Understanding and Approaching Developer Communities in Smaller Regions

These are slides for my talk at DevRel Asia.

The main aim of this talk is to discuss the right way to understand and engage developer communities in smaller regions. I'll be using Africa as a use case. I'll talk about successful developer communities in Africa, how they were able to gain traction and participation, successful developer education programs in Africa, and the best way to approach these smaller regions when carrying out developer relations efforts.

Transcript

1. Understanding and
   Approaching Developer
   Communities in Smaller
   Regions
   Shedrack Akintayo
   

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2. About me!
   ● Developer Advocate @ Cloud Foundry Foundation
   ● Technical Writer ( Smashing magazine, LogRocket, etc. )
   ● Community Expert
   

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3. You: Smaller Regions??
   What’s that??
   

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4. ● It isn’t exactly just geographical
   ● They lack certain facilities
   ● They lack financial support
   ● They lack access to information
   ● They lack access to opportunities
   

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5. Examples of Smaller Regions
   ● Africa,
   ● Middle East,
   ● Oceania, etc.
   

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6. You: Okay? Why should
   we care about how we
   approach these regions?
   

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7. Why you should care
   ● Availability of undiscovered tech talent
   ● A whole different market
   ● Diversity
   

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8. You: So how do we
   understand these smaller
   regions?
   

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9. ● Surveys
   ● Interviews
   ● Sponsoring Tech events in those regions
   ● Hiring from those regions
   ● Attending events held in those regions
   

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10. You: Okay! after understanding,
    how do we actually approach
    them with via our DevRel
    Programs?
    

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11. Me: How about we use Africa
    as a case study? Makes more
    sense right?
    

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12. Africa!
    ● Population of about 1.3
    billion (2018).
    ● Large and Untapped
    Developer Ecosystem
    ● Largest black continent
    in the world.
    ● Surplus Talent
    ● Enough space for
    growth
    

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13. Example of Successful DevRel Programs
    in Africa
    ● Google Developer Groups
    ● Google Developer Experts
    ● Google Developer Student
    Club
    ● Cloudinary Media Developer
    Experts
    ● Facebook Developer Circles
    ● Auth0 Ambassadors
    ● Kotlin User Group
    ● Gitlab Heroes
    ● Figma Africa
    ● Github Campus Expert
    

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14. You: Why are these
    programs successful?
    What did they do?
    

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15. ● They recognized and understood their target market
    ● They partnered with already popular community leaders
    which gains more traction for them
    ● They sponsored large developer communities in the
    continent (forloop, concatenate, open source festival)
    ● They hired folks from the region
    ● They hosted hackathons that let developers use their
    technology.
    

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16. How “you” can also
    approach these
    communities!
    

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17. Don’t just “take” from
    these communities,
    “give” also!
    

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18. Invest in
    non-exploitative
    Developer programs
    

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19. Shine light and provide
    opportunities on the local
    talent in these communities
    

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20. Hire these community
    members if you can!
    

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21. Speak their language!
    

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22. Some Key
    Takeaways!
    

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23. Don’t Just throw financial
    resources everywhere, plan and
    recognize where needs what!
    

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24. Recognizing developer
    communities in smaller regions
    and paying attention to them is
    very important as it encourages
    diversity.
    

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25. Measure and gather metrics.
    Use those metrics to
    improve your Devrel
    process!
    

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26. Ask questions and get
    feedback from the
    community!
    

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27. Thanks!
    @coder_blvck Shedrack Akintayo https://sheddy.xyz
    

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