DevRel Weekly - Issue 89 - Industry Announcements, Trends, and Resources

Welcome! 👋

This week was full of industry announcements and new long-form resources! Per usual, I've captured them all here so you can stay up to date with what's happening in the broader industry.

First up, CMX released their 2020 Community Industry Trends Report this week! It includes information about budgets, business value, and primary goals of community teams worldwide.
Vanilla Forums came out with a Community Manager's Survival Guide this week, which I wish existed when I was just getting started! From how to create community guidelines to dealing with trolls, this resource covers so many relevant topics for those managing an online community.
Over half of the Fortune 50 and the 50 highest-valued startups invest in their community in some way. Carrie Melissa Jones has been studying the trends from these companies as well as others, and presented her initial findings in a webinar this week. She also released her beta findings in a report.
Last but definitely not least, you've seen me quote from articles written by Josh Dzielak and Patrick Woods over the years, and I'm excited to say that they're embarking on a new journey along with Dustin Larimer to build tooling specifically for Developer Relations professionals.

On a personal note, if you missed my announcement last week, I'm winding down my consultancy and will be starting a new full-time job on December 9th! The newsletter, along with the other resources I've been producing over the years, will continue (I posted a quick update video on Patreon), but I do appreciate your patience throughout December and January as I get up to speed.

Phew! That's a lot of information. 😅If you've got the energy, keep reading for more content from this week, including metrics, how to design a good community hub, the latest from your favorite podcasts, and more.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Departmental Poll

DevRel Community - Help me understand if most of you are...
- We are our own team
- Part of Pre-sales / Sales
- Within the Marketing Org
- In Customer Success grp - Other

-Emmelyn Wang

DevRel Summit Recap

DevRel Summit happened this past week in Singapore, and based on the tweets, it looks like it was a great day. Topics ranged from open source to supporting developers around the world to the cultural implications of a global community. Check out the Twitter hashtag and I'll keep you posted if and when the videos are released!

What's Your Personal Definition of Community?

When asked for advice on community strategy, the first question I've been asking is:

"What is your personal definition of community?"

By having them reflect on what community means to them personally, they immediately start rethinking how to build community for their customers.

-David Spinks

Slide Deck Tips and Tricks

DevRel tip: Choose a common format for your slide decks. This way you can much more easily swap slides between presentations as needed.

-Billy Korando

DevRel Choose Your Own Adventure Talk

If you're attending DevRelCon London, start thinking about the topics you'd like to discuss! I'm co-leading a "Choose Your Own Adventure" session with K Rain Leander and Jeremy Meiss and we're soliciting topics. Be sure to take part in the conversation.

Tangibles 🤓

How to Work with Your Conference Speakers Effectively

Want to know how to have a better relationship with your conference speakers? This article from event ticketing platform Tito highlights tips and tricks from a variety of event organizers.

The truth about why your ambassadors are your ambassadors

Oftentimes, folks who contribute back to your company aren’t in it for the swag. But this baffles some folks. If the community members don’t get anything physical out of their contributions, what motivates them to keep giving back? Nick Emmett takes a quick look at what motivates external ambassadors and how to thank them for their work in this blogpost.

Wanting to build out an ambassador program? This article from Fahim Pour gives a few key tips and tricks to set your program up for success.

Three Community Design Principles And 1 Great Example

If one of your goals for 2020 is to build out a landing page for your developer community, Rich Millington says there are three key principles to keep in mind. Read through his suggestions and a brief case study to help inform your design decisions.

No More Vanity Metrics Please

Often, the easiest metrics to track are the ones that reveal the least about the health of our community and the effectiveness of our efforts. Bethan Bishop explains why these vanity metrics are particularly ineffective when it comes to making strategic decisions in this article.

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts

What's After DevRel? Job Fluidity, Career Paths, and New Roles with Shannon Burns, Lauren Cooney, and Matt Broberg - Community Pulse
How Communities Supercharge your Business with Jono Bacon - Fast Leader Podcast (Video)
Community Adoption Means Solving The Bigger Business Problems with Michael Sandoval and Chris Detzel - Peers over Beers
The Art Of Designing Workshops with Joe Nash - Technically True
Helping Developers Grow with Jesse Davis - Under the Hood of Developer Marketing

One from the Archives 📰

Budgeting for Developer Evangelism

I missed this post when it first released in February, but I'm definitely saving it now! I'm impressed by the real-world examples, well-thought-out context, and thorough descriptions that Rob Spectre included. If you're wrapping up your budget for 2020, it's definitely worth your time to go through a few of the exercises. Hat tip to Steve Pousty for bringing it to my attention.

Events 📆

DevRelCon London Dec 9th-11th

Join dev rel professionals from across the world for a day of training and two days of conference and unconference. Early bird tickets available now: london-2019.devrel.net

Events 📆

Developer Relations Events

In the U.S. some of us are starting to find the things we're thankful for in preparation for Thanksgiving next week. Personally, I'm feeling thankful for all the great professional development events I've been able to go to this year — take a look at our collection of upcoming conferences, meetups, and webinars to see if there's one you'd like to attend.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Advocate

Pulumi is looking for a passionate Developer Advocate to lead our community outreach, spreading the word about how Pulumi can help developers and operators build innovative cloud software together. The Pulumi community is warm, welcoming, and already growing fast organically. You will be a part of realizing a vision where every team can program the cloud.

Senior Technical Community Manager

As data & data center usage continues to grow exponentially around the world, ITRenew and the circular economy are positioned to play an increasingly important role in the global Internet infrastructure and ecosystem. Interested in data, DevOps, sustainability, and open source? The Sesame team is looking for a Senior Technical Community Manager to help them build an internal community that is excited to engage with the ecosystem of customers and partners, as well as participate in the wider technical community that will build on and with Sesame data center products.

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

We have so many jobs in our curated collection. We have Entry-level jobs, Mid-level jobs, Manager-level jobs, and even jobs that are DevRel adjacent. We've even taken the time to split out the Technical Community Manager roles if that's what you're looking for. If you're looking for a new job, we wish you the best of luck that you find something you love. 🤗