A DevRel team that doesn’t sell anything

Speaker 1: So yeah. So community is hard. It you know, there I've said it. That is the presentation. That's really it.

Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I think I've pretty much answered everybody's questions here. I'm Jeremy Mees. You can find me on the Twitters at I am Jaredog, and we'll skip to q and a. Just joking here.

Speaker 1: Of course, you know, that's not just it, but we know that community is hard. Building developer communities, it's it's hard work. It's long hours of of looking at stats, metrics, worrying about what if, you know, what if what you're building is sustainable or or heck, if it's even interesting enough. You know, it's really putting yourself out there in every interaction, everything you do from social media to blog posts to community threads and answers to meetups and conference talks and and virtual talks and all the prep for that. And then the in person is that starting to come back.

Speaker 1: Like, it's playing the long game of community growth and member life cycle, which can take years off of your mental stability. And, you know, you should've known me before I started doing developer community work. Slightly tongue in cheek there. But, you know and I love doing it. I love all of it.

Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not all of the aspects of what I just said, but but it's it's what I love doing for my job. I love working with developer communities. Like I said, my name is Jeremy Meese. I'm the director of DevRel at CircleCI. You can, like I said, find me on the Twitters at I am Jairdog.

Speaker 1: And then just trying to use the Polywork. So you can find me on timeline.jaredog.me, and then eventually, I'll get that updated. So alright. So I mentioned how hard work how much hard work it is to to build communities. And with that acknowledgment, it's kinda like you kinda have to ask yourself, why would you ever try and make it that much harder on yourself by building your community in a bubble?

Speaker 1: You know, why why position yourself on an island kinda staring at Wilson as you're trying to to to build this this thing to get it started or even just to take you know, come in and take it and and build from there. You know, building developer communities requires you to function very much like the very developers that you're building your community for. Developers exist in, you know, we all know in interconnected communities due to due to the particular software technology they might develop with or for, you know, their hobbies, you know, stage in life they are, etcetera. So kind of I have a few examples of of how this kinda plays out. If you look here, like so I use the Chrome extension Wapalizer to look at different websites.

Speaker 1: And so the developers for, you know, GitHub website or microsoft.com or even gitlab.com, like, they're using a variety of of different frameworks, different technologies, all of which have different communities associated with them just to build the thing that they're doing. So they have to kind of exist in in a lot of different communities if they're looking for help or if they're looking to, you know, build build more knowledge. They're they're hitting hitting different different spaces in inside different communities. You know, we've all kinda seen the the CNCF landscape. I can't even zoom in on all that because it's just it's massive.

Speaker 1: There's so many communities that are there. But if you're going to be, you know, working in in DevOps, you're working in cloud native, whatever that might be, you come in contact with multiple different communities, or the developers that are in your community are coming in contact with with lots of different communities. So because of, like, these different landscapes, it makes sense to grow a community, especially when you're starting from scratch, by collaborating with others. So it's story time. I'll try and relate the story pretty, you know, relatively pretty quickly.

Speaker 1: But at a at a pressed job, I worked and I was responsible for kind of building a community from scratch. It was kind of a a niche product to some extent that was trying to trying to get out to to enterprise. And because I hadn't really worked with enterprises other than being in them before, it it was important to to really kinda get a feel for who's you should do this with with all your communities. Get a feel for who's in that community. And so I spent you know, started looking and and seeing, you know, who was using our product at the time and then what were the different areas that they were in.

Speaker 1: And what continued to find, was these little segments of these are the, you know, these are the areas of the tech that we should be kinda collaborating with. And so I wanted to, start building out some, you know, whether it content. Be I was looking at doing that, doing some meetups, and doing a variety of things with different other community builders and other teams and other other even other companies to try and build it. And one of the ways that I also saw that is there was a conference that was happening, and it was, the people that were attending that conference. And while it was an open source conference and the product I was with was not really an open source product, the, all those that were attending were our target audience.

Speaker 1: And so my my thing was, alright. I'm gonna go. I've been accepted to speak. Everything is gonna be paid for, but I'm gonna go there, and I'm gonna jump in and speak about, you know, about communities and then build, you know, build relationships with with developers that are there because I want them to use our product. I want them to understand that, hey.

