How to self-check if you work in developer relations
I am doing a series of #devrel meetups in several cities and many people don’t really know these events are for them.
Have you discovered your inner evangelist yet? Then let’s check if you sometimes work in developer relations just that nobody told you that.
Tl;DR:
Passionate, mostly extrovert and ever travelling geeks sometimes need a safe space to discuss complex challenges of their daily life with people who can relate despite being from a different industry. Healthy for your consciousness.
Check if any of these apply
Does your company make a product primarily used by programmers? APIs, middlewares, game engines and all kind of developer tools find market adoption much easier if supported by a developer relations team. Why? I’ve discussed it already here. But if you’re working for this kind of company, there’s a huge chance you’ll find our devrel meetups of tremendous value.
1. If you’re in any way helping out the users of your developer-focused product, well, this event is here to inspire you and empower you.
2. If you’re herding a community of programmers in any sense of this almost funny pseudo-sarcastic expression, then this meetup is here to gather people just like you, share your concerns and ask for advice.
3. Are you writing any kind of technical documentation that is to be read by programmers? You’re very welcome to join us and ask questions about the best tools, optimised processes and the power of open source in documentation.
4. Maybe you’re a software developer who enjoys talking about tech on the internet or even (gasp!) live, publicly… Chances are there’s a developer advocate or a technical evangelist hidden under your skin. Come to the meetup and discover your hidden skills, inquire about career prospects in the extrovert programmers’ field and express your opinion on things to the fellow documentation writer from the paragraph above.
Developer Advocates. Technical Evangelists. Customer Success Engineers. Developer Community Managers. Technical Writers. Developer Experience Managers. Sales Support Engineers. Technical Product Owners. And everyone else interested in Developer Relations. All are welcome at devrel events to give and get value.
Why do I want to meet all these people I don’t know
I did my best to put down some welcoming words, but what exactly we discuss at the devrel events? Or rather, what do people from totally different industries may have in common and why do they want to hang out together?
The answer is plain and easy: to learn from each other in the multitude of dimensions:
- folks from bigger corps are often very good at putting numbers to their travel and event work;
- API providers often can share a lot of open-source practices and community building;
- game dev people contribute their experience of facilitating game jams (it’s hackathons for the non-game dev crowd);
- everyone even after 10 years in this position still talks about being a good speaker and making nicer slides;
We talk career prospects, references, cool events and meetups… We discuss tools that make our lives better. We ask each other for the feedback on our content drafts. We… moan… Yes. Because everybody needs a safe space to moan instead of doing in on Facebook or alike.
I mean, did you try to make a loud sigh on Facebook about having to travel to Paris and then to New York and then to Tokyo and attend some invite-only rooftop parties with your industry friends? I did…
Less travelling people, perhaps some random people on Facebook had an opinion that I fail to live my life properly. I reflected on this in a long read here.
The devrel meetups I was talking about
Currently, I have set up something I call Event 0 in two cities. These are pub events with all the limitations you can imagine. But I needed to start somewhere.
I’ll do my best to make Event 1 more inclusive with short lightning talks and an unconference. I am talking with two cool companies willing to host us in their offices in Stockholm and Vilnius.
And at some point in December, we’ll try other formats like board game evenings or hack camps.
The reason for different formats is simple: many of developer relations people have at least 8–9 years of professional experience and fall into the most represented group in IT. Yeah, I know, Event 0 reflects just that.
But my dream is to attract more young professionals to the dialogue, more women and minorities to both learn from them and also share our knowledge and experience.
Event links
The online Slack community for devrel people is here. There’s a screening process to be able to join, but getting there helped me to feel better about what I do and what I want to do. It is a decent space to ask questions, get feedback and share back some love.
And I am looking to kick off a series of devrel meetups somewhere else. Maybe Minsk or Limassol?
