DEV Community: SlashData

What are developer marketing, relations and tooling professionals working on?

SlashData Team — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:42:09 +0000

The Developer Program Leaders survey is back! Time to refresh what we know about the work, challenges and priorities of developer marketing, developer relations and developer tooling professionals.

In the previous survey wave, we discovered that the

No1 challenge for Developer Relations professionals was growing their community.
Developer Program Leaders Survey - 10th Edition

Are you working in:

Developer Marketing
Developer Relations
Developer Advocacy
Developer Tooling
With a developer program?

What is yours? What KPIs are you using to measure success?

Answering questions like these helps map the world of Developer Marketing, Relations and tooling.

At the same time, it helps the global community understand, relate and learn about the challenges these professionals face, the metrics they use, and where they spend their time and budget.

Respond to the Developer Program Leaders survey.

What you gain by spending ±8 minutes responding:

Full access to the findings both in a report that illustrates the highlights and key graphs, and in an interactive session where our research analysts and the community will come together to discuss key findings and impact on the industry.
A chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag
You participate in a community effort to understand and improve how your peers work and set their strategy

How long is the survey?

It is short. You’ll need ±8 minutes

This survey helps better understand how and what developer marketing, relations and tooling professionals work on, including how they:

Run their developer programs
Prioritise their work
Segment their audience
Measure success
Justify the value of their developer program to senior management and more!

What types of questions does this survey ask?

Which regional markets does your strategy target?
Which resources take most of your budget?
What are the main challenges for your Developer Relations efforts this year?
Do you segment your developer audience? How?

Here are some results from the previous survey wave:

It’s insights like these that you will be able to access by responding.

Do you want to help professionals elevate their DevRel game?

Have your say!

Driving Impact in the Age of AI: DevRelX Summit 2023 Lineup

Viktorija Ignataviciute — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 18:31:54 +0000

CFP is now closed, and we have already confirmed the first round of speakers and their sessions! Here is all you need to know about joining DevRelX Summit 2023!

📅 Date & Place: Oct 25-26 | Online

🎟️ Admission: Register | Free

🤖 Theme: Driving Impact in the Age of AI

DevRelX 2023 Lineup

We will get together to explore how AI is shaping the future of developer ecosystems and the ways in which DevRel professionals can harness its potential to create meaningful and impactful experiences. Here are some of the key sessions we will have in store for you!

Panel Discussions

⭐ “What it means to be a developer in the Everything GPT era?”

Hosted by Katherine Miller, Marketing Leader and Consultant and joined by:

Sean Falconer, Head of Marketing & DevRel at Skyflow
Leandro Margulis, VP of Product at Prove
Rizel Scarlett, Staff Developer Advocate at TBD.

⭐ “One developer program, multiple audiences: How to think about content curation that matters to them?”

Hosted by Ray Stephenson, Sr. Director, Developer Relations at Cisco and joined by:

Tessa Kriesel, Head of Platform DevRel, Snap Inc.
Kevin Blanco, Senior DevRel Advocate at Appsmith
Esther Agbaje, Developer Advocate at Directus

⭐ “2.0 of your DevRel team - How DevRel teams can use AI today?”

Hosted by Ash Ryan Arnwine, Director of Developer Relations at Nylas and joined by:

Jon Gottfried, Co-Founder, Major League Hacking
Joyce Lin, Director of Developer Relations, Postman
Kerri Shots, Principal API PM, Adobe

Lightning Talks

Let’s unleash human intelligence to make the most out of AI and push the known boundaries. Join us as we share insights, and meet industry leaders who shape the future of DevRel in the era of AI!

"Building learning communities that scale with developers"
🎙️ Lisa Tagliaferri, Senior Director, Developer Education at Chainguard

“What I learned by building an AI-powered chatbot for our documentation site”
🎙️ Todd Kerpelman, Developer Plaidvocate at Plaid

"Conferences and Communities: How to take the most out the them?"
🎙️ Jonathan Vila, Developer Advocate at Sonar

"Fear of being replaced? Key to a winning partnership with Generative AI"
🎙️ Meredith Hassett, Developer Advocate at Canva

"Future-Proofing Your Career: The Low-Code and AI Way"
🎙️ Paulo Tavares, Director, Developer Relations at OutSystems

Stay tuned as the full agenda will be announced soon!

Want to join us as an Event Partner? Get in touch!

If you’re looking to elevate your brand, network with industry leaders, and support the growth of the DevRel communities, join us as an event partner! This is a unique opportunity for organizations to showcase their products, services, and thought leadership to a highly influential audience.

Are you looking for:

Networking
Thought leadership opportunities
Recruiting talent
Showcasing what makes you stand out
Or engaging with the DevRel community? Then don't miss this chance to elevate your brand, network with industry leaders, and support the growth of the DevRel communities. We look forward to partnering with you to make the DevRelX Summit 2023 a success!

Meeting Challenges and Scaling Sustainably in 2023

Viktorija Ignataviciute — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 22:00:00 +0000

As you already know, we started this year trying to answer, among others, a burning question - What are the main challenges for developer programs?

We just closed our 10th Developer Program Leaders survey, where our goal as always, was to understand your and your peers' challenges, how other DevRel professionals prioritise resources and activities, justify the value of their developer program, and offer insights into how you compare against industry’s practices, especially in the times of uncertainty.

Now, we want to offer you and the rest of the community access to data, allowing for data-backed decisions to make your developer program aligned with developers’ priorities and make them want to keep coming back!

A big thank you if you supported our recent survey by adding your voice and spreading the word. If you missed the opportunity to chime in - keep an eye out for the next one! As always, DevRelX Community members get the news first. 😉

Developer Program Leaders Forum

Now that the survey results are in, it’s time to look into its findings together!

On May 11th we are hosting an interactive session where we will discuss Q1, 2023 key findings and their impact on the industry. And we would love for you to be a part of it!

Join if you're in pursuit of answering questions like:

What are the main challenges DevRel professionals are facing in 2023?
How you can use your available resources to meet these challenges and scale sustainably?
How you can turn the knowledge you already have into wisdom that will help you unlock developer-led growth?

