I have been really happy to see more folks hosting AMAs. AMAs are great because it's a really great way to distribute nuanced views into the software world, and have folks get to know you. Everyone is welcome to host one, and I'll give a few tips:
Your title should have a hook
Check out other AMAs in order to get a feel for what might be a good thing to center your AMA around. It doesn't have to be ultra unique, but how you phrase your title will dictate the AMA.
I really liked this one:
I think this gives readers an idea of what insights they might glean from checking out the conversation. You might really solve someone's career problem just by hosting a discussion centered around some element of your history/career.
The body of your post should give a bit more detail but not be too long
The Q&A portion of the AMA is the good stuff. Keep your bio short and sweet.
You can promote something in the body of the post, but don't be weird about it
Don't just use the AMA for promotion. We may remove the AMA if you go too far in this direction. You are more than welcome to do an AMA alongside a launch, it's a great use case. Just don't go too far with this.
Keep up with the AMA over a few days
AMAs are designed to be somewhat asynchronous. Questions will keep coming in for a few days and then things will fade. So try to respond quickly but no need to be 100% back-and-forth because every AMA has a different pace.
Use additional tags
If your ama is about VueJS, use tags like #javascript and #vue in addition to the #ama tag.
Tell someone else to host an AMA
If you know someone who is not an active dev.to member, ask them if they are interested in doing an AMA. It is a great way to intro new folks to the community. Open source maintainers, industry leaders, etc. are always welcome to stop by!
Planned/scheduled AMAs
Email yo@dev.to if you want to schedule an AMA in advance. Most of the time this isn't really worth bothering with, but we will definitely work with notable leaders in this way, or anyone where pre-announcing would be useful.
Tips for AMA askers/readers
- Be supportive! There is absolutely no reason to be a hater in an AMA. There is always a respectful way to ask a question.
- Get in early! It is very helpful to get the convo going with quick questions, it helps out everyone.
- Ask follow-up questions once you get an answer!
- Chip in on adding your own answers or follow-ups to some questions where you can be helpful, but do so respectfully of the host. This is their space.
Top comments (18)
How to write a Howto on dev.to #metameta
This is a great write up.
It also brings up an interesting philosophical topic of an infinite regression of explanation. i.e. an explanation of an explanation of an explanation of an.....
To understand recursion you must first learn to understand recursion.
exactly
I'm intrigued. Tell me more. lol
You're intrigued? Tell me more
So basically, one of the arguments against the existence of God is that God can't be the explanation for anything because noone can explain God.
That's kinda like this:
Why did the apple fall?
Because of gravity.
Explain gravity
Curvature of space-time
explain Curvature of space-time
...
Also quite similar to why of toddlers.
Try googlink recursion. Will bring a smile to your face.
On the topic of AMAs, can we expect a Dev team AMA anytime soon?
Yeah, good call. I think we can make that happen sometime next week.
Is there any way to see how many views your posts have gotten?
It's awesome that dev.to is encouraging this!
You should do one Shannon! The topic of the CodeLand talk I saw you give would be a great hook.
🤔
I may have to do that. I still get asked about that project / talk. Might be a nice tie in to Hacktoberfest 2018.
Thanks for the idea!
You definitely should. Don’t put it off! 😁
Doing one has been a lot more fun than I expected, really interesting seeing the different things people want to know!
Yeah, it's a great way to learn about how your own expertise relates to what other folks know or how they think about your field.