DEV Community: Viktorija Ignataviciute

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!

Inspiration for your coding journey

Viktorija Ignataviciute — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 09:00:55 +0000

In the first episode of our Developer Nation Broadcast we welcomed Lars Bergstrom, Director of Engineering at Google who gave us an idea of how he approaches interviews in his current position and what are the things he is expecting to see from a candidate and/or an new recruit.

“When we're doing our interviews, what we're looking for is, whether you can take an understand a problem and begin to work on it with some amount of mentoring and guidance, but generally in a productive way where you can do a bunch of work independently, given enough of the structure for what that particular problem is.”

Listen to the entire episode here

How Much Does It Cost To Appoint iOS Programmers?

Viktorija Ignataviciute — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 08:47:05 +0000

A blog shared by Lily Laster in our Developer Nation Community.

If we consider the current scenario, then people nowadays utilize different categories of solutions to satisfy their purposes. Especially after the COVID - 19 pandemic, usage of smartphones has been bolstered to a considerable level. As a result, there was a massive rise witnessed in the utilization of applications among users. Since then, the usage pace has never slowed, and it has continued increasing till the current date.

It's a truth to be told that Android devices are utilized in maximum numbers, but Apple devices are no more behind, as they stand second in global usage of smartphones. Over the past few years, the utilization of iOS applications has increased tremendously, and it's because more than 1 billion users use iPhones, as per 2022 statistics.

You might be fascinated to hire iOS programmers from an IT company for creating your business solutions and grab an advantage of rising requirements for iOS applications among users, which you might have derived from the figures mentioned earlier.

So, refer to some things that should be kept in mind while hiring iOS developers and the cost of appointing them are discussed further in this post. Reading all those sections would reduce your hassles significantly for hiring them from firms to get an application for your enterprise ready.

Qualities To Be Considered While Hiring iOS Coders

When appointing iOS coders, you, as an entrepreneur, must ensure that they possess several characteristics to create your iOS solution for an enterprise. Which are those? They are stated below:

Must Possess Knowledge of Swift 3.0

It is an object-oriented programming language by Apple, which has a simpler syntax to access specific functions, making it easier for programmers to adopt. The iOS developers using Swift programming language can create a dynamic application loaded with demystifying features. So, you should appoint iOS coders having knowledge of Swift 3.0 and must be capable enough to deliver you the solution for your business with top-notch performance.

Experience in Xcode

You, as a startup owner, should know that the iOS coder you are looking to hire must possess Xcode IDE(Integrated Development Environment) in their skill sets. It is a solution that contains tools for debugging, interpretation, compiling, automation, and programming procedures streamlined for iOS developers while creating your application. By appointing iOS programmers to develop a solution for your business, you will also be charged a lesser fee for developing and deploying the platform, as Xcode makes such processes much more straightforward. It suggests that hiring iOS coders can assist you in building a platform with fewer expenses.

Problem-Solving Skills

Receiving the solution created by iOS developers is fine, but they should also be capable enough to quickly solve problems with any level of complexity. It is a must that you, as an entrepreneur, must appoint those iOS programmers who possess sufficient knowledge to get rid of any issue popping up in your application rapidly.

Secured Application

You might be aware that the ios app store doesn't allow an application to get published if it doesn't match their set security standards. Hence, as an entrepreneur, ensure that the iOS coder you hire delivers a safe and secure platform to you or not for launching it in an application store.

By keeping all these things mentioned above in your mind, as a startup owner, you can look for iOS developers to hire from specific companies able to provide you with a helpful solution for your enterprise. It will assist you in appointing a perfect iOS programmer who is dedicated and skilled to offer you desirable and practical application for your venture.

Cost To Appoint iOS Programmers

Now, after knowing the several elements to remember while hiring iOS developers, you should see the cost of appointing them. There are numerous parameters that play a vital role in the costs of recruiting iOS programmers, out of which a few of them are mentioned below. Refer to each of them before analyzing the prices of iOS coders:

Complicacy

It is an essential component contributing to the cost of appointing an iOS coder to build a solution for your venture. The complicacy of an application includes:

The number and types of features.
The design of a platform.
Third-party apps to be integrated.
The specific database you select for storing user data of your application.

So, if you are thinking of building your iOS solution, then consider all these things about your app to be created. It will assist you in saving additional expenses after appointing iOS programmers.

Number of Coders

The cost also depends on a number of iOS programmers tenant by specific technology partners. The companies need to pay a certain amount to developers occupied working on your project, which relates to your application's complexity, as discussed earlier. The rates of hiring iOS coders would likely be high if you want more attributes in your solution to be implemented, as a specific number of developers hired by you would not be able to work on other pending projects of the firm.

Experience

Based on how experienced an iOS programmer you have hired, the fees would be charged to you by them accordingly. It is because they will help you to avoid specific issues during and after creating the application for your business from their side. In addition, they will also provide you with a bugless application so that you don't need to spend more money in the future to maintain your solution. Therefore, it's suggestible that you should appoint a well-versed iOS developer that doesn't charge much higher nor too lower fees for building your app.

Development Location

At last, along with covering all these factors, the cost to hire an iOS programmer is finally decided by the company, based on the development location. The charges for appointing an iOS developer from any specific country are determined based on their costs of living, hosting charges, and fees charged to them for accessing a particular function. Following are the rates of hiring iOS coders from different countries mentioned. Consider the table below to get an idea about appointing them from a specific location.

Countries Hourly Costs of iOS Developers(in $)

Australia
$45 - $65
India
$20 - $60
USA
$60 - $90
Switzerland
$55 - $80
Netherlands
$50 - $75
Canada
$35 - $70

Final Verdict

In the last few years, usage of iOS devices has skyrocketed to the next level, so numerous ventures have launched solutions in an Apple store to receive the advantages of increasing demand for its apps among people. Apart from this, many startup owners are planning to build their iOS applications for their enterprises, and if you are one of those, then refer to some qualities while appointing iOS programmers and the cost to select them mentioned in a post. It would help you in getting a clearer vision for hiring them.