Save the date & RSVP here

This session will be supported by our Data Journalist, Richard Muir, who will present the survey results and address your questions live. We'll also have a panel of Developer Program Leaders Forum experts and community members joining us for the discussion.

We strongly believe that open discussions, community support and knowledge sharing are key to success and innovation in our industry, individually and collectively. Join us if you feel the same!

Transforming words into action, we are taking it a step further and introducing Developer Program Leaders Forum as an extension to our last year’s roundtables.

The Forum will consist of DevRelX community members and ambassadors, inspiring, creative and thought-leading Developer Relations professionals. The Forum will come together twice a year, with experts taking turns each time, to discuss the latest Developer Program Leaders survey results and industry trends.

Meet our experts

Let’s welcome our first Developer Program Leaders Forum crew - Katie, Wesley, Vera, Yuri and Kamran!

To get to know them better or source additional inspiration, we invite you to take a look at some of the knowledge nuggets they have already shared with our community.

⭐ Katie Miller
Director, Developer Marketing, Slack

Impact Via Influence: Keys to DevRel Success within the Organization video + audio - Panel at the DevRelX Summit (2022)
Step Up Your DevRel Game - Panel at our Summit (2020)
What makes a great developer event? - Chapter in Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide (2020)
Developer Events - Podcast recording (2020)

⭐ Wesley Faulkner
Sr. Community Manager, AWS

Drafting impact-driven DevRel Strategy - Panel at the DevRelX Summit (2022)
Setting up For Success in Your Next Role: Where to Start? - Community Session (2022)

⭐ Yuri Santana
Developer Relations Advocate, Fonoster

What even is a DevRel? | Part 1 - Article (2023)
The importance of documentation in the DevRel space - Article (2022)
How to Increase Engagement Within Your Community - Article (2022)

⭐ Vera Tiago
Manager, Developer Advocacy, OutSystems

Developer Journey: Key Metrics and Initiatives to Drive Success video + audio - Panel at the DevRelX Summit (2022)
Between the developers and the business - Podcast recording (2022)

⭐ Kamran Ayub
DevTool Onboarding Specialist, Lovely DevEd

Kamran is always sharing fantastic insights and tips with our members on a spectrum of topics in Developer Education, and tooling. To name a few:

Learning friction,
Setting up a Github repository,
Certificates for developer training and more!

Are you in?

Join the first-ever Developer Program Leaders (DPL) Forum session on May 11 to contribute to the discussion and support our future surveys and if you’d share the spotlight at the next edition!

🙋 Would like to host the next community-led session? Connect with our team!
To enable learning and experience sharing among our community members, we bring you DevRelX Community Sessions, hour-long online roundtable discussions.

Each session is facilitated by a prominent community member and prompts peers to discuss challenges and share insights on topics that matter to the community the most!

What are the main challenges for developer programs?

Viktorija Ignataviciute — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:13:17 +0000

The start of 2023 marked a 3-year anniversary of DevRelX.com - thank you for being with us! Another Q1 highlight in our community is the 10th Developer Program Leaders survey, a bi-annual effort to understand your and your peers' challenges, and how DevRel professionals prioritise resources and justify the value of their developer program.

We invite you to participate and gain access to insights into how you compare against peer practices and contribute to the industry’s knowledge share.

Interested? You’ll need ±8 minutes. Take the survey

For every complete response, we will donate $3 (and up to $500) on behalf of the DevRelX Community to support the people who have suffered from the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the key findings from our past surveys, complemented by expert insights from our members!

Building a Developer Program Strategy

Sean Falconer shared personal thoughts on Q4, 2021 survey insights. Below are some of the highlights and you can read more in this blog post.

How do program leaders spend their time, budget and effort?

Below are the results from the survey breaking down how developer program leaders spend the majority of their time.

It’s encouraging to see that program leaders are spending the majority of their time on strategy. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.“

When I joined Skyflow, I spent a lot of time immersing myself in the product, the problem space, meeting people and customers, and thinking deeply about strategy. I wanted to be able to put together a long-term vision. What does developer relations look like for Skyflow in 5 years? And, a short-term vision. Where will it be in 6 months?

Starting with a strategy and creating a plan helped me focus on where I should put my attention and how to think about hiring. There are always a million things to do at a startup, but if you try to do everything at once, you’ll do nothing well. A strategy with clear objectives helps you tune out the distractions and focus on moving your key metrics in the right direction.

Thinking about and creating a strategy should be the foundation of any developer program. You should outline your goals, and the things you’re going to measure, define a North Star metric, and plan the tactics that will get you there. However, just because you have a plan doesn’t mean it’s going to work. As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.“

You need to be able to adapt. Failure is to be expected. It’s a learning opportunity. Just don’t make the same mistake over and over again.

Internal buy-in and funding

The survey reports that 22% of a leader’s time is spent creating internal buy-in or securing funding. In a prior survey, this was 15%.

I think part of the responsibility of any program lead, regardless of function, is to spend some time justifying their function’s existence and securing funding. It’s our responsibility to convey our program and team’s value. That being said, I think it’s unfortunately too common that developer program leaders spend A LOT of time on this and it’s a topic that continually comes up.

At Google, I felt that several times a year, I had to give presentations explaining what my team did, the value we brought to the program, and the impact we’d had, but even then, I really had to fight for resourcing. Continually fighting this battle is counterproductive and exhausting.

So although it’s part of a program lead’s responsibility, I believe there should be a limit. Ultimately, it’s critical that developer programs have executive buy-in and are seen as a strategically important investment. Without that, you’ll burn yourself out trying to make people understand something they are simply not ready or interested in accepting.

Understanding where you are and where you need to go

Ayan Pahwa has also highlighted the importance of internal buy-in when looking at the Q2, 2022 results in this blog post. Here's what he shared:

Internal buy-ins and getting funding: Steadily bridging the gap

Now, this is an interesting one. Seeing a drop in creating internal buy-ins and securing funding from 22% in the Q4-2021 survey to 15% this year, really proves that DevRel practitioners are now spending relatively less time in convincing and justifying the cost of their DevRel programs.

This could be the result of developer advocacy programs becoming more mature and clearly linked to strategic goals. The impact of developer advocacy programs and their integration into company-wide strategy seems to be making it clearer for stakeholders to consciously invest both budget and resources in DevRel efforts.

