How Erlang Developers Can Build a Vibrant Digital Space for Erlang

The Erlang community is recognized for its technical resilience, but the same cannot always be said for its digital presence. While the Elixir ecosystem has built a formidable content machine, Erlang — the language that started it all — often remains in the shadow, with solid documentation but little continuous production of accessible, up-to-date content.

This article proposes a practical roadmap for Erlang developers who want to change this scenario. The idea is simple: turn technical knowledge into digital presence through three complementary fronts — weekly articles, YouTube videos, and active research on how to contribute better.

Why care about Erlang’s “digital space”?

The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation (EEF) exists precisely to “expand awareness of the Erlang Ecosystem and participation in its community.” This is a stated goal, and individual developers can be direct agents in this process. The EEF’s Marketing Working Group, for example, publishes interviews and use-case articles to keep the community engaged.

Moreover, content production is not just “marketing.” When a developer writes a tutorial or records a video, they are:

• Documenting the ecosystem in a living, contextualized way;
• Lowering the barrier to entry for new programmers;
• Creating a historical record of practices and solutions that would otherwise be lost in forum threads or chat channels.

Pillar 1: Weekly articles — 3 posts per week

The goal of three articles per week may seem ambitious, but it is feasible if there is a rotation of formats and careful topic curation.

Formats that work

1. Step-by-step tutorials: from the classic gen_server to more specific topics such as supervisors, OTP behaviours, or integration with ecosystem libraries.
2. Curiosities and language “behind the scenes”: Why is Erlang’s pattern matching different? How does the VM manage lightweight processes? What are EEPs (Erlang Enhancement Proposals), and how do they shape the language?
3. Short case studies: how a specific feature solved a real concurrency or fault-tolerance problem.

Where to publish and how to distribute

dev.to is an excellent starting point: the publishing barrier is low, the audience is technical, and the platform allows the use of tags such as #erlang, #beam, and #otp. In addition, the official Erlang forums have dedicated Blog Posts sections where content can be shared in an organized way — including keeping a single topic for all posts from your blog.

Planet Erlang is a meta-blog that aggregates posts from various developers and contributors, functioning as a natural showcase for those who publish regularly.

Pillar 2: YouTube videos

YouTube is the platform where most new developers look for introductory content. There are already notable individual initiatives, such as the “Erlang bits” series, created by a community member with the goal of maintaining a cadence of one video per week on topics such as gen_server and basic language concepts.

Strategies to avoid getting stuck in production

• Short, focused videos: instead of trying to cover “all of Erlang” in one hour, record 5- to 10-minute videos about a single concept or a single function.
• Screen recording with narration: screencasts are easier to produce than videos with elaborate scripts and a camera. The aforementioned “Erlang bits” follows exactly this model.
• Reuse material from articles: a written tutorial can become a video, and a video can generate three short posts with the main excerpts.

Channels such as the BEAM Channel already show that there is room for continuous content about the BEAM VM, publishing videos “several times per week” about how different aspects of the ecosystem work. The difference is that most of this content is aimed at Elixir; there is a clear gap for content centered on Erlang.

Pillar 3: Research on how to contribute to the digital space

Publishing without researching is building in the dark. The Erlang community has a culture of polls and surveys that can be used as a compass for content production.

What to research (and how)

• Quick forum polls: the Erlang Forums have an active “Polls” section with topics such as “Which shell do you use?”, “Which webserver do you use?”, and “Which operating system do you develop on?” These data points indicate what the community is using now and, therefore, what deserves up-to-date tutorials.
• Larger surveys: occasionally, initiatives such as “State of BEAM” or surveys focused on diversity and inclusion appear, helping to understand who the community is and what barriers exist for newcomers.
• Gap analysis: compare the amount of Erlang vs. Elixir content on dev.to, YouTube, and blogs. Where there is less content, there is more opportunity for meaningful contribution.

How to turn research into content

If a poll reveals that a significant portion of the community uses a specific tool, that is a signal to create a tutorial about it. If a survey shows that beginners struggle with a concept (for example, OTP supervisors), that is the topic for the next video. Research stops being an academic exercise and becomes an editorial calendar.

The role of the EEF and Working Groups

The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation offers a structure that can amplify individual efforts. The foundation maintains Working Groups focused on areas such as Education, Training, and Adoption and Marketing, whose mandate is precisely to “facilitate, evolve, and consolidate educational materials” and “expand awareness.”

In addition, the EEF offers stipends for projects that benefit the BEAM community, with a focus on “online workshops, training materials, hands-on training, and open-source development work.” A developer who wants to produce a tutorial series or a video course can apply for this financial support to make dedication to the project viable.

Practical roadmap to start this week

1. Choose a topic for your first article and write a 300-word outline. Publish it on dev.to with the tags #erlang and #beam.
2. Record a 5-minute screencast on the same topic. Do not worry about sophisticated editing; focus on clean audio and visible code.
3. Open a poll on the Erlang Forums asking the community which topic they would like to see covered next. Use the result as the agenda for the following week.
4. Join the EEF Slack (the invite is available at erlef.org/slack-invite/erlanger) and participate in discussions in the Education Working Group or the Marketing Working Group to align your effort with larger initiatives.

Erlang’s digital space will not be built by one person or one company. It will be built by developers who decide that three articles per week, short videos, and continuous research are a legitimate way to contribute to the language that powers critical systems around the world. The infrastructure already exists — forums, foundation, working groups, publishing platforms. What is missing is the content. And that content can start with you.