Issue 30

Welcome! 👋

In Week 1 of my vacation, I'm thrilled to bring you a selection of Developer Relations-related posts from Lorna Mitchell. Having just interviewed her on Episode 27 of Community Pulse, I know that she is full of great tips and tricks as well as experience in the DevRel and community-building spectrum!

You'll still find the usual Jobs and Events listings below, including listings from our current sponsors, Progress and Algolia.

Without futher ado... I'll introduce Lorna and let her take it away!

Lorna is based in Yorkshire, UK; she is a Developer Advocate with Nexmo as well as a published author and experienced conference speaker. She brings her technical expertise on a range of topics to audiences all over the world with her writing and speaking engagements, always delivered with a very practical slant. In her spare time, Lorna makes things out of fabric/wood/yarn and blogs here.

-Mary, @mary_grace

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

Conferences, meetups, and webinars, oh my! Check out this list for a bunch of upcoming events you don't want to miss!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate – Kendo UI for React

At Kendo UI team at Progress we build JavaScript tooling to help developers build better web apps faster. We are engineers and storytellers, representing Kendo UI to developer communities all around the world – online and offline. If you’re passionate about connecting with React developers, trying out new frameworks and technologies, and sharing what you’ve learned with the world, we’d love to hear from you.

Algolia Developer Advocate

The Algolia Developer Relations team is looking to grow and would love to have you be a part of the team! Developers make up a large part of our community, and Algolia Developer Advocates play a crucial role in keeping developers both informed and inspired about what’s possible. Choose your adventure with writing code and blogging, speaking and traveling or helping with partnerships!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Looking for a new job can be exhausting, but we're here to help! There are tons of positions in a multitude of industries conveniently all located in one list, check it out!

Guest Post 👫

The Developer Evangelist Handbook

Every year or so, I re-read Christian Heilmann's The Developer Evangelist Handbook which I notice is now also in print format as well as publicly available online. His approach resonates with me and helps me to think about why I do what I do, as well as offering actual guidance when I'm not sure how to approach something. He has also recently started a great blog post series which got a mention in a previous DevRel Weekly newsletter and is well worth your time.

What is Developer Advocacy?

Another great post for thinking about Developer Relations is What is Developer Advocacy? from Ashley McNamara. It's a great insight into developer relations as a profession, and inspired me to think more about how to share what we do as DevRel-types - so much so that I also wrote my own post to reflect on my own experiences.

The Core Competencies of Developer Relations

The skills required for Developer Advocacy are many and varied! I came across this article covering The Core Competencies of Developer Relations while listening to the one and only Mandy Waite on an episode of the Google Cloud Platform podcast. The competencies listed are a wonderfully accurate reflection of the kinds of things this job needs and I definitely recognised myself (and maybe some weak points) in this post.

People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely to Be Successful

DevRel needs such a weird mix of skills and personally, it took me many, many years to understand that my inability to specialise wasn't necessarily a bad thing. For anyone else feeling the same way, I'd like to share this article: People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely to Be Successful According to Research. Follow your passions, everyone!

Art of README

Today I'm looking at improving documentation on some of our repositories at Nexmo so I'll also share the resources I've got open in my browser tabs right now: Art of README and contributing template which is packed full of excellent examples from all over the open source world.

Developer Avocados 🥑

Let's Taco Bout How Awesome You Are

While not strictly avocado-related, I did want to touch on how awesome all of you are. Your support and encouragement over the past 29 issues has been so meaningful to me, and that's something I never get tired of "taco"-ing about!