I’ve been on the spot, spending hours to justify the cost of attending a conference or organising an event or just buying a new service or platform subscription to support our Developer community, so it’s really good to see that time is being claimed back and spent doing other rather more impactful tasks such as:

Direct developer engagement (rising from 11% to 18%). This is one of my favourite activities as a developer advocate. The feedback you get during 1:1 or 1:many interactions is extremely useful and specific. This also gives you an opportunity to create relationships on a much more personal level with members of your developer community, which can later become the foundation of your ambassador program.

Understanding of the product:

Although not showing up in the results but of great importance based on personal experience, is time spent in understanding your own product better. This is especially true for developer-first organisations where the products are ever-evolving and getting complex.s a DevRel practitioner it’s important to stay up-to-date with your own product growth and for someone who just joined a new organisation as DevRel, quite a significant amount of time can go into learning about the product itself.

Challenges calculating on-boarded developer value:

The survey also asked how a Developer program budget is justified and the estimated lifetime value of an on-boarded developer. It’s clear that the majority of people (~45%) participating in the survey don’t have a solid methodology for calculating the value of an on-boarded developer and hence only a small portion (8%) has backed the budget allocated to the developer program by an exact FIAT value. Given the complex developer lifecycle and pricing plans of developer-facing - products, platforms and solutions, it’s fairly complicated to create a solid framework that can help calculate the exact dollar value associated with an on-boarded developer.

Most products often have a free tier associated up to a certain usage and some also have free tiers for certain segments of developers such as student groups or non-profits. A developer can also evolve from being a part of a free tier to onto a paying payment plan over time and hence adding more complexity to put a dollar value on developer acquisition. It’s also difficult to know which acquisition strategy exactly works in onboarding a new developer, whether it’s that Youtube video you recently published or a past conference talk or demo during a local meet-up, It could very well be your SDK written in Go with good documentation.

How companies and DevRel serve the communities developers join

As we continue following Developer Relations and Marketing field, we notice how the community is becoming a more and more integral part of all strategic activities. Developer Relations is becoming (if not already) a community-led effort.

There is a huge benefit to any vendor to maintain a community for all the reasons that data shows us. If we can enable developers get more out of a product, if we can enable them to be excited about the product, share their experience with their peers and also progress through the community member’s lifescycle from new joiner to expert, we are helping them progress in their career and we’re also getting them more invested in our product and ecosystem. If you keep those core needs in mind, that’s when vendor communities start to add value.

Jamie Langskov, Community and change management strategist.

With that in mind, our most recent survey (Q4, 2022), zoomed into the following:

Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?
Why are developers joining communities?
How are developer-facing professionals address developers’ community needs?

Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?

Developers join communities to learn. According to the Q3 2022 Developer Nation study, which surveyed 23,790+ developers, 19% of developers rank community in the top 5 resources that companies should offer to support developers. This makes the community 7th most important resource overall, just ahead of answers in public forums and only slightly behind professional certifications.

Are organisations paying attention to developers’ community needs?

Yes, they are. And we will data-back this affirmation by looking at the data from the latest Developer Program Leaders survey, where we surveyed ~130 industry professionals in developer-facing roles. The data speaks for itself. Communities are now sharing the spotlight with other traditional popular methods of developer education. And developer-facing organisations are aware.

According to their responses, when the professionals are setting their strategy on how to talk to developers and address their technical audience needs, 73% consider community as (at least) a key part of their strategy. More specifically

34% consider community as the most important part of their strategy
39% consider community as a key part of their strategy
Only 6% do not include the community in their strategy.

You can see all responses in this graph:

Have you enjoyed these insights?

Respond to the survey before April 3rd and gain access to more insights like these and a chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag - Have your say!

How companies and DevRel serve the communities developers join

SlashData Team — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 12:29:02 +0000

If you have been following Developer Relations and Marketing for a while, you might have noticed how the community is becoming a more and more integral part of all strategic activities. Developer Relations is becoming (if not already) a community-led effort.

There is a huge benefit to any vendor to maintain a community for all the reasons that data shows us. If we can enable developers get more out of a product, if we can enable them to be excited about the product, share their experience with their peers and also progress through the community member’s lifescycle from new joiner to expert, we are helping them progress in their career and we’re also getting them more invested in our product and ecosystem. If you keep those core needs in mind, that’s when vendor communities start to add value.
Jamie Langskov, Community and change management strategist.

Naturally, this leaves us asking:

Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?
Why are developers joining communities?
How are developer-facing professionals address developers’ community needs?

We don’t have to guess these answers. We just need to look at the data Jamie is referring to. These data come from 2 surveys run by SlashData: the Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused). Let’s look together at the insights these bring us.

Where do communities fit in the perception of developers?

Developers join communities to learn. According to the Q3 2022 Developer Nation survey, which surveyed 23,790+ developers, 19% of developers rank community in the top 5 resources that companies should offer to support developers. This makes the community 7th most important resource overall, just ahead of answers in public forums and only slightly behind professional certifications.

Student developers’ professional aspirations

Having understood what makes developers join a community, we look at what the “next generation of developers” aka developers who are currently identifying as “students” look forward to.

When asked about their top career aspirations, student developers (sample size of 4,790+) listed these as their top 3 aspirations:

Solve problems
Become an expert in a domain or technology
Build innovative products/services

You can see their full responses in the graph below. What the answers to this question show is how the community can be the place where student developers’ needs are getting addressed. The community can provide the space, the resources and the interactions that can help student developers meet with their top aspirations: solve problems and gain expertise in a domain or technology.

Are organisations paying attention to developers’ community needs?

34% consider community as the most important part of their strategy
39% consider community as a key part of their strategy
Only 6% do not include the community in their strategy. You can see all responses at this graph:

What are developer program leaders’ roles?
By now we have established the importance of community in a developer marketing strategy. To better understand how this strategy is implemented, we will look at the hats these developer program professionals are wearing to implement this strategy and we will also look at the community sizes – for perspective.

With 73% of those professionals reporting community as a key part of their strategy, it comes as no surprise that 34% of them have “Community Manager” as their professional title, the second most popular, right behind “Developer Relations Practitioner” and only slightly above “Developer Marketing Practitioner”.

