DEV Community: Elisha Tan

How to overcome cultural & language differences and scale a DevRel program

Elisha Tan — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 10:06:21 +0000

Summary: In my keynote talk at DevRelCon London 2019, I shared a framework on how to start a developer relations program that was well-received. You can watch it here. This article, building off that talk, shares some best practices on scaling developer programs overseas.

Say you have built up a great developer relations program in your local market and are ready to expand your program to engage with developers overseas who may not speak your language. How and where do you start?

That was me 4 years ago. When I started doing DevRel at Facebook - I was not well-travelled, am only fluent in English, and only have experiences with developer communities in Singapore.

It was a challenge to scale a global developer relations program in Asia, a region that speaks over 2000 languages with multitudes of cultures.

Common ways to scale developer relations programs and why they both aren’t quite right

I studied how other organizations tackle this problem and discovered that the methods categorized into 2 schools of thoughts:

Copy-pasting the program to a new market
Find a local partner to design and execute on the developer programs

Both of which are not ideal because:

Copy-pasting a DevRel program ignores local context & affects engagement

For example, it is very common to find overnight hackathons in the USA where alcohol and communal resting areas are provided. While these may be perks in that country, it would be tone-deaf to audiences in other markets, such as Indonesia and Pakistan.

It may also discourage women from participating as it’s not safe for them to be out late, more so if they’re expected to rest in a gender-neutral communal space.

Outsourcing entirely to a local partner affects your effectiveness as a DevRel professional

You know your company’s culture, internal dynamics, resources, and goals far better than any partners. You are the best person to get things done while maintaining brand consistencies globally.

I believe that a company should own their relationships with developers, not a third party. I’ve seen amazing community leaders move away from specific companies because they didn’t like the partner’s management style.

The best analogy to scaling developer relations programs. I'm lovin' it.

Same same but different is my recommendation

My best practice is to adopt an approach that’s somewhere in-between these two - design a global DevRel program that allows for some local adaptions and create these adaptions with a local execution partner. Then, consistently check-in with the partner to adjust the program accordingly.

To explain it with an analogy, take McDonald’s for example. You know you’re in a McDonald’s restaurant when you walk into one and Big Mac tastes the same everywhere. However, your nearest McDonald’s may also offer rice (in Indonesia), shrimp burger (in Japan), or rubbish (in USA (sorry I couldn’t resist this joke)) to suit local preferences, depending on where you are.

Each McDonald’s restaurant is owned by a franchisee, someone experienced in running local businesses, trained, and supported by McDonald’s headquarters.

Taking that as a reference, a developer relations program should be same same but different globally. It should have the same ethos and value proposition, localized to meet people’s needs, and executed by a local partner who speaks the language and understands the local culture.

The challenge here is getting to the right balance between consistency across markets and localization. While this balance varies for different companies, here are my best practices to overcome culture and language barriers to build developer communities and design effective developer relations programs.

Google is your best friend. Do your homework.

1. Do your online research

This may sound very basic, but it will surprise you how many people don’t do it before visiting a new market. Yes, the purpose of a research trip is to learn about the market. Yes, it may be difficult to find information on the developer landscape in certain markets. However, having a high level understanding of a country before a trip is table-stakes to showing respect and interest in the market.

It’s just like how you read up on a company before a job interview in preparation to build a working relationship.

Pro-tip: Read up about the developer and cultural landscape before you visit a new market. High-level information like major cultural practices, mobile usage, connectivity challenges, and payment modes are easily found on most of the markets with a sizeable amount of developers.

The only time the host printed a banner for me. I regret not asking if I could keep it.

2. Learn from the locals

With the information you’ve gathered from Step 1 and your company’s goals, you can easily come up with a list of you want to learn from the locals.

In my travels, I have not found it difficult to find people who speak enough English to chat with. Sometimes, I’ll invite someone who’s bilingual in English and the local language to join my meetings (in exchange for pleasant conversations and/or a meal). I’m often amazed and grateful for how many helpful folks I’ve met!

Pro-tips:

Ask for recommendations for people to meet via your social media platforms.
Find key ecosystem influencers and reach out to them. Sending cold emails is fine!
Be open-minded, curious, and non-judgemental of others’ cultures. Ask questions, not make comments.
Ask the same set of questions to different people so you have a clearer and more holistic view of the answer.
Cross-check people and companies by asking others how they feel about an entity or person. Most people won’t spill the tea, but any tea spilled is good context.
Be respectful of people’s time. I usually bring some swags to share, hold meetings over coffee and meals, or share community best practices from my personal experiences.

I’ll be honest - sometimes I find it difficult to hold my tongue from commenting on certain cultures that clash with my own beliefs around women’s rights to work and safety. I remind myself I’m here to design developer programs, not to fix a society.

