The Business Value of Developer Relations
Footnotes & Resources
For more information about The Business Value of Developer Relations, including more information, purchasing links, and more, see persea-consulting.com/book. Thanks for your support!
Footnotes & Resources:
Introduction
[1] You can read more on the items that every company needs in order to have a successful DevRel team in Anil Dash’s post A Developer Relations Bill of Rights: https://medium.com/glitch/a-developer-relations-bill-of-rights-21381920e273
[2] https://twitter.com/matthewrevell/status/1003477945707462656
Chapter 1
[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/community.html
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community
[3] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/community
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters and https://hbr.org/2018/03/5-things-we-learned-about-creating-a-successful-workplace-diversity-program
[5] If you’re working in DevRel full-time, you can apply to join it here: devrelcollective.fun
[6] Simon Sinek’s TED talk “Start with Why” explains this concept in further depth: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
[7] https://twitter.com/mary_grace/status/923287669940948992
Chapter 2
[1] See https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/raci-matrix.php for more information.
[2] Heath, Dan, and Chip Heath. “Chapter 4: Point to the Destination. p93.” Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Random House US, 2010.
Chapter 3
[1] This is why the podcast that I co-host with Jason Hand and PJ Hagerty is called “Community Pulse” -- as community professionals, we’re responsible for keeping an eye on our respective communities and reporting back relevant information about the health of our community. Learn more at communitypulse.io
[2] Engineering Manager, provider of scotch and also Scottish (aka Scotch Angel), @ewanovitch on Twitter.
[3] An email delivery API built for and by developers. I worked on building its community strategy for the better part of 2 years.
[4] Geographic regions are important to note, since generally speaking, from a technology adoption standpoint, the West Coast tends to be ahead of the East Coast, which is ahead of the Europe, which is slightly ahead of the Midwest, and so on.
[5] Vice President and Senior Mosaic Specialist, KeyBanc Capital Markets; previously Technical Eminence Program Director at IBM; creator of #CloudMinds; also mentor, innovator, community cruise director, and all-around awesome individual; @amyhermes; I met her because of the Geek Whisperers Podcast Episode 93: http://geek-whisperers.com/2015/08/bringing-people-together-is-not-marketing-with-amy-hermes-ep-93/
[6] Again, like most tools I’m mentioning throughout the book, there are two caveats:
1) There are likely others that are better suited for your use case, or at the very least, different from the ones I mention.
2) The tools I mention may not be the best fit for you. Take the outlined principles and apply them to your own goals, communities, and companies to figure out what the right tool is for you.
[7] I’m going to be using examples primarily from Twitter, partly because that’s the current social media network of choice for most developers and partly because that’s my largest area of expertise when it comes to social media networks.
[8] https://www.thememo.com/2016/08/11/slack-every-company-needs-a-voice-this-is-how-slack-found-theirs
[9] https://slackhq.com/words-are-hard-aabafc490d04
[10] https://slackhq.com/one-voice-many-hands-f8759968f9b8
[11] I talk more about this on Episode 15 of the Teamwork podcast from Dan Thomas: imdanthomas.com/15
[12] Founded by Ben Halpern, Jess Lee, and Peter Frank, dev.to is one of the most welcoming and inclusive environments for sharing content that I’ve ever come across in all my time working with developer communities. @thepracticaldev on Twitter.
Chapter 4
[1] https://github.com/RobSpectre/Talks/tree/master/Measuring%20Developer%20Evangelism
[2] https://twitter.com/SparkPostOps/status/667420447345102848
[3] https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/building-internal-community/
[4] A great guy that I had the privilege of working with for 2 years at SparkPost; passionate about making things easier for developers; @itsaydrian on Twitter
[5] This is also the reason why my consulting firm is called Persea Consulting. Persea is the scientific genus for the family that avocados falls into, and also lends to thinking about “persons”, which nicely translates to community and developer relations. https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2018/1/31/developer-avocados-the-good-kind-of-fat
[6] https://twitter.com/sherlyholmes/status/938934404251971584
[7] This is a good exercise to do on a monthly or quarterly basis with your team as well. It helps you keep ahead of any problems and issues that may be cropping up before they become too large to handle.
[8] A good friend of mine; He’s a passionate community builder who has tremendous insight into and passion for the open source community; @mbbroberg on Twitter.
