Approaching Developer Relations in an Open Source Community

Developer Relations is a very new concept in the industry today, a lot of B2D companies are beginning to pay serious attention to it, and this way their community of users are happy and effective.

I believe that this should be the same in open source communities because Developers and Designers are at the heart of every open source community.

In this talk, I'll list out why open source communities should care about Developer Relations, methods & strategies that can be used to approach developer relations in open source, and lastly, how to build an effective developer relations program in an open-source community.

Transcript

1. Approaching Developer Relations in an Open Source Community Shedrack Akintayo
2. • Developer Relations Engineer at Platform.sh. • Technical Writer, LogRocket, Smashing Magazine • Auth0 Ambassador • OSCA Core Team member whoami
3. This entire talk is based off my article on how we approached developer relations at the Cloud Foundry Foundation(an open source community) during my time there, Link: https://medium.com/cloud-foundry-foundation/approachi ng-developer-relations-in-an-open-source-foundation-77b1c66 0 bf95
4. “Developer Relations isn’t just for corporate companies, Developer Relations is for every community of developers.” Shedrack Akintayo.
5. What is Developer Relations?
6. It’s a group of Developer Advocates, Technical Community Managers, Technical Ambassadors, Documentation Writers, Trainers, and more who all exist to empower you(developers) to do your best work. - Mary Thengvall What is Developer Relations?
7. What is Developer Relations to OSS communities?
8. It is basically caring about developers, educating, growing and collecting feedback from the community. Developer Relations can come in any form like community management, documentation writing etc. What is Developer Relations to OSS communities?
9. Why should OSS communities care about Developer Relations?
10. Why should OSS communities care about Developer Relations? + Developers are at the core of every OSS community. + Creates a sense of empathy towards Developers. + It empowers developers to be able to utilize the software properly. + It enables collaboration internally and between other communities. + Developers will feel like their voices are heard. + It creates a healthier community
11. How do we pay more attention to Developer Relations as an OSS community?
12. How do we pay more attention to Developer Relations as an OSS community? + Listen to the community + As an OSS community, you need to understand what you are trying to achieve. + Learn from other OSS communities getting developer relations right (VueJS, ReactJS, Gatsby, Drupal). + Develop a strategy + Don’t be ashamed to fail + Keep experimenting till you get it right.
13. How to build an effective developer relations program in an open-source community?
14. How do we pay more attention to Developer Relations as an OSS community? + Understand the demographic of your community. + Provide feedback avenues for folks in your community. + Make your community inclusive and accessible. + Community Reward Programs. + Great Documentation for the technology. + Collaboration with other communities. + More tutorials and use cases. + Organize talks and webinars.
15. How to measure success?
16. Personal advice? Don’t measure success.
17. Measure impact, growth and quality of your community instead.
18. If your Developer Relations efforts is successfully, your community members will tell you.
19. If your Developer Relations efforts is successfully, your community members will tell you.
20. Do not be big on so much success and numbers, Instead just make sure to provide care for new and existing community members through the educational content and the overall developer experience.
21. Thank you for your time. @coder_blvck Website: sheddy.xyz Github: hacktivist123 Email:LastnameFirstname@gmail.com