“I’ll have one large community, please”
Communities come in different sizes. While everyone strives to build a space with a massive, always active user base, the reality sometimes shows differently. In fact, only 4% of the Developer Program Leaders reported running an active community that counts more than 10M members. 27% responded to running communities smaller than 100 members.

The less people are in a community, the more effort is needed to keep the discussion going. Which begs the question: how can you engage the community members?

Driving participation in the community
To answer this question, we don’t look at what community managers are doing to increase engagement in their communities. We ask developers what makes a community fun for them.

33% of developers (sample size 10,478) responded that having a well-designed community platform is their #1 reason that encourages them to participate. Four more reasons are tied for the second place, with 29% of respondents saying that what encourages them to be active are:

Getting regular updates
Fun activities
A well-defined purpose for the community
Projects on which community members can work together.

The latter one is especially important for students.

Here is the full breakdown of their responses:

Developer community + DevRel strategy wrap up
In summary, looking at the latest data from our Developer Nation survey (developer-focused) and the Developer Program Leaders survey (DevRel-focused) we reach the following conclusions which we discussed in this hopefully-not-that-long article:

Developers rank community at their top-5 resources
Developers’ #1 reason for joining communities is training and resources
A community can be the means to address student developers’ top aspirations
Community is considered a key part of a developer-facing strategy by more than ⅔ of developer program leaders
Community management is the second most popular title
Communities come in all shapes, but even more sizes
Developers share what makes them engage in a community and are happy to share it. How are you addressing your developer community? Join the discussions with like minded people at the DevRelX community.

If you want more data on developer needs and wants or you are trying to better understand developers, SlashData has the insights you need.

This post was originally published on SlashData

How Education Helps Developers Reach Purchasing Decisions and Product Adoption

SlashData Team — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:45:20 +0000

One of the trends that we’ve seen in recent years, is not only the continuing growth of the developer population but also an increase in their decision-making power and influence in purchasing decisions.

For this reason, software companies can no longer focus their efforts on attracting the attention of the C-suite and educating them about their product. They need to work out how to reach developers. Spoiler alert: the same marketing tactics don’t work on the developer population.

With this in mind, Nate Aune, CEO of Appsembler recently led a session at the DevRelX Summit 2022 with Konstantinos Korakitis, Director of Research at SlashData, on how education helps developers reach purchasing decisions and product adoption. Yes, that’s right. The critical marketing tactic you need to focus on is not marketing, it’s education.

If you missed the session, or if you need a reminder of the important points we discussed, we’ve summarised the key takeaways below. The data we cite below is from SlashData’s latest Developer Nation survey. The State of the Developer Nation report is available to everyone and shares insights and trends on what matters most to developers.

More Developers Are Decision Makers Than Ever Before
While not all developers make the final tool buying decisions (many do), many influence purchase decisions and that number continues to grow. 41% of developers influence purchase decisions while 26% are decision makers. But who are these developers?

Developers are influencers and decision makers in companies of all sizes, particularly so in medium-sized businesses of 51 to 1,000 employees. In medium-sized businesses, 59% of developers influence purchase decisions (compared to 51% in large enterprises and 49% in small businesses) while 41% are decision makers (compared to 28% in large enterprises and 32% in small businesses).

One of the reasons behind this is that developers are likely to have a say in product and tooling decisions in these companies. In large enterprises, where we see the smallest proportion of decision makers, there is a sense that software purchasing decisions are made higher up in the hierarchy, or by centralised purchase departments.

Experience Levels Affect Level of Influence
The level of experience in software development is one of the strongest predictors of the amount of influence that developers have on tool purchasing decisions. Those developers holding leadership positions have the highest level of influence on decision making.

This isn’t surprising as these developers have accumulated expertise and knowledge over the years, meaning that their opinion matters. It's also due to the nature of their roles and the responsibilities that they gain as they progress in their careers.

Developers with highly technical roles also exert a lot of influence over purchasing decisions. More than half of technical specialists affect or influence buyers or make the final decision when it comes to choosing tools. For example, the vast majority of DevOps engineers are involved in the tool purchasing decision process. Similarly, more than three-quarters of architects, system administrators, and hardware engineers have some form of decision-making power.

This is likely linked to the nature of the specialised nature of development tools they use and the experience they have. For example, nearly 80% of architects have six or more years of experience in software development compared to only 54% of frontline coders.

Developers Expect You to Offer Educational Resources
Understanding what these developers expect from vendors is important because these expectations are likely to affect their decisions. SlashData's research has consistently found that three features come out top of developers’ wishlists and expectations from tool vendors. These are:

Documentation and sample code
Tutorials and how-to videos
Development tools, integrations, and libraries

These resources should be the starting point for every developer marketing program. Alongside these core resources, more than a quarter of developers say that tool vendors should offer technical support, training courses, and hands-on labs. In total, 40% of developers expect software companies to offer educational resources, including training courses and interactive learning environments. Investing in high-quality training resources is time and money well spent for developer program managers.

Developer Education is Crucial to Getting in Front of Decision Makers
Developer buy-in is becoming critically important for companies that are selling software to developers. More than a third of sales opportunities are lost because the seller failed to get developer buy-in.

This is happening because developers are evaluating the product early in the sales cycle and the buyer is getting involved at a much later stage. Software purchasing is happening from the bottom up. Developers are getting an API key, downloading an SDK, and playing around with the software; they only bring in the decision maker after they have checked that the solution is right for them.

If you're a software company and you're not onboarding developers quickly and helping them get to that aha moment, then they probably won’t ever introduce the buyer to your solution. That’s why it’s critical to think about how to onboard, to educate, and get developers up to speed quickly and easily.

Hands-On, Interactive, and Frictionless Training Environments are Key
Developers want to dig in and understand how your software works rather than watching someone explain it or read a brochure. Developers also want to get their hands on the software as soon as possible. They don't want to have to talk to sales or jump through hoops to access your product or have to spend a long time installing software on their computer and dealing with compatibility issues.

The faster you can give a developer access to your product, the better, and the quicker they will get to the stage where they recommend it to decision makers.