Speaker 1: Here's what we do, and here's how we can work with this technology and and grow. Seems like that would make sense. It did not make sense to the decision makers that were that I reported to. And because that particular technology was not something that was identified by my manager as something that would make sense, was not able to do that. And in multiple instances, whenever we tried to build those communities and build our community and and and grow it, ran into a lot of little brick walls around kinda the same thing.

Speaker 1: It's like, well, that doesn't make sense, so we shouldn't do it. And so I've kinda put together, you know, some reasons of why collaboration is a good thing for you. And one thing that was, you know, learned over the years and tried to apply and and just ran into those brick walls of trying to convince the the the people that were the decision makers that I had to report to of why collaboration was good and been able to, you know, hopefully, provide you with some some ammunition, probably not the some some good ways and some good, you know, tools that you can use to to collaborate with others and and get your decision makers, people above you to, kinda sign on to that. So, reasons to collaborate or why you should play well with others. So the first one is problem solving, and learning.

Speaker 1: It is. It's better together. We all learn, I feel, and I've I've seen it over and over. You know, not learning in a vacuum. When you're able to learn with others, you you learn more about what is important for them, and you can share what's important for you and you can solve problems.

Speaker 1: You can learn it. It happens better together. You can also bring people and companies together. Again, it's just these different ideas make a community stronger, and make a company stronger when you bring in that diversity of thoughts and diversity of idea and diversity of background. And even diversity of technology, can help bring, bring people and communities and and companies together.

Speaker 1: Also opens lots of new opportunities. It's been my experience over the years, working with different communities and building those collaboration, with them, you know, between different companies and between different, you know, projects is that you see those opportunities, and often they present themselves that you're able to, hey. This was not something we intent we anticipated, but we're gonna jump into it. We're gonna go, and we're gonna, you know, really try and, you know, serve not only those that are in ours, but we can this other community and and really grow together. It also helps to keep your community members around, even those that look as as disgruntled as these ostriches, which I think those are ostriches, not emus, but these flightless birds.

Speaker 1: It's important. It's important to as you're, you know, showing that your technology or your product or whatever it is that your community is about works well with others and works with other things that commute your community is using, helps to keep those those people in your community as well. And it can help you grow that and and make sure that, you know, whatever you're doing kind of reinforces the viability of your community, and then, you know, you can gives you, again, back to the others more opportunity to, to grow and and, you know, seek new opportunities. So, it also can make you more efficient. It's never you can always go farther with two people, and you can carry more.

Speaker 1: You can do a, you know, a lot more with when you have more people than if you're just trying to do everything yourself. If you're just trying to get in, you know, impact within your community, guaranteed you're gonna miss things, and you're going to miss opportunities to make everyone better. And so it's it's you know, collaboration is extremely important, makes you more efficient. Alright. So some ways to kinda get started.

Speaker 1: The the first the first way to start collaborating is you know, it starts by first taking stock of the developers that are in your community and the tech you're using. You know, going back to that look, you know, the the slide that had the different technologies for each of the, you know, websites. You know, figure out who's in your community, what tech are they using, even along with what the core tech within your company is, what you might be using to deliver your product or service. You know? Get all of that.

Speaker 1: Put it all up on a screen and on a board and and and really get a landscape for where all of the, you know, people are in your community. And then once you've identified, you know, that different tech that's in use by your company and those who, you know, do or could use your product, make those different tech and communities collide. I love watching this GIF. For lack of a better term, get them get them to collide. Get involved in each of those communities.

Speaker 1: And that's not just, you know, getting where you are, you know, just self serving with it. Get involved by listening and and and seeing where are the ways that you can help serve them and provide, something of value to them. And so there's a number of different ways that you can kinda get involved in these other communities. Attend. Meet people.

Speaker 1: You know, go to you know, it's it's often really valuable just to sit and listen. In fact, that's probably the most valuable thing. Just sit there and listen. Listen to what they're saying. Listen to what they're doing.

Speaker 1: You can go to some you know, work on doing some meetups together, speak at respective community conferences, looking at, you know, ways that you can share content, you know, blogs and samples tutorials from another community and and partner to to get both content on on each. Do live streams together. You know? We've seen that over the last, you know, eighteen to twenty months of, a rise in in these live streams between different companies, that's another extremely important option. And then there's you know, I put the multiple dots, whatever that's called when you put multiple dots together, but, there's more where that came from.

