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
2. About me! • Developer Advocate @ Cloud Foundry Foundation • Technical Writer ( Smashing magazine, LogRocket, etc. ) • Community Expert
3. You: Smaller Regions?? What’s that??
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
5. Examples of Smaller Regions • Africa, • Middle East, • Oceania, etc.
6. You: Okay? Why should we care about how we approach these regions?
7. Why you should care • Availability of undiscovered tech talent • A whole different market • Diversity
8. You: So how do we understand these smaller regions?
9. • Surveys • Interviews • Sponsoring Tech events in those regions • Hiring from those regions • Attending events held in those regions
10. You: Okay! after understanding, how do we actually approach them with via our DevRel Programs?
11. Me: How about we use Africa as a case study? Makes more sense right?
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
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
14. You: Why are these programs successful? What did they do?
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.
16. How “you” can also approach these communities!
17. Don’t just “take” from these communities, “give” also!
18. Invest in non-exploitative Developer programs
19. Shine light and provide opportunities on the local talent in these communities
20. Hire these community members if you can!
21. Speak their language!
22. Some Key Takeaways!
23. Don’t Just throw financial resources everywhere, plan and recognize where needs what!
24. Recognizing developer communities in smaller regions and paying attention to them is very important as it encourages diversity.
25. Measure and gather metrics. Use those metrics to improve your Devrel process!
26. Ask questions and get feedback from the community!
27. Thanks! @coder_blvck Shedrack Akintayo https://sheddy.xyz