CMX Series - Developer Evangelism - Overview + Team-building

This talk is focused on hiring your first developer evangelist and building a team.
I lead off with a general overview of developer evangelism and provide some ideas on how to figure out whether or not your company needs a developer evangelist. From there, I discuss how to identify a good evangelist candidate, where to find your next team member, how to get them to join your tribe, and how to forget about retention and focus on helping them flourish as people.

Transcript

1. 1 CMX Series Developer Evangelism & Community Wed Jan 14 2015 Tim Falls - VP, Community - Keen IO @TimFalls | @Keen_IO tf@keen.io
2. 2 Story time, Pt I. Q: Does Developer Evangelism work? A: YES. And here’s an example of how/why: In September of 2013, this article was written by a community member. Benefits: put SG on the map as thought leaders, spread awareness to developers from a trusted source (another developer), drove new signups and inspired future team members, had many long- lasting effects… The author updated on Jan 8, which brought it back into circulation, onto Hacker News, and into the Developer Evangelists Facebook group, for all those to see who hadn’t even been in the game 18 months ago…
3. 3 @timfalls @timfalls Intro to speaker (me) • 2010: learned from the best (John Sheehan/Twilio) • 2011: hired first evangelist • Summer 2014: conducted/led my last team summit at SG • 15 people: 1 VP, 1 Dir (me), 1 Community Pro, 12 Devangelists (incl 1 intern/ambassador), 5-10 active ambassadors • Home Cities: SF, LA, Denver, NYC, London, Sao Paulo • 30 events per month (avg) • 1 weekend, 9 hackathons, 4 continents, 4 countries, 7 cities • 1 year (2013), 10,000 t-shirts • SendGrid shirt on The Playa - ultimate #everywhere
4. 4 Tonight’s topic of discussion: Hiring your first evangelist + building a team + retaining (or not)
5. 5 But first, let’s get the “lay of the land” WHY is Developer Evangelism? - establish your company, product, brand in the eyes of developers as a group of people who care about them and who they can/do trust - engage deeply and meaningfully with developers, to enable yourself to help them more and empower them to help you in return - build strong relationships between the developer community (individuals, groups) and your company - foster your own little community within the broader developer community - benefits benefits benefits: to every department in the company: sales/advocacy, marketing/awareness, biz dev, support/data science
6. 6 Developer Evangelism and You…? How do you know if a developer outreach program and/or a developer evangelist role will be helpful, let alone necessary, for your company? Let’s look at some examples of companies (and categories of companies) that have figured it out, or are in the process of doing so right now…
7. Infrastructure 7 Infrastructure, the plumbers of the internet: hosting services (IaaS / PaaS), critical components of your architecture (e.g., payment processing)
8. Dev Tools 8 Developer Tools: maybe not mission critical (depending on your business), but extremely helpful in achieving optimization and maximum efficiency and effectiveness
9. Marketplaces 9 Marketplaces: environments in which developers can create new business opportunities for themselves as entrepreneurs
10. Developer/API Services 10 Developer/API Services: large-scale professional services, like social code repos for open source or private sharing, and cohesive API management
11. New Products/Features + Monetization 11 Opportunities: New Products/Features + Monetization: can create previously unnoticed or unrealizable business opportunities - monetization (additional or sole revenue streams), advanced features/product lines to increase value proposition
12. So cool I can’t even… Blue oceans! 12 Opportunities/Fun: So cool I can’t even + New markets (blue oceans) — developers just can’t help themselves from playing with the new stuff; capitalize on previously non-existent, emerging markets that result from completely new technologies • e.g., Internet of Things (IoT)
13. 13 Ok, now that we’ve located ourselves on the map…
14. 14 14 We now need to ask ourselves: “Is developer evangelism a thing that we really need?” I could make a [second] living consulting for companies that are trying to figure out how to build their developer evangelism programs. I conduct (almost) weekly conversations with founders, company leaders, investors, VPs, etc - each of which starts with, “how do we get this thing off the ground? how do we hire our first community person / evangelist?” My question back to them is always, “Why do you need developer evangelism?” In fact, many of the conversations I have with these people ends with an unexpected answer: as it turns out, you do not need a developer evangelist. Perhaps you need a Solutions Architect, or a Sales Engineer, or a technically minded business development person; perhaps none of the above. (eg, Viglink) Helpful exercise: Ask yourself, “Who is playing this role today? Founder? CEO? intern? What happens if we don’t hire this person/fill this role?” FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE REST OF THIS TALK: I will assume that you’ve correctly reached the decision that your company DOES NEED (or will greatly benefit from) having a full time developer evangelist on staff.