Create an Ongoing Developer Education Program
What are successful developer marketers doing to convert developers into paying customers? We know that developer-oriented software requires more education and training before a developer recommends the product. That means you need to help the developer move through the journey with relevant resources and content to ensure they don’t fall out of the funnel.

Think of education resources as stepping stones. The goal is to get the developer hooked on your product and to reach that aha moment. A developer might start with low-commitment resources, such as a five-minute teaser video that explains what the product is, who it's for, and what problems it solves. Then they might watch a 15-minute tutorial before digging into the documentation.

Next, they’ll take a self-paced course or live workshop that helps them to build sample apps or try out an integration. The culmination could be a multi-day proof of concept where they can try things out in a sandbox environment. It’s only at this point that they will bring in the decision maker.

All of these steps are designed to help the developer get familiar with the product at their own pace and to help them validate that the solution is going to work for them. You need to create a compelling and unified learning journey that you can track and see where the issues and blockers are and where you can make improvements.

Developer Education in Action

To bring it all together, we talked about software companies that are already using developer education to boost product adoption. Here are some examples to get inspiration from.

Chef Software

Chef Software, a DevOps automation tools company, wanted to be able to introduce developers not only to Chef products but also to the foundational skills that developers would need to be successful with Chef. They created the Learn Chef site, which provides these courses and also offers the ability to spin up sandbox environments. Within seconds, users can start using Chef software and learn how it saves time and solves their problems. It’s also a way to grow their audience and onboard and train new customers.

The Learn Chef site also acts as a marketing engine to draw developers in who may not even know about or be interested in Chef. Chef tracks user activity such as who is taking courses, what stage they are at, and what courses are they enrolling in, in Marketo. They use this data to send personalised emails to developers according to where they are in their learning journey. These nudge emails keep developers engaged and remind them that they enrolled in a course.

Chef can make personalised recommendations, such as enrolling in advanced courses once they have completed initial courses. The sales team can gauge buying intent and marketing can improve messaging, as they know which products to highlight.

Redis
Millions of people were downloading real-time data platform Redis, but they had no idea who they were. To solve this problem, they created the Redis University where, in exchange for getting free courses on databases and related technology, developers needed to register and provide an email address.

Redis found that the people who went through these six-week courses were highly qualified leads as they had spent so much time engaging with the company and product. Between 15 and 20% of people who took the online courses ended up becoming Redis customers.

Check out the 40-minute session recording to get the full story.

The importance of documentation in the DevRel space

SlashData Team — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 11:21:36 +0000

Technical writing is an important building block within any community, especially when advocating for a product. Documentation is the first direct contact you have with developers and users interested in getting to know and using the product.

The better the writing the better the odds of them coming back and getting involved with the community. But, what exactly is technical writing?

Technical writing is designed to make hard concepts as easy as possible for the readers. It’s more common than you think, whenever you read a user guide, a tutorial, case studies and many others are common examples of technical writing in the field. It is designed to explain specialised information to those that are not familiar with it and help those that are deepening their knowledge.

It’s important to notice that technical writing and documentation have their differences but keep in mind good documentation practices can help enrich your technical writing. Developer documentation is essential for technically communicating with users, now knowing how important it is, we can identify some common mistakes and we can avoid them when making our documentation.

Common mistakes

Assuming the reader has the same technical knowledge as you: By thinking this way you are limiting the number of users and developers that are going to interact with your product. This is why it is important to know your audience. You should always explain based on the different levels of background education your readers will have, not the ones you possess.
Not disclosing acronyms: You should always write in the text the meaning of the acronym before actively using it in your documentation enclosed in parenthesis. This is heavily tied to the previous point, don’t assume the reader has the same technical knowledge as the writer.
Using passive voice: This leads to less clarity and ambiguity. Using an active voice will urge the reader to take action and understand the document they are reading more clearly because it keeps sentences from becoming too wordy.
Skip minor steps: By skipping minor steps that the writer thinks are a given, the reader will be lost and won’t know what to do. Do not skip steps when the goal is to make the user complete a task or understand a concept.

What makes documentation good?

Good documentation is meant to explain to your audience heavy concepts in an easy way. It is a lightweight task with no direct flow of income but it's necessary. This is why documentation is often overlooked, but in the long run, the benefits are palpable. It helps not only instruct your user but to document the development process.

Here are some ways you can improve your documentation:

Write in simple terms: There is no need to use extremely technical terms when writing. The safe option is to write simply about what to do and a quick overview of the why. Think of a way to deliver the content in a way that’s easy for readers to understand whether or not they have prior experience with the product.
Have a style guide: It can help create a consistent voice within the company, the reader will respond to a standardized form of content, terminology and visuals. There is no need to start from zero, there are many documentations that can serve as a guide.
Get community feedback: This way you can get immediate feedback from the community on the guides that are working and those that are confusing.
Track changes: Have a version control that will help you track changes over time, in case a new feature is later removed because of the user’s reaction, you can revert back to the previous documentation.
Think about the users reading your documentation: Is your documentation accessible? Is it easy to follow? Can they easily find what they were looking for?. Help users have a frictionless interaction with your documentation.
Inclusivity and Accessibility: Avoid idioms to help cater to your international audience, consider people using screen readers, make sure you have a good contrast ratio in the design, and if you make use of screenshots make sure they have text.

Which audience should you focus on?

Depending on the type of audience your goal is you should adapt your writing to fit the audience's needs. We can identify two different target audiences with their different needs that need to be fulfilled, developers and users.

Developers

Developers play an active role when reading documentation, having clear guides in place will make them want to contribute and help with the product, making the code, documentation and community better. They have a way more different approach on documentation than users do, so let’s see what types of documentation they focus on:

Types:

API documentation: It serves as a reference on everything regarding API calls.
Read Me’s: It is meant to be an overview of the product, usually with the source code.
System documentation: The goal is to describe the product, technical design documents, software requirements and more.
Release notes: It shows information about releases, bug fixes or the latest version.

