Issue 71 - Open Sourcing Your Docs, Building a New Community, Summer Travel Schedules, and More!  June 27th 2019

Open Source Documentation: Why Is It a Good Idea?

I've run into a handful of people in my life who genuinely love writing good documentation, but for most people, it's a necessary part of their job, but not necessarily one that leaves them dancing at the end of the work day. Add into that the complication of having multiple programming languages (as well as spoken languages) that need to be catered to and the complexity of trying to accommodate different learning styles, and, well, good documentation starts to seem like an impossible goal.

Sherene Mahanama approaches this problem from a unique angle: What if we open sourced our documentation?

medium.com  

What Members Want To See When They Suggest An Idea

Getting unsolicited feedback from engaged community members is a great achievement! But what do you do with that feedback once you receive it? And what are the community members typically looking for in return? Rich Millington shared a short list of expectations that community members will likely have upon submitting significant feedback or ideas. How many of these items are you doing and which ones could fairly easily be adopted by your team?

feverbee.com  

Going Beyond ROI: Finding Balance in Developer Relations

"What's the ROI?" is likely the biggest question that you hear from your company stakeholders on a regular basis. But is that the right question to be asking?

Jesse Davis walks through the changes that DevRel has experienced in the last few years, from driving empathy and awareness to being put on the ROI metric train. He argues that what we need is a happy medium, and he gives a few ideas of how to achieve that zen state in this recent Devada blogpost.

devada.com  

Building a Developer Relations Team from The Ground Up

Being a team of one has come up a handful of times in the last month, and this interview that Dave Nugent conducted with Sarah-Jane Morris is a fantastic summary of how to make sure you're able to create a successful DevRel program as a company's first DevRel hire. From tooling to your first goal to measuring success, this article contains a lot of tips for setting you (and your future team) up for success.

dev.to  

Confessions of a Speaker: 50+ tips for conference organisers

As fall conference season looms, event organizers are in crunch mode, figuring out the last few steps of the CFP, solidifying schedules, and selling tickets. If you're in this boat, you'll appreciate this resource from Grishma Jena -- a list of 50+ tips for conference organizers borne out of her experience speaking at conferences around the world.

github.io  

Navigating Q&A: An Academic Perspective

If you've ever refused to do Q&A at a conference or been terrified about the possibility, you're not alone! Being in the spotlight while people you don't know ask questions (or make snide remarks that aren't actually questions) can be a nervewracking experience. Eve Tuck has a different way of approaching conference Q&A, including giving people time to talk through their questions with their neighbors prior to the mic being passed. Read the rest of her tips in this Twitter thread.

twitter.com  

What's Missing?

We usually consider stages of community building as

1. Build 🏗️
2. Engage 🗣️
3. Scale 📈

But what are the hidden in-between steps which every newbie #cmgr should know before starting it off?

-Rohit Kumar Guha

This question sparked a fantastic discussion on Twitter, including many steps that are usually bypassed by folks setting up a new community. Be sure to take a look when you have a moment -- chances are, you'll have more than one aha! moment.

Interested in more information?

• Rohit wrote up his own thoughts in this blogpost on how to build a community from scratch.
• This article from Vanilla also has some fantastic tips on how to set your community up for success.

twitter.com