[9] https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/almostanauthor
[11] https://genuinely.co/2013/08/measuring-community-kpis-social-metrics-community-building/
[12] Bitergia is a fantastic resource if you have a large stake in the Open Source world. Their dashboards help you see who your biggest Github contributors are, in addition to stats around mailing lists, forums, bugs, and more. Netflix’s OSSTracker is another: https://github.com/Netflix/osstracker as is MeasureOSS: https://github.com/MeasureOSS/Measure
Pulling Twitter Analytics and other API metrics into something like Keen or Datadog can be useful from a visibility standpoint. Without being able to see the trends from the past month, how can you make well-informed decisions on what to do next?
[13] https://developer.github.com/v3/search/
[14] https://stedolan.github.io/jq/
[15] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
[16] http://www.betterevaluation.org/en/blog/anecdote_as_epithet
[17] http://startitup.co/guides/374/aarrr-startup-metrics
[18] https://devrel.net/strategy-and-metrics/introducing-aaarrrp-devrel-strategy
[19] http://bit.ly/aaarrrp-template
[20] https://twitter.com/mary_grace/status/843975759890800640
[21] https://genuinely.co/2013/08/measuring-community-kpis-social-metrics-community-building/
Chapter 5
[1] http://www.communityleadershipforum.com/t/alternative-title-to-community-manager/923 https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-alternative-titles-to-Community-Manager
[2] https://experts.feverbee.com/t/alternative-title-to-community-manager/5159/8
[3] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/164ZkdeyJ5wzOmsvvisBpS1ygFAh3ZPNfUAipCp-0MdU/edit
[4] I’m a fan of this documentation matrix from Daniele Procida: https://www.divio.com/en/blog/documentation/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management
[6] Bear is an awesomely strong DevRel professional with a lot of experience building communities at large companies. @beardigsit on Twitter.
[7] https://www.heavybit.com/library/blog/building-developer-relations-teams/
[8] A fantastic women and amazing community builder. Kara and I connected over the DevOps community while working at competing companies (she at Puppet and I at Chef) and became fast friends. @FeyNudibranch on Twitter.
[9] http://cmxhub.com/keystocommunityreadiness/
Chapter 6
[1] Jeremy Price, @jermops on Twitter. I’m lucky to have him by my side!
[2] This is why it’s important to get the automated data-gathering that we talked about in Chapter 4 in place to begin with. That way when you need to take the time to do the research, you aren’t having to backtrack to prove the value of what you’re doing. Libby Boxes come in handy here as well, so that even when you don’t have dollar values to put with your metrics, you can at least show how you’re making an impact with the metrics that you’ve defined.
[3] If you’re working for a large company, you might need to check with Sales and Support to make sure there aren’t any customers you should avoid talking to (i.e. customers that are considering another option or who have been having difficult experiences lately).
[4] You’ll notice I’m referring to these folks as your customers and not your community. There’s a reason for this! In general, as we established in Chapter 1, the community can be anyone who is currently using your product, is considering using your product, or could benefit from your product. However, in this circumstance, you’re using the information about your current customers (paid or free) to gain insight into your larger community, of which the customers are a subset.
[5] Remember that if you’re an API company and you offer SDKs, you can find this information by implementing user agent strings in your SDKs. See Chapter 4 for more information.
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq6tsM57JZ0
[7] Jono Bacon first introduced this concept of Read vs. Write Communities in The Art of Community, Chapter 2.
[8] https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Do-ocracy
[9] http://thagomizer.com/blog/2017/09/29/we-don-t-do-that-here.html
[10] https://kubernetes.io/docs/imported/community/guide/
[11] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/
[12] Originally created by Renee French (reneefrench.blogspot.com), the Gopher has taken on a life of its own, namely under the direction of Ashley McNamara. While an amazing artist, she’s also an incredible DevRel professional herself and a wonderful person to boot; @ashleymcnamara on Twitter. Erick Zelaya is also a Gopher artist and is also responsible for the amazing cartoon avocado versions of my case study individuals; @erickzelaya on Twitter.
[13] If you want a cartoon gopher version of yourself, simply point your browser at https://gopherize.me
[14] Originally created by Simon Oxley and expanded by Cameron McEfee. Full story here: http://cameronmcefee.com/work/the-octocat/
[15] http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html
Chapter 7
[1] https://twitter.com/mattklein123/status/949387830588948480
[2] https://twitter.com/DrPizza/status/955552718126551041
[3] https://github.com/keen/community-team
[4] http://ahoy.twilio.com/heroes
[5] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy
[6] http://thagomizer.com/blog/2017/09/29/we-don-t-do-that-here.html
[7] A changelog (aka release notes) is a record of all notable changes made to a project (most notably an application), including bug fixes, new features, etc. One example of a company that does great app release notes is Slack. I consistently read the app updates, and trust me when I say this is not my normal practice! https://slack.com/apps/mac/release-notes
[8] https://www.salesforce.com/products/community-cloud/overview/
[9] Owner/Founder of Fanchismo, frequent speaker at CMX Summit, and awesomely enthusiastic individual! @communitydrives on Twitter.