My favorite compliment is where people asked if I've lived in their country or grew up there.

3. Appreciate and observe the local culture

While I can’t speak for other regions, people in Asia generally appreciate people taking part in their cultures through language, clothing, and food.

I would dress like a local, learn how to say simple phrases like hello and thank you, and practice cultural business practices like bowing to acknowledge people in Korea and Japan and not offer a handshake to men in Pakistan and Indonesia. These are how I show respect and interest in engaging with people as a guest in their countries.

One thing that I didn’t expect was how many people appreciated my effort! I’ve literally received applauses after greeting the audience in their language. Obviously, I don’t get everything right. Most people don’t mind if I’ve accidentally committed social faux pas as a foreigner.

Pro-tip: Learn to say simple phrases like hello and thank you to better connect with the audience. Observe local cultural business practices.

Past and present Developer Circles leads in Vietnam.

4. Find local partner/s

Once you understand a market, its key influencers and potential collaborators, you have enough context to know what qualities make an excellent partner. That’s when you look for local companies or community leaders to work with. Finding a local partner is important as they speak the language, understand the culture, and are more efficient in getting things done than doing it myself.

However, having a superb partner doesn’t mean to outsource the entire program design to the partner. Again, you know your company’s culture, internal dynamics & resources, and goals far better than any partners. Co-creating a program or community is the best approach to balancing between brand consistency and local customisation.

Pro-tips:

Make a list of qualities you want your local partner to have, including ethos, reputation in market, and track record/experiences.
Cross-check your prospective partners with the folks you’ve met in Step 2. Find out about their reputation and track record.
Co-create developer programs with your local partner - you provide the direction and resources, they provide the local strategy and execution.

Applicable in both business and sports.

5. Check in with your local partner/s and developers

Neither a community nor a program is a success at launch.
In fact, I usually prefer a low-key launch event because the grander a launch is, the higher the expectations and attention a DevRel program receives.

As inspired by Mike Tyson, everyone has a DevRel plan until the market punches them in the mouth. Building a successful DevRel program requires consistent iteration and making smart iterations requires collecting consistent feedback.

Pro-tips:

Design a feedback loop for developers to surface their thoughts. I usually recommend starting with a bi-weekly check in with developers and change the cadence accordingly as you go along.
Decide on what qualitative and quantitative feedback you want to collect from the audience. Qualitative feedback is great in exploring blind-spots whereas quantitative feedback allows you to track & compare across time periods.
Provide feedback and updates from your company to the local partner too. Changes within your company could affect how the partner executes.

What are your best practices to scale developer relations programs overseas?

I hope these best practices are helpful! These are the lessons I’ve learned on my DevRel journey and are not an exhaustive list nor a definitive how-to guide. I would also love to hear from your experiences, do share your best practices in the comments section below.

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* Yes, I’m aware of how much I sound like a YouTuber in the last couple paragraphs. lol.

Image credits:

Lessons I learned from leading 72 dev community leaders

Elisha Tan — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 03:53:43 +0000

Note: This article includes my personal takeaways and does not represent my employer or the Developer Circles program.

After an amazing 3.5 years as the Developer Programs Manager for APAC, I am moving to a new role to lead content strategy for our Developer Circles communities globally. While I’m excited to get out of my comfort zone, expand my scope, and eventually move to Facebook’s HQ, this transition feels bittersweet.

I had a fantastic time in my APAC role. I launched and scaled the Developer Circles program to over 18 countries, supported 72 community leaders, and served >80k developers in Asia. 💪 #lowkeyflexing

This was an exceptional job-passion fit, and I realised that I want to grow and expand my capabilities to serve more developers.

To celebrate of our time together as I move onto my next role, I shared a few key lessons with the Developer Circles community leaders. These are lessons that shaped how I see my career within and outside of Facebook and honestly, how I see the world.

Below is an expanded version that I thought could be helpful to a wider audience.

Talent is everywhere, opportunities are not

I started the Developer Programs Manager for APAC role in 2016 and inherited a handful of Developer Circle communities, including a planned launch in Malang, Indonesia. Back then, I remembered asking in my head, “What is a Malang?”, as it’s not the capital city nor a major city.

Yet, this tiny unknown city in Indonesia left a huge impression on me - it consistently topped the charts for community engagement, produced many community success stories, and Sheryl Sandberg publicly acknowledged their achievements!

It was immensely inspirational to watch how much the warmth, passion, and energy the Developer Circle leads can achieve with so little. I wondered what they could achieve if they have the opportunities I have as a middle-class Singaporean. This was when I first learned about my privilege.

Malang taught me that talent is everywhere, opportunities are not. Brilliant people can come from anywhere and speak any languages, not just English.

I’m glad that Malang was the first city I visited because these early lessons framed how I approach my career - to advocate for the under-served talent.