Speaker 1: There's plenty. These are some really great ways, I think, to to get started, though. In in doing those things, they've really I've I found raised the awareness of your brand, but it also shows, you know, both in both of the communities, both yours and and the other one that you're starting to try and collaborate with, you know, how your tech and how your community and what you're doing is not on an island. It works with many different things they might already have in play in their specific environments. It also, you know, can open doors that previously were not available and then thus boost your community value.

Speaker 1: You know, if if you're looking to try you know, as a company, you're looking to try and get into your areas where you know you can be of service in different communities, if you're able to build those relationships, it opens up those doors. And then, you know, like I said, you can add that value, and and brings it back to you, and you can continue to this cycle. It also kinda it really helps sharpen your skills in building collaborative materials. You know, it's that's that's everything from learning how to use your product better to how your product works with other things as well. Really sharpens your skills as you as you build out more collaboration.

Speaker 1: It it benefits both. And then if if all of these things aren't happening by a mission or, you know, a lack of support from upper upper management, you are severely limiting the reach of your community, and you run the real very real risk of your community become becoming one dimensional, limits your impact. And once that happens, it it it is only a matter of time before, your community becomes stale and, you know, the, you'll get that dreaded question of, like, well, what's the ROI on that thing? Or what's the ROI of even having a community team? So it's important to get ahead of that and and, really start to to figure out your community.

Speaker 1: So back to that original story, if your attempts to collaborate, get involved, with other communities are thwarted or discouraged at, you know, every opportunity you try and do it, do them in, there are a few things that you can't do. First one is, you know, use competitors as examples. Look at what others have done, especially the competitors. Because the the reality is is that many decisions in business come down to the bottom line. And if your competitor is doing collaboration with other, teams or other companies or other projects, other communities, chances are, you should be doing that as well.

Speaker 1: The other thing, get buy in from other groups. Look at look at other groups within your company. Maybe get with the product team. Get with the engineering team. Get their get their take on some of the things you wanna do.

Speaker 1: And often, I've seen this happen where, you know, getting getting your engineering team that says, oh, yeah. We think this is a great idea. We'd love to to collaborate with, you know, you know, this other project because we use their their tool. Maybe we use Angular, and we, you know, we we should work with them. Getting that buy in can also kind of smooth some of the hesitations that your that your management might have about working with others.

Speaker 1: Another is kinda make sure and you should always be doing this regardless, but make sure that that whatever activity, the collaboration activity you're trying to do, make sure it tracks your OKRs, the company bottom line, and be explicit with it. Come back with the well, you're if I can't do this, I'm not gonna be able to hit this OKR or this our company's, bottom line. Be subversive. Just go do it. You know, the old saying is, you know, sometimes it's easier to, ask forgiveness than permission.

Speaker 1: You know, you might just have to go and just do it and then come back with, hey. I did this. Here's our reward. Here's what we got, and we need to do more of this. And then, you know, you might just need to collaborate with your network for for something different.

Speaker 1: Right now, there's a lot of opportunity out there. You know, I I'm not one to to say, go find a new job, but there does come a time where you might just have to start looking and seeing where there's other opportunities and and use your collaboration skills for that. So one final point I do wanna make before getting to the end here is that any attempt that you want any attempt at collaboration with another company or another community or project, it must be it has to be win win. You've got to be genuine on this. If you aren't, it's gonna be obvious.

Speaker 1: Both the communities and in other companies are you know, they're gonna know that you weren't that it was really more one-sided, and it's not gonna go well. Everyone talks. We all, you know, especially within DevRel and community, we we talk, to each other. And so I you know, I'd even say that as as you begin to do all these and look for new opportunities, make sure the other community or company wins more than you do, and build that rapport and build that that trust so you can go from there. Alright.

Speaker 1: So, that is it. I know I've gone on over a minute or two, but you can find me. I am Jerdog. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Dev two. I need to write some more.

Speaker 1: Also, would love to hear from you on, you know, any feedback. I have some swag for you as well. So find me on circle.ci/jeremy, and let me know what you thought. Any questions, I'd love to answer those if we don't get into q and a. Thank you.