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
[11] http://prtini.com/online-communities/
[12] Lindsey’s talk from CMX Summit East in 2016: https://youtu.be/saTcOuAi0vc?t=5m54s
[13] https://medium.com/google-developers/the-core-competencies-of-developer-relations-f3e1c04c0f5b
[14] An amazing human being that I first met at CodeDaze 2016 and with whom I have since collaborated with on occasion in my consulting business; @rainleander on Twitter.
[15] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/facebook-communities-summit/
Chapter 8
[1] Pro tip: when facilitating a conference for your community, include their Slack or Twitter handles on their badges so they can easily identify their online friends and colleagues.
[2] I’ve crossed paths with Tim several times over the years and have been energized by his work many-a-time, from SendGrid to Keen and everywhere in between. His heart for the community and for the world is inspiring. @timfalls on Twitter.
[3] Note for smaller companies or startups with small sponsorship budgets: Don’t forget to ask for discounts! Most conferences as willing to negotiate on sponsorship fees, especially for first-time sponsors or new companies.
[4] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy
[5] PJ Hagerty, founder of DevRelate (http://www.devrelate.io/) and one of my co-hosts on Community Pulse, created Meetup Land -- http://www.meetup.land -- which curates the top 20 meetups on Meetup.com for a particular topic.
[6] My co-hosts and I explored this topic in Episode 20 of Community Pulse: http://communitypulse.io/20-meetups/
[7] https://groups.drupal.org/colorado
[8] If you’re looking for good resources around public speaking, here are a few of my go-to’s:
- Lara Hogan’s book (and talk) on public speaking:
http://larahogan.me/speaking/
- Scott Berkun’s advice on how to prep for and give a great Ignite talk, which applies to longer-form talks as well:
http://scottberkun.com/2009/how-to-give-a-great-ignite-talk/
- Christian Heilman’s “what not to say” blogpost:
https://christianheilmann.com/2016/07/06/things-not-to-say-on-stage-at-a-tech-event/
[9] I like this one in particular: https://medium.com/devrel-life/the-art-of-the-conference-talk-proposal-3e97cd3bd33a
[10] PJ, Jason, and I interviewed VM (Vicky) Brasseur (a phenomenal speaker and Open Source legend, as well as an amazing human being, @vmbrasseur on Twitter) in a Community Pulse episode about how to submit the best CFPs and then give an awesome talk:
http://communitypulse.io/23-cfps/
Chapter 9
[1] https://medium.com/@mary_grace/burnout-what-happens-when-you-take-on-too-much-ebd0be3ad1ad
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/
[3] Burnout.io has an amazing list of resources:
https://burnout.io/en/latest/resources.html
as well as quotes from blogposts and talks that community members have given on the topic:
https://burnout.io/en/latest/furtherReading.html
[4] While this isn’t a proven trend, it’s been referenced in a number of blogposts from Developer Advocates and I’ve seen it ring mostly true in my own career as well as colleagues and friends.
[5] https://medium.com/compassionate-coding/only-you-can-prevent-tech-burnout-be3f0504c627
[6] Accelerate, by Nicole Forsgren, with Jez Humble & Gene Kim, is my go-to book for the concept of blameless postmortems, and other DevOps and Agile topics.
[7] https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/postmortem-culture.html
[8] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/unlimited-pto.aspx
[9] The blogpost is about careers, but if you scroll about halfway through the article, you’ll get to the bookshelf image that I’m referring to:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html
Or you can find just the image here:
https://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/yearning-hierarchy-2.png
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyfiPIHsIg
[11] Technical writer extraordinaire and one of my earliest supporters in my career. @kathrynb on Twitter.
[12] Founder of Release Engineering Approaches and a great businessman. He’s been a business mentor of mine since I spun up Persea Consulting and a friend for many more years than that. @jpaulreed on Twitter.