A team is more than the sum of its parts

From the early years of my DevRel career, I built my reputation as a strong executor - I get things done. I enjoy having autonomy over a project and I had to learn what it means to be leader and more importantly, to let go.

Letting go of automony doesn’t mean letting go of quality. Over the years, my Developer Circles leads and I worked as a team to:

produce the first Developer Circle Pakistan Conference where people from 17 cities travelled to attend
pilot a Women of DevC meetup in Indonesia that scaled across 70 countries globally and hosted the first #TechbyHer APAC Online Conference
launch new initiatives such as the Developer Circles Vietnam Innovation Challenge in HCM and Hanoi and the Developer Circles JS Course in Indonesia.

Given that these projects are novel, there were challenges to overcome, plenty of uncertainties to figure out, and honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Despite that, I was never afraid that we cannot deliver because of the skills and passion the team has. People have different strengths, weaknesses, and working styles. But when a group of people pool their talent together to push towards a shared vision, magic happens.

Leading means to serve & empower others

It was challenging to build communities across Asia as I’ve lived in Singapore all my life. With >2000 spoken languages, a range of cultures and perspectives on women, Asia is not a monolithic region.

Given the distance, language, culture, and connectivity issues, there’s a limit to how much I can execute on projects. If I can’t execute better than the people I support, how do I be an effective leader? And what does leading means?

After learning from different senior leaders and trying different things, I have some hypotheses on what leadership is. While I’m not an expert, leadership means to:

create psychological safety for the team to share their opinions, and most importantly, safety to fail. Potential of failure is the price of innovation.
asking the team the right questions or provide suggestions to help them plan their strategies.
provide resources (time, money, connections, people) to help the team achieve its goals.

Leadership still requires execution, but instead of booking a venue or designing a marketing asset, leadership means to execute on mentorship, gathering resources, and building trust in the team.

Take time to find the right people

Strong executors with the right heart, integrity, and commitment are extremely hard to find. And once you recruit the right people right, half the job is done.

Nothing drains me more than trying to motivate someone unmotivated or having to micromanage every step.

Take the time to find the right people. I promise you that work doesn’t feel like work when you’re working with people of same vision, have integrity, are hardworking.

3 questions I always ask prospective community leaders are:

Purpose: Why do you want to be a community leader?
- Everyone has a why, and not everyone has the right why. This question helps identify who has the right heart.
Past behaviour: What relevant experiences do you have?
- Many people have passion, and few will do something about it. I genuinely believe that if one has access to the Internet, one does not need permission to contribute to one’s community.
Vision: What does a successful community look like? How would you know that you’ve been an outstanding community leader?
- This question always trips people (read my answer for TechLadies here). Building a community is a journey, and I’ll like to know where we’re going.

We are more alike than we think

This job offered me the amazing chance to see Asia. I would meet local folks in tech and who run developer communities to learn more about their culture, how they build communities, and what challenges they face.

So many people have welcomed me with open arms - being gracious with their time, knowledge, and yes, food. 😂 (Pakistani's hospitality is unbeatable. They feed you, ask you to eat more, and tell you to pack some food back in case you get hungry later.)

Despite living in a world with different cultures and languages that’s getting more divisive every day, I’ve found that the passion for developer communities and community service is the same everywhere.

Whether if it’s someone from Melbourne or Tokyo or Karachi, people start communities for very similar reasons and face similar challenges. It was such a joy to find my tribe, no matter which city I’m in.

That got me to realise that people are more alike than we think, and perhaps we should put in that little effort to understand each other rather than focusing on our differences.

Goodbye, and hello from the other side 👋

As someone who came into this role after being fired from a startup after failing my startup, this role was fantastic!

It’s where I’ve found my footing and confidence and has helped me grow so much over a short period despite being my first DevRel job.

I’m excited to see how I’ll grow in my next role, but I know I’ll miss referring to the Developer Circles leads in APAC as “my Developer Circles leads” and I’ll miss them calling me “mum”.

How self-doubt almost stopped me from presenting a conference opening keynote

Elisha Tan — Sun, 17 May 2020 13:28:48 +0000

Last Dec, I was the opening keynote speaker at DevRelCon London 2019. As a DevRel professional, this was a fantastic opportunity to establish myself in the industry and to speak at a different region.

I shared about a 6-step Program Design Thinking framework (Slides here), inspired by the design thinking methodology, to designing programs that engage with developers.

I’m not ashamed to say that I’m very proud of how well I did - a handful of people complimenting my talk in person and my barely used Twitter account light up with so many positive comments. 🎉

Side note: My favorite compliment is from a gentleman who hated animations in presentations but said mine were tastefully and hilariously done.

But as my title suggests… I almost turned this opportunity down because of all the negative stories I told myself.

