Issue 5

Welcome! 👋

I won't lie -- this issue is intense, and I struggled piecing everything together! But there are so many good articles this week, from handling documentation to being genuine with your community to escaping (or at least managing) the politics of community management.

Why do I do this every week? As you'll see in this issue, I know that DevRel is an emotional rollercoaster that leaves us riding a high of a successful introduction, only to drop off the edge when we have a difficult conversation with upper management. You need to know you're not the only one, and that things can get better. So take a few minutes to revel in the comfort of knowing that whether it's a good week or a bad one, you're not alone. Skim, click, read, and then go back to your to-do list with a renewed sense of purpose and drive to continue building your community.

I'd love to hear from you -- what resonates? What rubs you the wrong way? What helped you get through the rest of the week? Shoot me a note -- [email protected] and let me know!

Enjoy the newsletter and I look forward to chatting more soon!

Mary Thengvall, @mary_grace

Tidbits 🕔

What does effective Developer Advocacy take?

DevOps Advocate Paul Bruce put together a list of things required for effective advocacy. I've chosen my favorites:

Time / Patience
Opportunity (in the room)
Employer efficacy: demonstrated cultural leadership
A vision worth sharing

Looking to do DevRel well? Be Pixar.

Craft your narrative to address the broadest possible spectrum of developer experience in your audience; you don't need to leave anyone behind.

-Jonan Scheffler

Community = Customers, Clients, and Company

Steve Brock, Director of Moderation Services at Mzinga, posits that in becoming a community manager for your clients and their customers, you can't help but become a community manager for your company as well, and I tend to agree with him. It's a lot to juggle! Lucky, for him, he loves the opportunities that he's presented with!

Work/Life Balance means putting our lives first (and second, and third).

Shannon Emery brings us an important reminder via CMX this week:

Sometimes it can be really hard to live and work on the internet when the world is in pain; it is okay to take a step back for your own health.

DevRel topics popping up at #AllTheConferences

From IndexConf to Digital Workplace Tech Forum and beyond, DevRel topics are starting to pop up at a variety of conferences these days. Here are a few highlights from Twitter:

The #cmgr is the critical people support and facilitation function in the modern #digitalworkplace

-Dion Hinchcliffe

👏💯📖 Product documentation is as important as the product you are delivering

-Max Katz

Re: developer advocacy and partnering with other companies: “ I just want to make developers happy. There are plenty of devs to go around.” - @maxkatz

-Justina Nguyen

Tangibles 🤓

DocOps & Onboarding: All Part of this Complete Experience

A huge part of the developer experience is documentation and the onboarding process. In fact, a good metric to track is "time to value," or how long it takes an individual to accomplish the intended purpose of your product. While some companies have the luxury of employing a full training or documentation team, this job often falls to DevRel.

Adam Butler, Technical Lead of Nexmo Developer, talked about this "DocOps" role at DevRelCon London 2017. He touched on their tooling and contribution guidelines, as well as how to automate some of the processes around maintaining docs. If you work with documentation, you'll definitely want to check out the video from his talk, or at least read through the transcript.

If you've been digging into Developer Experience for a little while, you've likely heard of Cristiano Betta, DevRel & DevEx Consultant for Hoopy. He's published his latest analysis of Developer API Onboarding, this time focusing on Heroku. This incredibly indepth analysis goes through the general exploration experience, as well as the reference docs and onboarding process.

DevRel: The RomCom

The opening of this article explains this week's theme perfectly:

If a romantic comedy were produced solely for the developer community’s entertainment, a fitting title might be, “What Developers Want.” Simply put … it’s complicated.

From how to create genuine community relationships (hint: you have to be willing to invest in people) to making sure you're actively listening to your customers instead of simply trying to figure out the next thing to say, everyone's trying to crack the nut of how to connect with their audience. Maybe the key is to make sure you're not only focused on your developer persona, but the actual people.

The politics (and numbers) behind community management

There's no denying that navigating the politics of DevRel and community management takes some real skill. From storytelling to knowing the right time to bring up a particular problem, you have to figure out how to get executive buy-in or else your projects are dead in the water.

From scaling your external advocates in order to make your small team more sustainable, to figuring out how to build a collaborative community that creates a whole larger than the sum of its parts, growth is messy and metrics are key.

However, we've got to remember to look beyond the numbers into the actual details and context that make up the full story. Ildiko Vancsa (ecosystem technical lead at OpenStack Foundation) talks about how to use metrics in a more successful, meaningful way. She understands that when your focus shifts from building community to building datapoints, you've already lost the battle.

Tips on diversifying your speakers (from Tanya X Short)

Running an event and struggling to find diverse speakers? Tanya X Short published a great Twitter thread with suggestions of how to diversify your speaking lineup (and what the problem might be if you can't). Take a look at this writeup for suggestions. Do you have others? Let me know! I'll include them in the next issue.

Don't Forget: Take the the State of Community Management Survey! ✍️

It'll only take you 15m, but the information and metrics the Community Roundtable gets out of it is invaluable for the entire industry. They released a sneak peek of the data they're pulling out of the responses they already have. Please take the time to support their research! As we all know, a rising tide lifts all boats!

Tangents 🐰

The Art of the (Conference Talk) Proposal

Based on the numerous conversations that I've been a part of in the past two weeks around "Which conferences are you speaking at / submitting to / attending / sponsoring in Q3 or Q4?" it seems like the 2018 conference season is going to be a busy one! As you're prepping your latest CFP, stop to take a quick look at this recent post from Zan Markan, Developer Evangelist at Pusher. He talks about his process for finding appropriate conferences, choosing a title, getting feedback from peers, and how to keep track of his abstracts.

One from the Archives 📰

Debate: Does Developer Relations exist to shape the sales funnel?

When trying to figure out the goals of DevRel and where we best fit within the organization, my guess is not many of us jump to the idea of Sales. D.E. Goodman-Wilson tackles this messy topic in a well-argued post which forms the assumption and theorems that lead to the following conclusion: Developer relations exists to shape the sales funnel.

On the flip side, Phil Leggeter, Director of DevRel at Nexmo, was interviewed while at Index SF and very specifically stated "I don't do sales." He was joking (kind of) but that tends to be our go-to when confronted with the "what do you do?" question, so I'm guessing Don's post will hit a chord with many of us.

Thoughts? Feelings? Emotions? I know I had a lot the first time I read this post... I'm curious to hear what you all think! Let me know, and I'll publish your opinions next week.

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

From webinars to meetups to full-blown conferences, the list of opportunities to learn from other folks in DevRel is growing exponentially! Check out the upcoming events here.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Just a heads-up: I did a quick pass of the links in the Jobs collection and closed out the ones that were no longer valid links. That being said, there are still 78 open positions, so what are you waiting for? Go find your dream job!

Developer Avocados 🥑

Avocados are as Confusing as DevRel

In yet another way that DevRel is like avocados, it seems that people can't make up their minds around all of the pros and cons of avocados. On the one hand, recent research shows that there are some elements of an avocado peel that can fight cancer. On the other hand, however, some of the chemicals in avocado peels can cause cancer.