15. 15 If the answer is “Yes, we need this.” Then, let’s go hire! The Developer Evangelist’s DNA - know her/him before you meet her/him Defining characteristics: • A developer at heart. • A love for helping others. • Your (and everyone’s) friend. • Expert in his/her company’s tech. • Relationship-driven, people-focused, human-conscious, real • Independent/entrepreneurial/self-driven, passionate, humble, mature (!=old!) • Technical chops: • Knowledgable in many other technologies (not just the tech they officially represent) • generalist (broad knowledge) + individual interests, passions, specializations • Excellent Communicator - to all audiences, through all mediums: • e.g., “How I explained _____ to my parents” • This includes listening! • Remote location is ok, but close touch with company/culture is critical - especially early on in role with company • Focus on helping with anything and everything, don’t focus solely on your company/product/brand
16. 16 cred: Johnny Townsend johnnyism.deviantart.com Once you know who your looking for, where do you look to find them? First stop: your community. This is the drone you are looking for. And it’s just under your nose. The problem is, sometimes you don’t know where your nose is! Identify your most active community members: • The developers who are contributing to open source projects - yours and others’. • The developers who are answering other developers’ questions about your product/service on Stack Overflow, Twitter, and other forums • The developers who are building cool stuff on your API • The developers who are blowing up your support line with Q’s that stretch the boundaries of your team members’ minds • The truly engaged community members (outside of the realm of your product/company): • The developers who you run in to at meetups, hackathons, conferences, etc. • The developers who proudly wear your t-shirts and decorate their laptops with your stickers
17. Commitment Curve 17 Commitment curve: As you move up the curve, you’re asking community members to do more and more and they’re feeling more comfortable doing it as you’ve created trust and a deep relationship. As you identify a developer at the bottom of the curve, engage with them, reward them, and move them along and up… - source: Douglas Atkin, Global Director of Community - Air BnB Through their behavior/activity, they will raise their hand and identify themselves as the person you’re trying to find…
18. 18 Once you know who you’re looking for, and you’ve found some potential candidates, how do you get them to be your evangelist? What are they looking for? Build an ideal environment for an ambitious, creative person to flourish and self-actualize. Important factors: • people, culture, fit • a learning environment • freedom to explore and pursue personal passions • leadership opportunities • clear, realistic expectations • interesting, fun, valuable product • multiple career pathways forward • open-mindedness without too much ambiguity (achieve a balance)
19. "the curative force - tendency to actualize one’s self, to become her potentialities... to express and activate all the capacities of the organism." -Carl Rogers 19 Create an opportunity of self-actualization for your team members - even if they don’t already know they’re looking for such an opportunity.
20. 20 Team building: …if you’re hiring more than one evangelist, some things to keep in mind: • each evangelist hired helps attract the next great person • diversity* is paramount • *Note: I didn’t do that well with this in previous roles, at least from a gender standpoint, but beyond that it was pretty good • at SG: 3 countries, 20-35 yr old, 5+ languages spoken, multiple women hired • diversity means more than gender, race, age (personal background, sexual orientation, etc) • languages known (computer and human); geographies; interests and passions - work and play (passions outside of code?), etc
21. 21 Retaining those you hire: don’t plan to retain people long-term, or you’ll be sorely disappointed • This is often times not a career-long position for the person you hire • This role may very well be a [re]entry point to a new/different career, leveraged for exploration of potential future options • young & old[er] alike • Entrepreneurs gonna entrepreneur!
22. 22 Sharp II: story-time When I left SendGrid, we were on top of the world as a team. We were at our Summit, and our team had reached a high point (15 people in attendance.) Since then (Aug, 2014): Nick, Scotty, Heitor, Yamil, Will, Me: have moved on. This isn’t a bad thing! Everyone is proceeding to do bigger things, good things, things that will make them happy (equally or more…or maybe less?), and things that they likely could not have done without this experience. e.g., Swift was with SG for a year; now he has sold HL to Mashery (which he worked on while employed by SG), started MLH, hired Nick. Key consideration: Once an evangelist, always an evangelist. If you treat them well, and they get the value from the experience that they expect and deserve, they will be on your side forever. Case in point: I’m still standing up here talking to you about SendGrid, even though I work for Keen IO.
23. 23 And everyone finds their next family somewhere…
24. 24 Key takeaways: 1. Know where you fall on the map. (Who are you, what are your goals, what aspects of your company might benefit from developer evangelism?) 1. Based on your location on the map, you think you need an evangelist. Ask yourself, “Why?” and make sure you have a good reason. Is it really an evangelist you need, or potentially someone else? 2. Know your candidate before you meet her. But be open-minded when you finally come face to face, as she might appear a little different than you’d imagined :) 1. Look in the most (which are sometimes actually the least) obvious places, and be patient. The right person is worth the wait. 3. Build an nutrient-rich environment, ripe for the flourishing, growth 4. Cherish the time you have with them, and be ready to set them free
25. 25 That’s all folks!
26. 26 @timfalls tf@keen.io Questions? Contact me.