Inspired by a conversation with a friend, I want to share my story to help people who may go through the same journey as I did to feel less alone and to share some tips I used to overcome this negativity.

I wrote this also as a reminder to myself that sometimes, wonderful things can happen when I don’t give in to self-doubt. 😌

One big scary goal for 2019

I set myself a big scary goal very year. For 2019, I wanted to establish myself as a DevRel professional by speaking at an industry conference.

Public speaking isn’t scary for me since I’ve spoken many times outside of my job at Facebook. What was scary was that I’ve never spoken about any DevRel-related concept that I created despite being a Developer Program Manager professionally for 3 years.

It was particularly nerve-wracking because my speaking experiences are on my startup/failure experience, experience as a woman in tech, or programs that TechLadies offer - it’s very personal or very factual, nothing debatable, unlike presenting an idea or concept.

So while I put in a lot of effort to craft a talk proposal, I was nervous when I received the email that they accepted my talk. There were a lot of thoughts that crossed my mind, such as…

Has someone covered the same topic before?

While I like to think I have something useful to contribute, I wonder if my content is really that unique, if it makes sense, or worse, if someone has shared something similar.

Even though I swear I came up with this 6-step Program Design Thinking framework myself, part of me wasn’t sure if I’ve creates something unique or have unknowingly copied someone’s idea.

How would the audience feel about my talk?

In my brief career as a Developer Programs Manager, I’ve only been to one other DevRel conference in Singapore. I have a very limited idea of how my content stacks up with talks by other speakers in the industry.

One of my worst fear was how people may react to my talk publicly. Folks in the tech industry are big on Twitter, and people can be vocal there. I wasn’t sure if people would mock me publicly if my talk didn’t go well and I don’t know how to recover mentally and emotionally if that happened to me.

Will the audience understand me?

In all of my public talks, I like to make my audience laugh. Humor is important to me because I feel like I’ve done some good when I make someone momentarily forgets all the problems they face in life and just laugh.

Unfortunately, humor is culture-specific - something funny in one culture may not always translate well in others. I wasn’t sure if I could be funny in the European context. I wasn’t even sure if people can understand my Singaporean accent. There’s totally a chance that I could be perceived as someone speaking with an unfamiliar language who occasionally laughs at her own jokes.

Is this going to be worth my time and money?

Speaking at an overseas conference, especially ones organized by grassroots communities, requires a financial on top of the time commitment for travel and preparation. Since I wanted to own the IP of my slides, I didn’t want to represent my employer for this conference. That means I bore all* expenses and had to request for paid time off to speak.

Flying between Singapore to London isn’t cheap, and London isn’t a cheap city. Plus, the week that DevRelCon London took place clashed with one of the largest events of a developer program I led at Facebook. I had to plan out my finances and workload to speak at DevRelCon London, eat all fish & chips in London, and fly to Vietnam for work (and eat all the spring rolls) with no hiccups.

I wasn’t sure if this would be worth it.

To go or not to go

When I weighed the financial, professional, and psychological risks, I got very close to making a lame excuse on why I could no longer speak at DevRelCon London 2019, purely out of fear. Fortunately, there was still some rationality in me that mitigated my fears.

Here are what I did to decide on my participation and to prepare for DevRelCon London.

Trust the organizers’ decision

One thing that helped me boost my confidence to speak at DevRelCon London was that I didn’t misrepresent myself and my talk in the proposal. I’ve explained what I want to talk about, I’ve given my LinkedIn profile, and I didn’t lie about my experiences.

Knowing that the organizers have done DevRelCon a handful of times and still picked my talk meant that I have something valuable to share. So having the “am I good enough” narrative running through my head almost seemed disrespectful to the organizers’ decision in picking my talk, as it implied that I doubt their intellect and domain expertize in picking talks.

Do my research

Researching previous DevRelCons addressed my doubts on my content’s uniqueness or if people can understand my accent. Between the time when I received my acceptance email and confirming my spot, I watched almost all videos of the past DevRelCons. Doing so helped me with two things:

I have a better understanding on what content they shared before and how fresh my content is
I have a better picture on what is the expected presentation style, understanding if speakers speak sternly or being casual is okay, and the range of accents past speakers have.

Fortunately, I didn’t find any content that is close enough to the 6-step Program Design Thinking framework that anyone could claim plagiarism, and the range of accents past speakers have was very broad. My accent is fine as long as I don’t go full Singlish.

Weigh my opportunity cost

Like every big-ish decision, I created a list of pros and cons to help me decide if speaking is an excellent investment of my time, money and energy:

Having a space to meet fellow DevRel professionals and doing something that scared me were the biggest driving forces on why I should speak at the conference, and what tipped the scale for me was that they recorded the talks.

DevRelCon produces great quality recordings with transcripts, and they publish each talk as an article on the site. I felt good about it because it means that my talk has an impact beyond the conference and I need not feel bad if only a few people showed up to my session physically.