Users

They can play both an active and passive role when reading the documentation. They want to use your product, and an active voice should be used when talking to them. Some ways of targeting the users are writing easy-to-follow guides and adding code snippets and external sources when needed to expand the information. Some of the types of documentation they focus more on are:

Types:

How-to guides: It takes the user through a step-by-step detailed process to help them reach a goal. It is problem-oriented. It helps the user complete a task.
Tutorials: The goal is to leave the user with knowledge of a concept or process. It’s meant to provide a successful learning experience.
Explanations: They’re written to help users clarify certain topics that users might not have knowledge on.
Reference docs: Are made to share with the user more technical descriptions of the product.

Closing thoughts

Documentation is changing the way developers and users interact with products, good documentation motivates people to be active within the community, and it creates loyalty to the product and a sense of unity.

This is why documentation shouldn’t be an afterthought, good documentation can make or break your product and community.

Thank you so much for reading!

Make sure to connect with me on Twitter and check out more articles on my blog.

State of the Developer Nation 23rd edition: the fall of web frameworks, coding languages, blockchain, and more!

SlashData Team — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 09:25:00 +0000

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the beginning of the “Merry” season but also the time when new insights from the world of developers come to everyone’s house (magic may or may not be involved)!

Stay up to date with the 23rd edition of the State of the Developer Nation report and get the insights you would only pick up by slashing through data with your own two hands.

Our 23rd Developer Nation global survey reached more than 26,000 developers in 160+ countries and its findings are bundled in a free “State of the Developer Nation” report.

This research report delves into key developer trends for Q3 2022:

The state of blockchain development
Students’ top career aspirations
Language communities – An update
Why developers contribute to vendor-owned open-source projects
Types of studios game developers work for
The rise and fall of web frameworks

In addition to outlining the report’s major findings, here are a few key takeaway points to spark your curiosity:

The state of blockchain development

25% of developers are currently working on or learning about blockchain applications other than cryptocurrencies.
Developers with 6-10 years of experience in software development are the most likely to be working on blockchain projects.
Though Ethereum is the dominant blockchain platform, it is the only one more popular among learners than those currently working on blockchain applications.

Language communities – An update

Javascript remains the largest programming language community, with an estimated 19.6M developers worldwide using it.
In the last two years, Java has almost doubled the size of its community, from 8.3M to 16.5M. For perspective, the global developer population grew about half as fast over the same period.
Kotlin and Rust are the two fastest-growing language communities, having more than doubled in size in the past two years.

The rise and fall of web frameworks

Web developers who use frameworks are more likely to be high-performers in software delivery than those who don’t.
Web developers are gradually settling for a smaller number of frameworks as they stop experimenting with a wide range of tools.
React is currently the most widely used client-side framework and its adoption has remained stable over the past two years. By comparison, jQuery’s popularity is decreasing rapidly.

As you’ll notice, most of the trends we discuss in this report are takeaways from how developers use technology. Our goal is to share these insights with the world to help guide the next generation of development.

You can download the full report for free and access all data and insights within.

If you need additional information or looking to understand developer preferences’, please get in touch with us and we will dive into it together.

Using SlashData custom questions to understand AI software developers

SlashData Team — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 16:24:03 +0000

Our mission is to help our clients understand what the market looks like, what developers need, what excites developers, what doesn’t, and what they expect from our clients’ (and their competitors’) products and the developer programs that go along with them. So, when we are approached with a request for some custom work, we roll up our sleeves and dive deep into the data.

In this case study, we will be looking at how one of our clients, worked with us to understand the needs and preferences of software developers working with AI.

The client is a company among the top 50 in the 2022 Fortune 500 ranking, which for the purposes of this case study we will be calling “Client”. This is the third installment in our “how we work with clients” series, and you can read part 2 and part 1 with Okta for more details.

In this article, we will look into their request and more specifically:

The questions our Client wanted to answer
How we worked together on their problem
How they used the insights we offered them

The request

Understanding the needs of AI software developers

The Client wanted to better understand the needs of AI software developers, so we worked with them closely to understand the problem they were trying to solve.
Then, together we made sure that we added custom questions to our Developer Nation survey, to get the answers from developers.

Question: What was the goal/challenge you were looking to accomplish?

Client: We wanted to get feedback from our customers, who are software developers that work on AI, so we could get a better understanding of their needs:

What they’re actually doing
The specific points that we are trying to optimize.
We wanted to answer high-level questions such as what language they are using and high-level computing preferences. This is why we decided we want to have this survey.

Q: Why did you choose SlashData?

At Client, we have had the experience of working with SlashData. And we did get a high value out of the previous report that you did for us. I was impressed by the support that I got when I needed it, the responsiveness, how you were always on schedule. The real part of working together. I felt how you put the customer at the front, the priority. All of these were very important to us. This is why we chose to work with you again on this project.

Working together

I really got the feeling that you’re trying to understand real problems

Q: What did you like about the process of working with SlashData?

I really liked the execution: the ability to execute fast and answer our questions. We worked very well, very collaborative. Truth is, we did have a slow start. But then you said

“let’s do this: you will write your assumptions, we will ask questions and approach this project this way”.

Once we started that, work was progressing in a much better way. It was hard at the beginning, but I got excellent support. You had excellent questions, I really got the feeling that you’re trying to understand real problems.

“What is it that we are trying to solve?”.

You also asked questions to learn more about what we are doing, which I found very professional.

Q: What are the things you found challenging when working with SlashData?

We said that we would be adding X custom questions to your survey. But from our side, we tried to add more and more and we were left with all those very complex questions.

Very complex questions are tougher to answer when you are looking to gain something specific. You did tell us to get the simple questions answered. This is what comes to mind in retrospect: Don’t make the questions too complex, trying to squeeze in more. You will get more value out of the simple questions, not the very complex ones.

Deciding using the data

I used a significant part of those questions to presentations I gave to our senior executives.

Q: How did this project/report/data solve your problem/challenge overall? Did you understand the developers’ problems more based on the report?

I used a significant part of those questions to presentations I gave to our senior executives. I was especially more confident to use the less complex questions we asked.
If I had my current experience in the beginning, I would have managed to secure a higher budget to ask more, simpler questions.

data that show what our customers think and therefore, we could work with more than just our own thoughts and assumptions

Q: What decisions did you make using the data/research?

