Time for Developer Summer School?
When the Northern Hemisphere enters the summer season, developers might head out on vacation to take a break from the 24×7 world we live in. To keep developers interested and active in your community companies often offer “summer school” and other events. For Southern Hemisphere locations, you can do the same six months from now (you’ll be ahead of the date curve). There are many events you can create that will help developers catch up on latest technologies, APIs, and methods.
Qlik Summer School 2017
One recent example is Qlik’s Summer School 2017. Qlik says that the summer school offers “webinars covering in-depth technical sessions, best practices updates and even a glimpse into Qlik’s product future. It’s an incredible opportunity to boost your analytics skills during the summer months. The Qlik Summer School presents a customizable program of webinars designed to help you unlock your organization’s data-driven possibilities. Save your spot today, and then join at anytime from anywhere with an internet connection.” Check out the agenda for the 3 tracks.
Other Ways to Help Developers Keep/Catch Up
There are many other ways to allow developers to keep up and catch up. Here are a few ideas that are sure to help developers carve out a few hours during their summer schedule.
- Create a list of past webinars and links that are available on-demand. You might find that some developers were too busy with work to attend some of your events from the Winter and Spring quarters.
- Organize a self-study reading list of blog posts, quick start guides, eBooks, and white papers. It’s very possible that developers will have some time on airplanes, early mornings and late evenings to catch up on their technical reading.
- Write up a list of software development “challenges” with prizes for those who complete them. Create a series of short programming contests throughout the summer that will let developers do some quick coding and learning while they are on vacation.
- Schedule a developer conference or meetup at a “destination” location. If you want to attract developers with families (Evans Data research shows that 77.9% of developers are married), hold events at some of the top vacation locations. Schedule short developer sessions in the early morning or late evenings to allow for time with family during the day.
- Plan maker fairs and hackathons while students are out of school and able to spend time with your products, services and devices.
- Record audio podcasts, interviews and thought provoking technology information that can be listened to while relaxing poolside or during car, train and airplane parts of summer trips.
- Have your Developer Relations team members hit the opposite hemisphere where developers are still working. Schedule meetups, customer meetings and events in the Southern Hemisphere. Developers down under, Brazil, South Africa and other countries are still at the office and working.
Your Developer Relations Team Members need Time Off Too!
While your developer community members are taking time off and using the time to catch up on some reading and other technology fun, remember that your developer relations team also needs to take a break. Make sure your team members have reading lists, thinking items, and technology exploration areas. There’s always a few spare minutes when your team is not white water rafting, swimming, touring, scuba diving, hiking, biking and sightseeing.
If you’re not sure what to read each summer, check out Bill Gate’s “5 Good Summer Reads” on his Gates Notes site. Before the start of summer, Bill has been listing five books you should consider reading. Check out his summer 2017 reading list.
One other way to give you developer relations team members a break is to allow them to help out at a programming summer camp or hold a camp at your offices. There are many programming camps for elementary school, high school, college and adults. There are also cruise ships that offer programming education including CoderCuise (July 16-23, 2017) sailing out of New Orleans. Your DevRel team members can be presenters and/or attendees 😀
Do you have other ideas for how to keep your developer community active during summer vacation months?
If you have your own summer schedule of developer outreach activities, send me an email with what works best for you.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidi99/