About a week after I confirmed my participation, I learned that I’m doing the opening keynote, in front of >200 DevRel folks. This added quite a lot of stress on me, but oh well. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Since I’ve already booked my flights and accommodation, the only logical next step is to...

Rehearse EVERYTHING

I’ve done my research, did my deck, wrote an entire script down right to the jokes (Yea, I write all my jokes), and everything else is just practice, practice, practice.

I sent my boyfriend a clip of my rehearsing and he made me "hold" a pineapple because of my hand gestures. 😂

I record or film all of my rehearsals and fine-tuned my gestures, timing, script, movement, pronunciation, and intonation until I like what I’ve created. Since I’m not live-coding, I had no intentions of hiding behind the podium.

I also did some full-dress rehearsals, practicing my presentation in the outfit I’ve chosen, to make sure I’m comfortable with an outfit that doesn’t hinder the way I move.

Choosing an outfit beforehand is not just for confidence or vanity, it has a practical reason - a lot of dresses don’t have pockets for the lapel mic transmitter. I must choose between using a handheld mic and not have any free hands after holding onto the clicker or wearing something that can support the weight of a lapel mic transmitter.

I also needed a top that I can clip the mic without my hair potentially brushing it and something that I can easily remove my layers if I get too warm from my nerves (nobody wants their sweaty pit stains caught on film). There was a lot of thought into picking what to wear.

Rehearsing was so important that I pretty much shut myself in my Airbnb to rehearse the moment I landed 3 days before the conference. I probably rehearsed my entire talk at least 15 times before I spoke.

Sending positive vibes

Come the day of the conference, I woke up feeling prepared after all that rehearsals but still nervous. I calmed myself down by telling myself “I will inspire, entertain, and be useful” repeatedly.

While I don’t believe in the Law of Attraction, I did it anyway because it’s free to do so and because it’s quite a nice thought to mediate on rather than “oh shit I will screw this up”.

And honestly, all that prep work and nerves had worn me quite a bit so I was looking forward to get it done and over with so I can enjoy the conference. 🤭

Wonderful things can happen when I don’t give in to self-doubt

My talk went beyond my expectations - I remembered my script so well that I could say words when my mind blanked out on stage, my jokes landed well, and the public comments were positive!

While I initially wasn’t sure if my talk could be useful, I later learned that it was useful to many people who were starting out on building a developer relations strategy for their companies and the framework I proposed gave them a structured way to think about their strategy.

So yea, a lot of my self-doubt were mitigated by research, practice, reasoning. This experience has taught me about the value of speaking on something I’ve learned, even though I’m not that tenured in DevRel work, because there are always newer newbies entering the field who may find my work helpful.

On that note, I hope you find some encouragement (or comfort in that your crazy self-doubt talk isn’t all crazy) to challenge yourself to speak at an event or conference this year.

Your voice is important, your voice is needed!

Resources I used to help me prep:

The Art of Story Design - Melinda Seckington
The Art of Slide Design - Melinda Seckington
Speaking at conferences: A complete guide - Cassie Kozyrkov

Contribute your skills at these COVID-19 hackathons

Elisha Tan — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 07:43:42 +0000

If you, like me, feel restless about the pandemic we are facing, why not contribute your skills at these hackathons to build something useful?

Mar 16 - Apr 30, 2020: CODEVID-19

The world’s first pandemic hackathon, this is a global initiative to improve people's quality of live and fight the pandemic.

Project themes: Supporting Crisis Response, Understanding The Pandemic, Social Distancing & Isolation, Scarcity & The Economy

Mar 20 - Apr 27, 2020: 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge

Now in its third year, the Call for Code initiative is the largest technical challenge of its kind. The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge asks the world's developers to build solutions for COVID-19 and climate change.

Project themes: Crisis communication, remote education, community cooperation

Mar 23 - Apr 12, 2020: Hack Quarantine

Powered by GitHub and Hackathons UK, Hack Quarantine is a fully-online, people-focused hackathon bringing people together to use their skills to help combat the issues the world is facing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project themes: Supporting people quarantined or at risk, tech and health, remote working, improving awareness and behaviour

Mar 28 - Apr 4, 2020: COVID-19 Global Church Hackathon

COVID-19 Global Church Hackathon is a one-week online hackathon for the Global Church during the COVID-19 pandemic. Judges include representation from NASA and Facebook.

Project themes: Funeral, neighbouring, elderly, mental health, identity, worship, evangelism, discipleship, gather, resources

Apr 3-5, 2020: #VersusVirus Hackathon

VersusVirus is a Swiss-wide virtual hackathon under the patronage of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) and the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). It aims to leverage the collective intelligence of researchers, experts, technology specialists and fellow citizens to develop fresh ideas and solutions for dealing with and combating the coronavirus.