The work we did together was part of a huge project that Client is working on. I’m afraid I can’t disclose exactly the steps we did take after going through the analysis you gave us. What I can tell you is that senior management really liked the fact that we spoke to our customers and asked them directly. And not only that, but we also brought data that show what our customers think and therefore, we could work with more than just our own thoughts and assumptions. Client is planning for some huge products and of course there are a lot of parameters and a lot of things being done. But this data helped us pick a direction.

How would you describe the service quality?

The service was excellent, really.

This interview is part 3 of the “How we work with our clients” series. The product this client worked with was custom questions and analysis and a custom report, to target their specific needs.
You can also see how Okta managed to reach the top 3 in developer satisfaction using our Developer Program Benchmarking and how another client used our Deep Dives to boost their Developer Experience.

Working on a new initiative or want to make sure your product will win developers’ hearts? Talk to us.

Setting up For Success in Your Next Role: Where to start?

SlashData Team — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:29:22 +0000

Staying true to our mission - enabling learning and experience sharing among community members - we are hosting regular DevRelX Community Sessions, an hour-long community-led conversation. At every session, our community members present the topic they're experts in, and together with a group of peers in Developer Relations, discuss challenges and share insights on various topics. Would you like to participate in or lead one of the future sessions? Join the DevRelX community.

This article summarises the notes from the fourth session, "Setting Up For Success In Your Next Role," which was part of our Career Month initiative, among other activities.

Wesley Faulkner, Sr. Community Manager at AWS, presented tips and led a group discussion, joined by other aspiring DevRels, on:

Practical tools to help your visibility and help you put your best foot forward

Steps to define and find the right match when looking for the next opportunity

How to best position yourself and set yourself up for success in your next role:

Let's dive in!

1. Your Online Presence

It's essential to ensure that all your online profiles are as complete and robust as possible. These are publicly accessible platforms that can highlight your work. Such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Polywork, Dev.to, GitHub, Hashnode, Stack Overflow, or any other communities in which you participate.

This is crucial because whoever stumbles upon your profile there should know what to approach you with and how. You don't want to appear as multiple personalities in each location (e.g., react developer in one and full-stack in the other). Make sure those are consistent and up to date with what you're interested in now. When someone is researching you for a role, they also want to be assured that you are the right person in all of these areas that showcase your work.

2. Define What You Are Looking For

Sometimes it can feel like you need to take the job you can find or accept what's available. It can feel like a seller's market, but as a person selling yourself, ensure that you're looking for the right environment conducive to the way you work and what you're interested in and tailored to your strengths. Here are a few things you want to consider:

Work culture. What kind of culture do you want to be a part of? Think of the company size - small companies might have more freedom to accommodate different roles and activities, but you might have limited resources. At larger companies, you might have more resources but are more likely to focus on a narrower objective or work within the existing system.
The size of the team. You can be in a large company and be the first member of a new team. Sometimes you can be in a small company but still within a large engineering organisation or DevRel group. There are many different companies and journeys but think about the size of the team and what kind of support you'll need to do your job appropriately.
Remote vs. In-person. Most of the roles you will find will be remote, but some are in-person only or in specific locations where the company is headquartered, depending on where it operates. If you don't have the flexibility necessary to do both, don't apply for an in-person role when you're only going to be able to work remotely and vice versa. Make sure it's clearly defined by reading the job description and seeing if that's called out.
Seniority. The role's seniority is the next thing to consider. Depending on where you want to be, you might want to think about what title you wish to have. Decide if you're looking to move up or remain in the same position. You may also be open to taking a cut in seniority for a role that is more to your liking because it meets all your other requirements.
Project Type. Think about the projects you want to work on. Do you want to work on releasing another sign-in form? Do you want to work with a group doing something tried-and-true or new and exciting? Let's take crypto, for example. It's a specific niche, and you'll find more roles there because there is a lot to do, such as educational pieces, awareness, and community building. Or would you prefer a database company that's been around forever, and people know about that tech, and you're just there to concentrate on new features? So think about the kind of work that excites you.

3. Networking

Finding others in the same boat as you are is a great resource. As the saying goes, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. You can pass each other job leads, which companies should avoid, or they can connect you with someone explicitly looking for your skills. You can start this right here with others in the DevRelX community.

Peer Communities. Several groups specialize in specific technologies or verticals. It's fantastic that SlashData has the DevRelX community Slack. There's also Twitter, Meetup.com, and other ways to find peers. I would recommend using all of those sources to access the specific niche you want to target and find others like you, as well as find possible leads and people hiring. The bigger group you form, the better.
Past Co-Workers. Stay in touch with your previous employees, and go back as far as you can with anyone you've ever worked with. When you're switching jobs or leaving the company due to layoffs, attrition, or the company folding, ensure you're connected with all of your old co-workers on LinkedIn or any other networks they're in. LinkedIn is my preferred network of choice regarding work connections. The reason why this step is necessary is that they have experience working with you directly. They know your work ethic, what you're good at, and your style. They also might refer you to their current company, which works well for both parties since they may receive a referral bonus.

4. Vetting a Company

When looking to work at a new company, you'll need to ensure it is the right organization. Keep in mind that you aren't just looking for a role that will hire you; you are looking for a company where you can succeed.

Reviews. Check out Glassdoor and Blind app to see available reviews and what people say about the company. You can look at their current employees to see if they're on Twitter or LinkedIn and what they say about the company and their work experiences. Look at pay levels for the role that you're interested in - levels.fyi is an excellent source to understand if they are in your pay orbit.
References. If you feel comfortable enough, reach out to employees directly. Let them know you're interested in working for their company and if they'll tell you what it's like to work there. You can also reach out to past employees; sometimes, they're a little more honest about the circumstances that caused them to leave. Ask them about the work conditions or if there are better opportunities outside the company. Past employees are more candid about how the sausage is made at the company, so I would ask them about the abovementioned things - team size, responsibilities, and similar organizational challenges.
Job Description. One thing you should absolutely do is parse the job description. When you look at the job description, you can see how defined the role is or if it was templated and put together in a slapdashed fashion. It may not be defined as what that person actually does, the objectives, or how success is measured. Suppose it's copied and pasted for a generalized position for the titles they are looking for. In that case, you can tell they're just looking to fill the headcount for that position. In the job description, look for the milestones of the role and other specific indicators that show signs the company knows what they're looking for and if you're the right person to fill that role.

