DevRel Weekly - Issue 80 - Career Paths, Online Communities, and Stepping Away from Work

Welcome! 👋

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled program, everyone! I had a marvelous time exploring the California Redwoods last week, with spectacular views, lots of beautiful hikes, and a few solid days of very little time in front of a screen.

I jumped right back into a busy week upon returning -- I'm finishing this newsletter issue while on a train to Day 2 of CMX Summit -- and while hectic, it's been a great way to build on the inspiration I felt last week in the redwoods. I'm excited about heading into next week with all sorts of new ideas and tactics to better serve and grow the various communities I'm a part of.

I hope you are all feeling equally inspired these days, whether because of time off or an awesome conference. I'd love to hear about it if you are! And if you're not feeling particularly inspired, perhaps the articles below will help. As always, I enjoy hearing your feedback and suggestions about what types of articles and topics would be most beneficial to you in your professional journey. Drop me a line anytime.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Make Time to Turn Off "Work Brain"

The downside (for me) to caring about customers (whether they’re end users or developers when you're developer experience) is that when you see broken windows it’s hard to stop thinking about the broken windows even when you should be turned off from work.

-Chase Adams

This is a big part of why my break from technology last week was so needed! I've forgotten just how much it helps me reset my priorities and refocus on the work in front of me. I hope all of you are able to take some time, perhaps this weekend! to fully disconnect from work and do something that will refresh your body as well as your mind.

Listen to Understand

If they are still talking and you're already formulating your reply, you're not actually listening. Listen to understand, don't listen to reply.

-David G. Simmons

We're Not Rock Stars

Dear DevRel candidates. Interview tip for you! As a hiring manager, it’s a red flag if you tell me that you want to do DevRel because you want to be a “Rock star on stage”. I keep hearing and seeing this and it sends all the wrong messages, especially to me. #humility #community

This tweet from Jen Looper sparked a lot of good discussions, including these observations:

Being on-stage is ~10% of the work DevRels do, and it’s not even the most valuable.

I also hear variants of this consistently. It devalues both the rest of the work that DevRels do and the profession as a whole.

-Tierney Cyren

I think part of this is our fault for how we sometimes convey parts of this job to you. Let me assure you.

We are not rock stars. We are not famous. We are tired.

Seriously, I am little more than a human router. I connect brilliant people and enable THEIR success. The end.

The value of #DevRel is product feedback and community engagement. The cost of doing business is getting on planes and speaking at conferences.

-Emily Freeman

DevRel Advice Column

Jennifer Riggins is prepping for a podcast episode about internal developer advocacy and wants to hear from you!

Do you have an internal developer advocacy program? Tell us about it! Are you considering one and want to ask Brian some questions via me? Do reply here!

Hi #cmgrs! Do you manage a dev community that was already existing when you took it on? Please DM me -- I'd love to chat with you to validate some ideas I have. Thx

-Phoebe Venkat

We're More than Just People People

David Spinks tweeted out an interesting observation from a recent conversation with Evan Hamilton:

Community professionals have to be skilled at more than just community.

You need to be community +

Community + product manager

Community + marketing

Community + cust success

Being a people person isn't enough, you need to impact business objectives.

Evan responded in a thread of his own:

Important to note that this doesn't imply we should go back to the days of old, where we did almost everything at the company that wasn't programming.

Rather, it means that you can combine your community skills with one or two other skills to become highly effective at your company. Combining it with 20 other skills dilutes you.

Why is Closed Captioning Important?

Reasons to Close Caption your online videos! 👇🏻
✅ Deaf and HoH audiences have access.👂🏻
✅ Online video is international, helps foreign audience follow. 🌍
✅ Sometimes we gotta mute. 🔇
✅ Deafblind audience can feel the transcript with Braille displays 👆🏻
✅ SEO performance 📈

-James Rath

Tangibles 🤓

Applying the Fogg Behavior Model to Developer Relations

If you haven't heard of the Fogg Behavior Model, you aren't alone! However, it may be something you want to look into as you work on your next presentation to the company stakeholders. Max Katz takes a quick look at the model in a recent blogpost, explaining how it can be applied to Developer Relations and why it might be a helpful framework by which to measure success.

The Path to Developer Relations

The question "How did you get into Developer Relations?" is one I hear often at various community gatherings, and the answers are always fascinating to me. From theater and communication majors to support and sales engineers, our stories are varied, but all of these backgrounds have benefitted us in some way, adding to our skill sets and making us better at our jobs. I took the time to jot down some of these meandering career paths in a recent blogpost and ESNChat focused on it in a recent twitter chat as well. How does your experience differ? I'd love to hear!

Spotlight on Online Communities

Online communities were the talk of the town these past two weeks! From articles on how to make a community more welcoming to what questions you need to keep in mind while formulating a strategy, there are some gems in here:

Once your community is off to a good start, the next questions are often, how do you make sure it stays healthy? and if it isn't healthy, what's the next step? These two articles should be able to help with both of those questions:

Tangents 🐰

On Docs, DX, and Developer Happiness

Struggling to get your team to understand why up-to-date documentation really matters when they've got 12 other things on their plate? This post from Veselin not only reinforces the importance of good docs, but walks through a few ways you can use Docker to automate some of the updates.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts

This week brings you two great DevRel-related podcasts from somewhat a-typical sources! Hopefully these episodes will lead you to discover more podcasts that are of interest to you.

Erik Veld and Rosemary Wang, HashiCorp - HashiCast. In this episode, Erik Veld and Rosemary Wang from HashiCorp's Developer Advocacy team take over HashiCasts. Join us as we make introductions, talk technical about developer advocacy, review HashiConf EU, and debate about airplane food.
The Anatomy of Developer Advocacy with Matt Broberg - Screaming in the Cloud. For the last five years, Matt Broberg has worn many different developer advocate hats. These days, his developer hat looks a bit … red ... as he’s an advocate, writer, and editor for opensource.com at Red Hat. Join Corey and Matt as they discuss IBM’s recent acquisition of Red Hat, open source culture and how to contribute without submitting code, the rise of developer relations and whether the term “DevRel” will stick, what developer relations actually is, what its future looks like, and more.

Recent DevRel Talks & Videos

There have been a number of conference talks released in the past few weeks, with more to come in the near future I'm sure! Here are a handful that caught my eye:

Events 📆

Future Developer Summit 2019

How do you build a developer program from scratch? How do you hire your first 5 people in DevRel? Join 80 Director/VP/GM-level thought leaders at Future Developer Summit 2019 as they get together to debate best practices, learn and design better developer strategies and share their experiences.

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Did you know that the Cambridge Dictionary defines an event as "anything that happens, especially something important or unusual"? Take a look at what's happening that's important or unusual in DevRel, by digging into the DevRel Events collection.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Product Manager - Developer Experience

Making developers successful is key to creating platforms that have long-lasting impact. As the Product Manager for Developer Experience, you'll help build InterSystems into the first choice for developers building massively scalable, interoperable, analytic applications. This is an exciting opportunity to act as the key connection between developers and the rest of the team, responsible for creating and executing the vision InterSystems’ developer experience. You'll work closely with multiple groups in the company to define the vision, identify opportunities, and drive impact for both developers and InterSystems. The ideal candidate has a solid understanding of software developer needs, strong cross-functional and communication skills, and good instincts for balancing process vs value.

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

Jobs! No, not Steve Jobs, just a lot of jobs in the DevRel Weekly collection. If you're looking for a job or know someone who is, check out the collection and enjoy.