Project themes: Protection of risk groups, dissemination prevention, trustable data vs fake news, economical impact, isolation and mental health, hospital and medical care, family and kids, education, home office and teamwork, after the crisis, support and solidarity, art and culture, crime reduction

Apr 3-5, 2020: MIT COVID-19 Challenge

The MIT COVID-19 Challenge event, Beat the Pandemic, is the second in a series of virtual hackathons. Over the course of two days, multi-disciplinary teams will collaborate to develop innovative solutions that can help address the COVID-19 crisis. After the Challenge, selected teams will have the opportunity to bring their solutions to life with the support of our partners.

Project themes: Protecting vulnerable populations, helping health systems

Various dates: Hack the Crisis Hackathons

Started from an online hackathon in Estonia organized by AccelerateEstonia, Garage48, and Guaana to tackle the devastating effects of the Coronavirus crisis, Hack the Crisis has become a global movement with over 40 hackathons organized around the world. Here is the list of upcoming Hack the Crisis hackathons that seem to accept submissions in English and take place over a fixed period of time:

Apr 2-4, 2020: Hack The Crisis Kosova. Project themes: Health and emergency, social and psychological status, education and learning, economy and the future of business, government solutions
Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Australia. Project themes: Improve life, health, and wellness
Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Denmark. Project themes: Containment of COVID-19 with intent to develop (non-medical) solutions to deal with its aftermath
Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Cyprus. Project themes: Save lives, save communities, save businesses, save mental well-being
Apr 3-5, 2020: Hack The Crisis Netherlands. Project themes: Open-ended, suggested themes include patient care, protection for medical and sanitary staff at hospitals, virus containment and digital solutions for people and business in quarantine
Apr 3-6, 2020: Hack The Crisis Sweden. Project themes: Save lives, save communities, save businesses

Apr 4-5, 2020: Hack from Home

HfH is a virtual hackathon sponsored by Dataswift.io and organised by the Ethical Tech Alliance, HAT-LAB, Case Western Reserve University’s xLab, Cleveland Clinic’s Hwang Lab and WMG - University of Warwick.

Project themes: Citizen science, community health, mass coordination

Apr 9-12, 2020: The Global Hack

The Global Hack is an online hackathon solving the problems we are facing as a global society after the immediate corona crisis is over.

Organized by the folks behind the Hack the Crisis movement, I also love how they leverage Reddit (on top of the usual Slack) to engage with participants.

Project themes: Arts & creativity, crisis response, economy, education, empowerment, environment, governance, health & wellness, media & entertainment, mental health, work

United Nations: Global Call to Creatives

Not a hackathon but I thought I'll add this onto the list! In their words, World Health Organization needs "help translating critical public health messages - not just into different languages - but into different cultures, communities and platforms - reaching everyone, everywhere.

We need to meet people where they are, with a stream of fresh, innovative content which drives home the personal behaviours and societal support needed today. We are equipping you with WHO-provided knowledge and messages to spread."

Any other hackathons missing from this list?

Do suggest them in the comments below and I'll add them onto this list.

As usual, stay safe and healthy!

Best resources and learnings on running online events

Elisha Tan — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 08:44:30 +0000

Thank you for all the feedback and love from the last 2 articles! As evident from them, a lot of my learnings come from others who have graciously shared their knowledge.

This post will be a live document where I will continue to update with new helpful articles I come across.

Here are a couple of resources I've found to be helpful:

Detailed how-do on setting up online events: Video Recording and Live Streaming for RK
Timeline to organizing an online conference: End-to-end guide to a livestream conference in 3 weeks
Very detailed guide on Zoom: A Guide to Hosting Virtual Events with Zoom
Guide to hosting podcasts: How to launch a local podcast
Timeline to organize an online meetup: Some advice on running online meetups
Learnings from Hack the Crisis: How to set up an online hackathon within 6 hours
Good overview of how to get started on online events: Get started with running an Online Event with Peatix

Watch out for Zoom-bombing!

I didn't know that this could be a thing! 🤦🏻‍♀️

Here are a couple of articles I've found helpful in addressing this topic.

Your turn: what did you learned or resources you have found on running online events for developers?

Please share them in the discussions below!

Organizing online developer events? Here are some best practices!

Elisha Tan — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:57:29 +0000

Overview: This series is written as guidance for community organisers and devrel folks navigating building dev communities during the coronavirus season. It draws upon from my personal experience and from observing how other communities are tackling this issue.

Hello! I’m Elisha, and I manage developer communities in Asia at a big tech company as my full-time profession while driving gender diversity in tech with TechLadies on the side. While both entities are not affiliated with each other, they both relate to building and growing developer communities.

So as you can imagine that in this COVID-19 season, I face an important challenge - how do I grow and engage with our dev communities when the status quo of in-person activities no longer apply?