5. At The Interview

When you get past the application and start going through the vetting process, you'll be put in contact with a recruiter. Don't miss your chance to ask questions!

Resources & Costs. Talk to the recruiter about the investment that they allocated for the role. By investment, I mean the pay, equity, other perks, and support infrastructure for the position. Is the new hire going to be able to hire staff and contractors, and is there a budget? What resources will be available for that person to be successful? Everything that goes along with performing that role, like travel and equipment costs, should be thought through, especially if this is in DevRel. Do they have their own design team or design assets? Don't assume they have thought through all the supporting items you'll need for success. You can and should talk to the recruiter about your concerns.
Onboarding Process. Ask the recruiter to describe the onboarding process. That will tell you two things: how to prepare so you can be ready for the onboarding and if they even have onboarding, which also tells you about the company's maturity. During the first few weeks in the new role, what do they do for new employees?
Hiring Timeline. Ask the recruiter how soon they're looking to hire to get a timeline of this position's urgency. Ask about the interview process and how many rounds there are. If the recruiter is very open, ask how many candidates are in the pipeline, if they are looking to fill the role immediately, or if they are holding out for the right candidate. Is it just a minor role, or is this the critical role that they really need to get filled? You might not get all your questions answered, but understanding how significant the function is at the company will give you a better perspective.
Milestones. When you're talking to an interviewer, ask what the definition of "done" is. If you did a good job, what would that look like? Try to get that vision from the person you're interviewing, so you can understand what they're looking for. Talk about milestones: do you need to produce on day one, a month, or 3 months in? Understand how they see your progress in the role and see if they can explain that. Ask what the day-to-day looks like and what they prioritize. How is success defined and measured? Do they do quarterly evaluations, have specific metrics in a SMART format, and how do they measure success? You need to know what they monitor to reach those goals. If they can't explain in detail, that is a red flag.
Quality Standards. What are their quality standards? Sometimes they expect work to be done quickly, and sometimes thoroughness is preferred. Figure out which side of the scale they're looking for so that you can set your expectations. Is the aim to move quickly with an MVP to get it out the door and iterate? That may be an issue for you if you want to ensure the work is done well before you put your name on it.`
Money Talk. If you ever get asked about pay, try not to answer that question directly with the recruiter. Give a wide range if you have to, but first, try saying you're looking for the best fit using the list from above. Stress that you'll have a better sense of compensation after you go through the interview process and better understand how much work there is to be done. Beware of the situation where there is one title, but it's actually 50 roles, and it feels like you have to do everything. Then you might want to change your compensation based on that workload. If you're going to be laser-focused on one thing you're passionate about, you might be open to taking a lower salary. These are some things you want to consider before saying how much you're looking for in terms of pay rate with a recruiter. Hopefully, the recruiter will be the first to divulge the actual range that's budgeted for this role.

Think it Through. If you're ever offered the job, ask how much time you have to give an answer. Try not to give a yes or no on the call whenever you're offered the job, and give yourself some time to think about it. In your excitement, you might be pushed to say yes immediately but don't. Breathe, look at the offer, review your resources and consult people you trust to ensure that it is a good fit for you before making that life-altering decision.
That's my quick rapid-fire overview of how to set yourself up for success in your next role. You can follow me on Twitter or connect with me in the DevRelX community. Hope this was helpful.

DevRelX Summit: Elevating the DevRel community, together

SlashData Team — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 05:54:24 +0000

The DevRelX Summit is a community takeover, an opportunity for Developer Marketing and DevRel managers, strategists, practitioners, and enthusiasts to come together.

SlashData, which powers DevRelX and the community behind it, is organising a Developer Marketing/DevRel event for the 7th consecutive year, after the record participation of 1,000+ attendees in 2021. DevRelX is a learning and sharing zone, committed to elevating the understanding of developer audiences and industry trends. A space where regardless of their experience level, everyone gets to access and share knowledge.

This year’s event is an interactive experience of knowledge and expertise sharing, which puts the DevRelX community at its centre. The DevRelX Summit will take place on October 12 & 13 2022, with:

Panels
Community-led sessions
Lightning talks
Exclusive sessions and leadership workshops
Developer-focused professionals are invited to join the 2-day schedule.

October 12 | Milestone Day | 8 am PT.

The first day, “Milestone Day” is invite-only. It is addressed to DevRel strategists, senior managers, seasoned DevRels, and CXOs. Anyone who wants to participate can request an invite via this link.

The Milestone day will offer participants strategic conversations, master classes, and workshops presented by industry pioneers and experts.

October 13 | Community Day | 8 am PT.

The second day, “Community Day”, is open to community advocates at heart. Anyone who believes that a community-centric mindset is the foundation of developer relations can get their ticket via this link.

The Community day will be full of developer community conversations, learning, and connecting with peers.

Join the DevRelX Summit, for its 7th consecutive year – the best one yet!

Here is the full agenda:

How do you measure the success of your developer-facing activities?

SlashData Team — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 08:08:46 +0000

The Developer Program Leaders survey focuses on understanding “what makes a developer program successful” as viewed from the perspective of professionals in the field.

This survey brings you and the members of the DevRelX Community insights on how DevRel and Developer Marketing professionals:

Run their developer programs
Prioritise their work
Segment their audience
Measure success
Justify the value of their developer program to senior management and more!
If you are a DevRel, Developer Marketing, or Product Manager, your input is precious.

You may also think of it as an open-source initiative to better understand how the world understands the value of developer marketing and relations.

In the survey, you will find questions such as:

What metrics do you use to measure the success and ROI of your developer program? Do you segment your audience?

These questions (and a few more) need your input. The latest wave of the Developer Program Leaders survey is now live.

What you gain by responding:

Full access to the findings in an interactive session supported by SlashData’s research analysts hosted within the DevRelX community
A chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag
You take part in a community effort to understand and improve how your peers work and set their strategy

How long is the survey? It is short. You’ll need ±8 minutes

Shape how the world understands the value of developer marketing and relations!

Take this short survey.

The survey closes on November 14.