How DevRel is failing communities

1. The traditional CVE • Add CVE-2019-10842 - remote code execution in bootstrap-sass • https://snyk.io/blog/malicious-remote-code-execution- backdoor-discovered-in-the-popular-bootstrap-sass- ruby-gem/ 1
2. How DevRel is failing communities Florian Gilcher RUG-B April 2019 Rust Community Team & Core 2
3. Whoami • Florian Gilcher • Member of the Board Ruby Berlin • Organized RustFest, eurucamp, OxidizeConf • Organizer of multiple Meetups (Elasticsearch/Vagrant/mrgn.in/Rust Berlin) • Member of Rust Core and Community teams 3
4. Sustainability I’m in management of a programming language. Whatever that means. 4
5. Sustainability • The topic of open source sustainability is currently hot • Companies use a lot of larger open source products • Contacts are necessary • Time is the most precious resource on FOSS projects 5
6. DevRel • DevRel is a (relatively) new marketing method • Based on the idea to directly talk to users • Often happening at events • Often, DevRel is done by engineers, not experience managers 6
7. DevRel: Small Marketing • Doesn’t have budget • Often has no connection to budget • Has no decision power • Is clearly for person to person communication • There’s tons of interesting problems coming out of that 7
8. The problem isn’t DevRel, the problem is using it for everything. 8
9. Evolution of developer communities • Much more organised • webpack is now a project with 200k funding! • Projects are larger! • Rust has 120 people and its own marketing and support department • 40000 followers on Twitter, 12000 on YouTube • Projects are much more professional • Still, relationships are tied to people 9
10. A different relationship • The relationship between a company and an independent FOSS project is much more B2B-like • Organisational relationships are ideally less bound to people • Responsible people switching jobs drops all connections • Responsibilities change • If personal connections get lost, this impacts tons of people • Yet, the people handling them are the B2C marketers 10
11. A different relationship • We’re either need work contribution • Or substantial monetary contribution • No pizza, please! • Not even machine time! • We need long-running relationships 11
12. Future • Companies need to come up with a strategy around FOSS relationships • Does your company have a FOSS liaison? With budget? • Can they speak in capacity of your company? • How do you support the developers of the programming language you use? • And not just ”we’ll buy the successful ones” • Put us in your CRM please? 12
13. Let’s make life easier, sustainability and more efficient for all of us. 13