The Business Value of Developer Relations: How and Why Technical Communities Are Key To Your Success
by Mary Thengvall  (Author)

About the Author
Mary Thengvall is a connector of people at heart, both personally and professionally. She loves digging into the strategy of how to build and foster developer communities and has been doing so for over 10 years. After building community programs at O’Reilly Media, Chef Software, and SparkPost, she’s now consulting for companies looking to build out a Developer Relations strategy. She's the author of the first book on Developer Relations: The Business Value of Developer Relations (Apress, 2018).
Mary is a co-host of Community Pulse, a podcast for community managers and developer evangelists who are looking for information on community building. She curates DevRel Weekly, a weekly newsletter that brings you a curated list of articles, job postings, and events every Thursday.
She is also a member of Prompt, a non-profit that encourages people to openly talk about mental illness in tech. She speaks at various conferences and events about building and fostering technical communities as well as how to prevent burnout in yourself and your team.

About this book
Discover the true value of Developer Relations as you learn to build and maintain positive relationships with your developer community. Use the principles laid out in this book to walk through your company goals and discover how you can formulate a plan tailored to your specific needs.
First you will understand the value of a technical community: why you need to foster a community and how to do it. Then you will learn how to be involved in community building on a daily basis: finding the right audience, walking the tightrope between representing the company and building a personal brand, in-person events, and more.
Featuring interviews with Developer Relations professionals from many successful companies including Red Hat, Google, Chef, Docker, Mozilla, SparkPost, Heroku, Twilio, CoreOS, and more, and with a foreword by Jono Bacon, The Business Value of Developer Relations is the perfect book for anyone who is working in the tech industry and wants to understand where DevRel is now and how to get involved. Don’t get left behind – join the community today.
What You’ll Learn

• Define community and sell community to your company
• Find, build, and engage with the community
• Determine how and when to hire community managers
• Build your own personal brand
  

Who This Book Is For
Any business leaders/owners/stakeholders in the tech industry, tech evangelists, community managers or developer advocates.

Table of contents
Part I: What Is the Value of a Technical Community?
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Community 3
    Establish the (Flexible) Boundaries 4
    Why Do You Want a Community?  6
    What Do You Hope to Accomplish with a Community?  7
    Who Makes Up Your Community?  9
    Which Segment of The Community Do You Want to Focus on First?  11
    So, Do You Need a Developer Relations Team?  12
    Be Willing to Make Changes 14
Chapter 2: Selling Community to Your Company 17
    Gathering of the Stakeholders 18
        What Are You Trying to Accomplish?  21
    Your Version May Vary 22
    Setting Expectations 24
    Trouble in Paradise 26
    All Aboard 27
Chapter 3: Keeping a Pulse on the Community 29
    The Role of Social Media in Community Building 32
    Establishing Voice 33
    Choosing Platforms 34
    Working Together 35
    Technically Speaking 36
    Focus on Developers 37
    Elevate and Amplify 40
    Personal Brand vs. Company Brand 41
Chapter 4: Measuring Your Success 43
    Storytelling Is Part of the Job Description 46
    Checks and Balances 47
        Trust Your Gut, But . . .  48
        It’s Not All About the Data 48
        ROI Is a Difficult Metric for DevRel 49
    Qualitative + Quantitative = Sweet Success 52
        Online Engagement 52
        Multichannel Endeavors 53
        In-Person Connections 54
    Anecdotes vs. Facts 56
    Time-to-value 59
    Quick Wins and Weekly Reports 60
    Finding Your Specific Metrics: Libby Boxes 61
        Pirate Metrics 62
        Setting Objectives 63
    Building a World-Class Developer Relations Team 68
Chapter 5: Building a Developer Relations Team 73
    Draw Your Mall Map 73
    What’s in a Name?  74
        Team Title: Developer Relations 76
        Strategic Lead: Developer Relations Manager 76
        Technical Contributor: Developer Advocate 77
        Cruise Director: Technical Community Builder 80
        Developer Experience Manager 80
        Technical Ambassador 81
        Technical Engagement Manager 82
        DevRel Project Manager 83
        Full-Time Engineer 83
    Who’s First?  84
        Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses 84
        Make the Investment 86
    The All-Important Question of Where 89
        Marketing 90
        Engineering 90
        Customer Success 92
        Product 93
        Training or Content Division 94
        Internal Consulting Firm 94
        Community Department 95
        Geographic Location 95
        Where Does That Leave Us?  96
    Set Them Up for Success 99
Part II: Building and Engaging with the Community
Chapter 6: Finding Your Community 103
    Relationships 101 104
    Don’t Start from Scratch 107
    Open Source Communities 110
        Read vs. Write Communities 110
        The “Stickiness” of Open Source Communities 111
    The Person in Charge of the Community 113
    The People Around Them 114
    Feeling Like They Belong 115
    Open Source Is an Investment 115
    Giving Back to the Community 117
Chapter 7: Building a Healthy Community 121
    Finding Your North Star: Community Mission and Vision 122
    Setting Expectations: Code of Conduct 125
    Keeping Topics on Track: Community Guidelines 126
    Providing Stability: Community Rituals 127
    A Gathering Place 127
        Go with the Flow 130
    Community Advocates 130
        Diversify 135
        Build a Partnership 136
        Communicate 138
        Prepare 139
        Scale 140
        The Question of Compensation 143
    A Stitch in Time Saves Nine 146
Chapter 8: In-Person Events: The How, Why, and Where 147
    What Are You Trying to Accomplish?  148
        Brand Awareness 148
        Feedback 149
    Engage with the Community 152
    Test the Waters 153
    Maximize time, Minimize travel 153
    Conferences, Conferences Everywhere 156
    Navigating the Maze of Meetups 159
        The Exception to the Rule 161
    Speaking Engagements 165
Chapter 9: Dealing with Common Community Issues 169
    Burnout 169
        How to Prevent Burnout in Your Team 171
        How to Recover from Burnout 178
    Imposter Syndrome 182
        You Don’t Have to Be Good at Everything 183
        The Generation Gap 184
        How to Fight Off Imposter Syndrome 185
    Battling Distrust 188
Chapter 10: Building Your Personal Brand 193
    Views Are (Not Only) My Own 193
    Amplify the Good 194
    Foster Your Own Community 196
    Be Authentic 198
        Let Your Personality Shine 198
        Don’t Overdo It 200
    Practice Empathy 201
    Use Your Platform 202
Appendix A: Trip Reports 203
    Sample Trip Report 204
Appendix B: Event Scorecard 207
Appendix C: Hackathon One-Page Handout 209
Appendix D: Developer Resource Card 211
    Chef Developer Resource card 212
    SparkPost Developer Resource card 213
Appendix E: Sample Event Process and Playbook 215
    Event Process Template 215
        Event Goals 216
        Event Selection 217
        Event Preparation 221
    Event Execution 224
        Large Event Playbook (Hackathons and Conferences) 225
        Meetup Playbook 230
    Event Follow-up 231
Index 233

Length: 237 pages
Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. edition (October 27, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1484237471
ISBN-13: 978-1484237472

PDF version


EPUB version