DevRel Weekly - Issue 85 - Metrics: What Data do we Track and How do we Use it More Effectively?

Welcome! 👋

Metrics seem to be the name of the game this week. From what data to track to how to use the data more effectively, there are a lot of new resources that will hopefully have you proving the business value of your work in no time!

Speaking of metrics... if you're still looking for something to spend your professional development budget on, don't miss the metrics workshop I'm giving in London at the beginning of December. Be sure to drop me a line if you'll be at any of the upcoming events -- I'd be happy to intro you to others who will be, even if I won't be there!

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Fulfill the Needs of Your Community

There are few things more important than building a great community. Remember: the community isn’t a fit for your product, your product should be built to fulfill the needs of the community.

-DevRelate

Building Communities Drives Connections

Tapping into human emotions drives more meaningful connections with your customers.

-Alicia Tillman

DevRel Advice Column

Are developer newsletters still a thing in 2019? Do you actively sign up for and read newsletters? Dev rel/marketing folks - do you get value from sending newsletters?

If not, how do you keep your developers in the loop?

-Ari Vaniderstine

Go Deep First, Then Scale

The most common thing I do with clients who are starting communities: talk them out of scaling quickly. Go deep first - create the culture you want and then bring others in who will quickly acclimate or self-select out. It's how to get sustainable behavior and culture change.

-Rachel Happe

Bruce Ableson agrees:

This is so important when building communities - rocketship growth is not important in the beginning, but setting the community’s values and ethics is. Has to be there from the start.

Tangibles 🤓

Meet these open source alternatives to Meetup.com

Looking for a way to move off of Meetup.com after they botched the testing of a new pricing model? Josh Dzielak pulled together a list of alternatives, including a few brand-new apps being created by very motivated developers!

It’s All About That Data

A few weeks ago, I listened to Erica Kuhl talk about the success of the Salesforce communities and wished my fingers could take down notes faster. Today, I stumbled across this blogpost she wrote, and after reading it, instantly bookmarked it to read again later, because this includes the three areas she addressed in her talk: Customer Success, Company Growth, and Personal Success.

Interested in more about what we should be doing with all of the data we're collecting? Rachel Happe talks about the questions she's asking (and is curious to hear your questions as well!) in a recent blogpost.

How Did They Find You? What Did They Think?

What if we asked the last five people who joined our community how they found us and what drove them to join? While this seems like a simple suggestion, it's one that many of us don't consider when we're trying to gather information on our community members. As Richard Millington says in this short blogpost, "it only takes 30 minutes and you might be amazed by the quality of data it yields."

Speaking At Technical Conferences

As more first-time speakers are taking to the stage, Emma Wedekind took a moment to write up her experiences from speaking at 9 conferences this year. From why you might (or might not) want to speak at a conference to how to tackle the dreaded CfP, Emma has advice that applies to every conference speaker, whether or not it's your first event.

Tangents 🐰

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear on how Moderation Creates Communities

While some social media platforms seem to be dropping the ball when it comes to moderation, Twitch is stepping up their game. CEO Emmet Shear recently sat down to talk specifically about the changes Twitch is making to their platform in response to feedback from streamers.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts

Audience Segmentation: Why Finding Your Core Community Is an Integral Piece of a Successful DevRel Strategy with Sarah-Jane Morris and Jesse Davis - Community Pulse
Matt Broberg talks Developer Relations - Innovate @Open

Conf Talks & Recaps, Oct 2019

More conference talks and recaps are being released by the day! I'm continuing to add them to this Toby Collection for your browsing pleasure. From great talks about burnout prevention to online community trends, there's enough content to keep you satisfied for days, or at least until the next newsletter is released!

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

Whether or not you're already busy with events, you should take a look at these professional development opportunities in the DevRel Events Toby Collection, just in case you might be able to apply some of the knowledge from these events to your life. May events and people you meet at events bring joy into your life.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate Manager

We are looking for a Developer Advocate Manager that will join the Developer Experience (DX) team in Stockholm. You will be responsible for managing our team of Developer Advocates, including supporting their career growth, and driving Spotify’s developer relations strategy.

Technical Developer Evangelist

Testim uses artificial intelligence to speed-up the authoring, execution, and maintenance of automated tests. Here's a note from their Head of Marketing, Francis Adanza, about an exciting job opportunity:

Hello Folks, we're looking for a Technical Developer Evangelist to join our team. If you like to code as well as talk about it, then we should chat. Learn more about Testim and the role here or feel free to contact me directly!

Developer Advocate

Hasura is an open source project at the intersection of the GraphQL and cloud-native movements and empowers developers to build powerful and scalable applications easily. We're looking for a developer advocate based in San Francisco/ Bay Area to help developers who are using or interested in GraphQL & Hasura to achieve success with these technologies. Our idea candidate is someone well versed with application development, who loves to explain technical concepts in creative ways and most importantly is an empathetic individual, who listens to developers and is able to provide actionable input to the product & marketing teams.

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

Not sure where to continue to look for jobs yourself or others? We hope that our DevRel Weekly Toby Collections might help. We're sending good energy out into the world that you find what you're looking for.