In the last article, we went through what the different types of online events are. In this article, I want to share learnings from my experience organising online events and by observing the ever-awesome EmberConf, Facebook Developer Circles, and Microsoft Tech Community.

This article assumes that you are familiar in organising in-person events.

Online events have risks too - always have backup plans!

Everything you struggle at organizing in-person events (no-shows, venue changes, speakers pulling out) happens for online events too - things are always changing in this season.

Case in point, my office had a confirmed COVID-19 patient the evening before my online conference was to take place. It was VERY stressful to figure out a solution at that moment.

The best way I’ve learned to navigate through a crisis like that is to seek guidance from subject matter experts, be transparent and over-communicate EVERYTHING, and allow people involved to evaluate and take the amount of risk that they are comfortable with. We were lucky continue with the conference with minimal changes.

As things can change quickly, you must be agile in making changes as you may lose access to facilities, speakers, and volunteers unexpectedly.

Online events are great to drive inclusivity

In-person events usually take place in the evenings or weekends, at venues that aren’t always accessible to all. Such arrangements inadvertently exclude people who face logistical or cultural difficulties in attending meetups, such as parents, women, and wheelchair users.

Online events solve for this as people can tune in from anywhere. On top of that, live captioning helps people who struggle with accents and speed of speech from various speakers. I found PowerPoint (I know, I hear you gasp) to work great given that it’s accessible without additional costs or time.

Do also note that building inclusivity extends to details like the sizing of captions and sign language interpretation on the screen. So do make sure that they are visible enough!

Drive viewership before the event

It’s easy to start a livestream, harder to make sure that people show up. To drive viewership, I’ve found it helpful to partner with other communities to share your online event once you go live.

Facebook has this pretty neat feature called watch party where you can host virtual watch parties. However, there are currently no insights how watch parties perform. #bummer

In-person watch parties can be held at cities not affected by COVID-19 to drive viewership. At Facebook’s recent #TechbyHer Online Conference, several Developer Circle communities hosted in-person watch parties to ensure participation.

Speaking at online events isn’t quite the same as offline events

Body language and facial expressions are magnified at online events. Speakers need to be mindful of their gestures and facial expressions as these are more obvious to viewers. Also, speaking at online events require speakers to talk to a camera which doesn't come naturally to many.

An example of body language done well is Hazel Savage's presentation at the recent Microsoft Tech Community APAC Online conference. She has plenty of eye contact with the camera, natural gestures, and she smiles. Watching her present felt that she is talking to me instead of reading off a screen.

Speaking of screen, there’s limited space there. Viewers may not be able to see both slides and speakers clearly at the same time. So sometimes, the organizers will need to decide whether to focus the screen on the speaker or the slide.

Which means that...

It is important to rehearse EVERYTHING

You need to align with speakers if their slides look okay on-screen and what are slides they want to focus on.

It’s a delicate balance between letting the viewers see what speakers are communicating non-verbally and providing visuals to guide viewers on the presentation. While I don’t have a hard rule, I think generally using fewer slides is better.

As online events can have a much wider reach than in-person events, it is ideal to rehearse both presentations and panel discussions. This is more important if you are using software for live captions. Trust me, you don’t want your mistakes to become a meme on the internetz! 😂

And EVERYTHING includes moving through the agenda!

Don’t forget to also rehearse how to move from one agenda item to the next. I cringe whenever the screen cuts to a speaker who’s caught unprepared, didn’t cut away from a speaker who thought they are already off-screen, or unable to locate their next speaker virtually.

Engage with the audience before the event

Engaging with the audience is more challenging for online events. To drive engagement, you can invite the audience to submit questions beforehand. These questions are a great backup in case the live audience is on the quieter side, they also serve as a guide for topics to cover at future events.

Engage with the audience during the event

During the event, make use of an audience engagement tool such as Pigeonhole, Mentimeter, Discord or Meeting Pulse to run polls, discussions, and Q&A,

Also remember your CoC and have a couple of comment moderators! It's also good to prep some common responses and to decide on what type of comments you'll ignore, delete, or address.

You can also encourage viewers to tweet their thoughts during the event to win swags.

Speaking of swags...

I LOVE the idea of digital swags that EmberConf created. Pretty cool to have viewers show solidarity by using the same social media cover images. Brilliant!

Your turn, what did you learn from organizing online events?

I hope these learnings are helpful to you! I must admit that I'm still learning how to be better at online events. Plenty of my learnings came from the generosity of the developer communities themselves!

Do you have any best practices to share? I would love to hear them.

Until then, stay healthy and we can get through this together! 💕

Image credits:

Moving your developer events online? Here are some ideas to get started!

