past month, it's been difficult to get the newsletter out the past two weeks. But I'm calling this a win, since I've got a long newsletter chock-full of good information for you today, in addition to two awesome announcements!

We just finalized a fantastic list of diverse speakers for REdeploy and I'm even more excited about this conference as a result! We had a ridiculous number of CFPs (more than 10x the number of speaking slots!) and had an incredibly difficult time narrowing it down, which tells me just how timely the topics of resilient organizations and resilient people (in addition to resilient technology) are. If you're interested, I'd love for you to join us in San Francisco on Aug 16-17. Feel free to use discount code REDEVREL for 10% off your ticket.

Secondly, many of you have been following along as I've spent the last year writing what I believe is the first full-length book about Developer Relations, and I'm so pleased to announce that the writing and editing portions of this journey are DONE! There's likely one last proof of the book to come, and of course marketing and promotions, but I can breathe a sigh of relief -- it's now out of my hands and on its way to production land, led safely by my amazing editor, Louise.

These two milestones mean several things to me, most notably that I can accomplish things that I set my mind to, but that it often takes a village (or shall we say, a community), to see it through to the end. Stay tuned for a blogpost about lessons learned through this process -- just as soon as I can feel my writing fingers again 😅

No rest for the weary though -- we're coming up on the final weeks prior to REdeploy, I'm in the process of moving, and Burning Man is on the horizon! But as always, I'll be here once a week, bringing you the latest news and resources from the DevRel world. Per usual, feel free to reach out with any suggestions, questions, or comments -- I love hearing from you!

Best,
-Mary (@mary_grace)

p.s. I'm looking to take a few weeks off from the newsletter in August & September but want to make sure you're still supplied with content during those weeks, which means I'm in need of volunteers! If you're interested in curating an upcoming issue of DevRel Weekly, hit reply and let me know.

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Developer Avocados -- Cute Happenstance or Valuable Analogy?

In case you ever doubted my dedication to the #DeveloperAvocado cause, let me introduce my new favorite headshot, compliments of the incredibly talented Erick Zelaya. Stay tuned for the reveal of the final cover for The Business Value of Developer Relations -- there are a lot more avocados coming your way!

However, let me offer one caveat to the latest followers of the "Developer Avocado" movement. Joe Nash recently expressed concern about putting a serious definition around Developer Avocados, and he has a fair point:

Our little niche already wastes so much time and energy drawing lines between these titles (particularly advocate/evangelist), could we pls not take a cute nice thing & add to that mix? 😭

I have a tendency to agree with him on this, which might catch some of you off guard. But here's the deal -- I've used the "Developer Avocado" analogy all over the place for the last 2 years to explain what we do in Developer Relations, but I think trying to put a serious definition on "developer avocados" just muddies the water even more. There are so many different titles as it is - let's focus on getting an industry-accepted definition of Developer Relations before we spend too much energy on something that many stakeholders will view as a waste of time.

We need to be taken more seriously and I'm concerned that this "new definition", especially when presented as something that came out of a typo rather than an analogy of the value that DevRel brings to the table, will undermine our efforts to be accepted as valuable in the broader business community.

Thoughts? Hit reply -- I'd love to hear what you think!

DevRel Weekly