Issue 6

Welcome! 👋

Given that everyone's experience is different, trying to figure out the most simple and straightforward way to present your material is a difficult task. So difficult, in fact, that there's a whole industry being created around it these days: developer experience. There's a lot of overlap with DevRel and DevEx, and this week, we'll delve into some of those overlapping areas.

From simple and straightforward principles to learning how to use our influence in ways that will impact the greater experience, we'll explore DevEx from a lot of angles, including, per usual, that of the avocado. What's the biggest takeaway? At the end of the day, it's your community's experience that matters.

In other news, if you're going to be at SCaLE be sure to let me know -- I'm heading down there on Thursday and would love to meet up! Enjoy the newsletter and I look forward to chatting more soon.

Mary Thengvall, @mary_grace

Tidbits 🕔

Make it Obvious

Referring to his review of the Heroku onboarding guide that he published last week, Cristiano brings up one of the keys to developer experience in this tweet: make it clear what you expect customers to do next.

Every step has a clear purple button with a well defined success state, and often also a button to ask for support.

Get to know your customers... really.

Customer experience expands beyond the world of Developer Relations (surprise, surprise!). It's summarized nicely in this recent article from Inc.:

While we talk a lot of agility in product development, we need agile communications and customer experiences that could allow someone to save for later or show me tomorrow. If I receive the most compelling message for a brilliant product while I am on a deadline, guess what, I will ignore or delete it.

So get to know your customers, really. To win in the post-channel era of today we must adopt a customer-first mindset and put the customer at the center of everything we do.

YouTube introduces "Community" Tab

This one falls into the "How do we define community?" category... also known as the "Is the term 'Community' too diluted?" YouTube has introduced a "Community" tab on YouTube Creators channels. As this article points out, it's essentially "a host-initiated discussion forum for their channel," which begs the question if "community" has come to mean a place to hold moderated conversations.

#ESNchat Gems of the Week

ESNchat blew it out of the water again this week. Here are a few of my favorite tweets around community management:

Regarding titles:

Being a community manager means #storytelling 😍 communication of the community history, sharing values and also asking for them. Building something. It should be community builder/grower not community manager maybe? 😀
Isabell Gru

[Community managers are] influencers. Their power comes from bring able to read the tea leaves in the #ESN to understand what course of action to take to correct course, or to do even more of the good stuff.
Rita Zonius

For you #cmgr's out there you have so much more influence than you realise, you really are leaders for change :)
Dan Thomas

On the powers of observation that community managers so often have:

Insatiable curiosity will lead a #cmgr to observe complex human interrelationships & the influence certain actions have on the whole.
Noah Sparks

[Being able to identify different personalities and behaviors] will help the #CMGR recognize and praise the kinds of behaviors they want to see in their community, and reinforce the kinds of things that will build a strong and resilient community.
Amy Dolzine

We've done studies on what inspires people to collaborate and it really is different depending on business area / risk appetite / leadership / behaviours / emotions. Great #cmgr's have a sense for what will convert people and how and keeping it relevant and value adding.
Dan Thomas

Tangibles 🤓

Creating online community content that (actually) serves your audience.

Looking for a way to improve your content? Keely Sorokti, Senior Manager of Community & Knowledge Management at Commvault, wrote a great article on cultivating online communities through concise content creation, and knowing your audience.

DevEx, DevRel, and Accountability

This week's installment of videos from DevRel.net includes two talks on DevEx: One from DevRelCon London and the other from DevXCon San Francisco. Both address the challenge of creating the best possible experience for a developer.

The DX of Error Messages
Atsushi Nakatsugawa, Founder and CEO of MOONGIFT and DevRelCon Tokyo organizer.

A CEO’s perspective on dev rel, dev experience and ROI
Alex Salazar, former CEO of Stormpath

After you've gathered all of this experiential feedback, how do you report on the value of your work? Jessica West, Algolia Developer Advocate, gives tips on communicating DevRel impact to management:
Reactive versus proactive strategies for developer relations

Sometimes the best solution is a public one

What's one of the easiest ways to help developers understand how you're addressing their concerns? Make your roadmap public! While this can (understandably) seem scary, Forest recently decided to give it a try. Founder Sandro Munda explains how this has helped them be more transparent with their investors, teammates, and of course, their customers.

WIP Factory's 5th Annual Developer Relations Survey

The 5th Annual DevRel survey results have been released from WIP Factory! They have a few stats highlighted on their blog or you can download the entire report. I'm looking forward to digging into it myself this week. As they saw on their site, they create this survey in order to share best practices and benchmark our activities; as well as create more awareness across the board for the importance of Developer Relations and its practitioners. Thanks for your help in pushing the industry forward!

An A-Z of Community Engagement

If you're anything like me, you live for mnemonics, and you'll instantly want to print off this A-Z of Community Engagement. Which one's your favorite? I can't make up my mind between A, C, H, K, L, T, U, V... oh, who am I kidding? They're all great.

Tangents 🐰

It's all about the attendees.

Sometimes we need a simple reminder that as fun as it is to be on stage at a conference, it's not about us. Its about the people who are listening to you. What are they experiencing? How are they relating to your topic?

Jessica Baron gives fantastic reminders in this post, and while it's geared toward academics presenting their research, I think a majority of the tips relate to us as well.

Storytime 📚

Book Review -- The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

This is a great review of a good book on community management, and we all know how hard those are to come by! While this book tends toward the spiritual communities, there are a lot of things that we can apply to our developer communities as well. From the principles to the instructional nature of the book, it's definitely one to read.

One from the Archives 📰

The Case for a Great Developer Experience

This week's archive is a twofer.

The first is an article that is 7 years old, but the concepts are evergreen. Jeremiah Lee Cohick has been making a case for Developer Experience from early on:

Enabling app developers to be successful through better DX will create a more successful UX for the platform product.

The principles he lays out are fairly straightforward, but when dealing with something as complex as DevEx, it helps to go back to the basics.

The second article is only a few months old, but I have a feeling it will be just as evergreen. Keith Casey walks through some of the history of Developer Experience and why it's so important. He sums it all up by saying

A great developer experience – including but not limited to great documentation, simple SDKs, and relevant examples – lets all developers move quickly.

Events 📆

Toss Your Hat into the Ring to Speak at CMX Summit 2018 🎩

The CFP is open for CMX Summit 2018! Check out the information page for a lot of great tips and how-tos.

Developer Relations Events

Looking for a Community / DevRel / DevEx event? You're in luck! There are a handful of upcoming in-person conferences around the world as well as a few webinars. Check them out.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

This is the golden hour for Developer Relations as far as jobs go! There's everything from technical writing to Senior Management listed here. Find a broken link or know of a job listing that isn't included? Let me know.

Developer Avocados 🥑

An Avocado Known by any Other Name is... Confusing.

If you're not concerned about the experience that people have when they first encounter your product, perhaps you should consider the avocado pear. The avocado is also known as "fertility fruit" (use your imagination) or "the apple of the winter." Perhaps being sure of your customer's experience is a good idea after all!