Elisha Tan — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 05:52:32 +0000

Overview: I write this series as guidance for community organisers and DevRel folks navigating building dev communities during the coronavirus season. It draws upon from my personal experience and from observing how other communities are tackling this issue.

So as you can imagine that in this COVID-19 season, I face the same problem both professionally and personally - how do I grow and engage with our dev communities when the status quo of in-person activities doesn’t apply in this COVID-19 season?

I started experimenting at work and observing how other developer communities are tackling this problem. This article shares my learnings from corporate-supported communities (Microsoft and Facebook) and grassroots communities such as EmberConf, React Knowledgeable, JuniorDev SG, and SingaporeCSS.

To get started, let’s take a look at the different types of online events.

Types of online events

Sharing pre-recorded videos

Online events don’t have to be live. Presentations can be recorded before the event and shared during the event happens. Recording content beforehand ensures the quality of the presentations as speakers can film until they get it right and also avoid connectivity issues.

Tools to pre-record videos:

Screencasts: QuickTime (free), OBS Studio (free), Loom (free and paid plans)
Filming: Any camera or phones with camera
Editing: iMovie (free), OBS Studio (free)
Publishing: Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo

Video calls

Online events don’t always have to be big and public - they can also be intimate video calls. I find these cosier as everyone is experiencing the event together and chances of anonymity are lower. It also allows for more interactivity... once you get over the multiple “can you hear me?”, “sorry, you go first”, “can someone mute themselves please”. 😂

Free tools for video calls: Zoom, Google Hangouts, Messenger Rooms, Microsoft Teams

Livestreams/Webinars

These events are broadcasts where presenters have full control over the event in terms of event flow and conversations. Audience usually can only communicate via commenting or submitting a question with text. Speakers can either physically be in the same place for filming or take part remotely.

Tools for livestreams: StreamYard (free and paid), Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Zoom (paid), GoToWebinar (paid)

Video calls + livestreams

Debating between having the intimacy of a video call or the reach of a broadcast? Why not both! Using Zoom (paid) and OBS Studio, React Knowledgeable allowed speakers to dial in on Zoom while livestreaming on Youtube. I think this is an excellent way for multiple presenters to join from anywhere while allowing the audience to ask their questions in front of the entire audience via Zoom.

Tools for video valls + livestreams: Zoom (paid), StreamYard (up to 6 speakers), any video call tool + OBS Studio

Full-fledge online conference

Other than meetups, conferences are another great way for developers to meet. All event formats mentioned here can be extended or mix-and-matched into a conference. These conferences usually also use a chat tool such as Discord or Slack to replace the hallway track, allowing the audience to engage with each other or ask a question to speakers after their talks. There’s also NeighbourBot, a Discord bot that matches people randomly for conversations.

Most online conferences are single-track, however tools like Hopin offers multi-track experiences.

Tools to make this magic happen: Event tools listed above, Slack (free), Discord (free), Hopin (paid)

Combining offline and online

Online events don't have to just take place online. People can participate in-person at physical watch parties. For example at Facebook’s recent #TechbyHer Online Conference, several of their Developer Circles community hosted in-person watch parties to ensure viewership. Another example is a recent JuniorDev SG meetup where they restricted the number of in-person attendees while livestreaming the meetup.

Tools to make this magic happen: Event tools listed above + in-person meetups

Manpower for online events

Just like physical events where there are ushers, registration helpers, and emcee etc, there are different roles required to pull off an online event.

Suggested roles:

Overall Coordinator: As the main decision-maker of the event, this person decides the final layout of the content, the quality of the content, agenda changes (if any), and ensures the event’s success.
Event Producers: This person helps with all the technical setup for the event and switches the layout during the event as needed
Guests Handlers: This person ensures that the speakers and panel moderators show up where and when they need to be
Comments Moderators: This team monitors the livestream comments, hiding inappropriate comments, answering commonly asked questions, and bubble up audience questions to the panelists/speakers.
Emcee: Guides viewers through the day’s agenda items

Equipment for online events

Depending on the scale of the event, your setup can be an elaborated studio or very simple. You don’t need any fancy equipment to start - simply a laptop (with working microphone and camera) and stable wifi is good enough. I’ve also found it useful to have a table lamp in front of me so that I have enough lighting.

If you’re looking to splurge on equipment, I’ve heard good things about:

Camera:Mevo, Logitech C922
Microphone: BOYA M1, Samson G-Track Pro, Yeti

Side note: Wei from Reach Knowledgeable wrote a fantastic article going onto the equipment and how-to for their online events. Do check it out!

Your turn! What other types of online events have you come across?

I learn so much through observation and I'm always on the lookout on what other types of online events I can adopt. What types of online events did I miss out? What other tools and products will you recommend? I'll love to read them in the comments below!

Coming up: Best practices for online events

In part 2 of this series, I will share some online events best practices. Until then, stay healthy!