[13] https://medium.com/@jpaulreed/dodging-burnout-4-hours-at-a-time-965f1921e6a2
[14] https://adainitiative.org/continue-our-work/impostor-syndrome-training/
[15] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2015/06/29/im-so-over-we-need-a-rock-star/#3f4ddf050c1f
[16] http://communitypulse.io/24-imposter-syndrome
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills
[18] https://medium.com/@ashleymcnamara/what-is-developer-advocacy-3a92442b627c
Chapter 10
[1] https://twitter.com/i/moments/983238008429133825
[2] DevRel Weekly is a weekly newsletter full of relevant articles, job postings, and events that shows up in your inbox every Thursday, curated by yours truly. https://devrelweekly.com
[3] REdeploy is a conference that explores the intersection of and interactions between resilient code, teams, and people. Co-produced by J. Paul Reed and myself, the inaugural conference took place in August 2018. https://re-deploy.io
[4] Some of us have needed a teacher to perfect our gif game -- shoutout to Gareth Greenaway, Software Developer at Saltstack for helping me improve mine! @garethg on Twitter -- come for the gifs, stay for the content.
[5] https://twitter.com/ember_dog/status/569246196759277569
[6] See https://twitter.com/mary_grace/status/569316539989516289 Fun note: I actually still have my tiara!
[8] http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2017/11/30/personal-brand.html
Appendix B
[1] Event Scorecard Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D9iwHbOgE3NpifG4V-G9xuu2MoCGXaJ8LFa0fcppin4/edit
Appendix C
[1] https://www.sparkpost.com/docs/getting-started/getting-started-sparkpost
[2] SparkPost Hackathon Handout: https://drive.google.com/file/d/133-meAqKOWa-bTg7sA-T0u8fDCauvE7N/view
Appendix D
[1] Chef Developer Resource Card: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-Hh2KoYNl-Y68zj1n5zUkkOlB81tWFjk
[2] SparkPost Developer Resource Card: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hiOSIApn3xCfstgeQhKu3DDg7W11rFvu
Appendix E
[1] Asana is my go-to, though Trello, Evernote, and JIRA are all options as well. You can find other suggestions by searching for tools that follow the Agile methodology.
[2] If you’d like to copy this exact template to create your own internal documents, feel free to copy the file: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gsC1DQbKAzST1vw2_iopjwPpxbmGiMPIOmp_Nffk744/edit
[3] The goals you set for your company are going to depend on your overarching company goals. Are you sponsoring events to get more awareness? Your goal might be geared toward how many people watched your demo or interacted with you at the booth. Are you trying to build out a community of customers? A good metric to track might be how many sign-ups you got for your beta-testing program. See the Libby Boxes exercise included in Chapter 4 for more information on how to determine the correct goals for your team.
[4] See Chapter 8: “What are you Trying to Accomplish?” for more information.
[5] Typically, I care less about the recruiting opportunities at hackathons (students tend to give companies their resumes regardless of whether there’s a recruiter there or not) and more about the demos. It’s usually possible to negotiate for the above requirements in exchange for removing the recruiting package.
[6] This is the only requirement for a conference sponsorship to be valuable. Sponsoring events without a booth or table is more difficult because there’s nowhere for you to meet up with attendees. That being said, as mentioned in Chapter 8: “Engage with the Community”, there are ways to meet your community members while onsite even if you don’t have a booth.
[7] These are the individuals who will make decisions about whether or not you can sponsor this event. It might be the Head of Marketing if that’s where your events budget lives, or it might be the head of your department in addition to your teammates.
[8] More information about this breakdown is included in Chapter 8.
[9] The following four steps relate to this specific template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zhDTHtoGAw8ksxZO6agG4xEb0TVK5-KLPl88J1VLIng/edit
[10] Asana is my go-to, though Trello, Evernote, and JIRA are all options as well. You can find other suggestions by searching for tools that follow the agile methodology. The best way to create this to-do list is to have a pre-saved template that you simply copy each time. That way, you only need to change the dates and update who the responsible party is rather than build it from scratch each time.
[11] For a swag bucket template, see https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11yqckCYLnK8BaXnMOR3R4rSbsTqQdliv-h_Q59qg8-A/edit
[12] Send an email with all of the basic information and then have a follow-up meeting to answer any questions. The more touch-points you have, the more prepared your team will be. You can find a sample email template here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17QFHwYvS7WLxLbOtgl3I6pJhxX2l9ktROJ92DDy8Z4Y/edit?usp=sharing
[13] https://whatismyipaddress.com is a handy resource. Or simply Google “What is my IP address?"