Surfing the Wave of Developer Relations: Part I
Today’s post is a guest contribution from Kevin Chen. He was the first Developer Advocate at the now-unicorn open source company Kong and currently works at smallstep, an early stage open source startup.
If I had to compare working in the tech industry to a sport, surfing would be the first thing that comes to mind. And this is because of two key reasons:
So how do we stay afloat amongst the relenting waves of change and innovation? To finish out the surfing analogy, we look for the surfboard. Surfboards keep us on top of the wave, and afloat if we are to fall into the water. In the tech industry, Developer Relations is your surfboard.
But what does a Developer Relations practitioner do? When do we hire one, and who do we look for? In Part I of this series, we’ll briefly answer the basic questions on Developer Relations to lay the foundation for the Part II post on how developer engagement drives international expansion.
First, a broad overarching definition: Developer Relations (people in the industry often just say DevRel) is the practice of enabling developers to be successful users of technology. People working in this practice sit at the intersection of many functions -- primarily engineering, marketing, and product development. The well known and high visibility DevRel activities are:
