by David I | Feb 26, 2018 | DevRelate, Webinar |
This blog post includes additional information and links used in this week’s DevRelate Webinar “Internal Evangelism and Enablement to Support your Developer Program“. Developer Relations team members spend most of their time doing external evangelism to their developer community and prospects. At the same time, it is even more important to have an active and ongoing focus on internal evangelism to keep key stakeholders and departments aware of what you are doing while eliciting their help and guidance for your efforts. To some, it might seem like quite a task but it can be accomplished by setting up enabling internal technologies and systems to make it easy for employees beyond your developer relations team to support your efforts. This webinar will cover multiple ways for you to keep your company up to date while garnering their continued support and provide assistance with your content generation and activities.
The information and ideas contained in this webinar come from years of evangelism experience and also feedback from multiple Developer Relations professionals who are DevRelate members.
Topics Covered in this webinar
- The Value of Internal Evangelism
- Internal Community Newsletter
- Events “Tag Along”
- Trip Reports
- Pictures/Stories on the Office Walls
- Internal Webinars/Briefings/Lunches/Calls
- Awards Voted by Employees/Stakeholders
- Employees as Community Members
- Community Member Advisory Board
- Encourage Top Members to Visit
- Internal Dashboards/Channels/Systems
If you have additional ways that you do internal evangelism inside your company, send them along to David I for inclusion in this blog post.

14th Annual DevRel Conference March 26-27, 2018 – Palo Alto, CA
Two full days of sessions, round tables, workshops and networking events. Join top developer program managers as they share insights from some of the most successful programs in the industry including: GE, Oracle, RedHat, DocuSign, Ford and leading keynotes from IBM, Intel, Google and Guy Kawasaki join Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data Corp.

Developer Relations Boot Camp – Sunday March 25, 2018
The Evans Data Corporation’s Developer Relations Boot Camp provides a solid foundation on which you can build or enhance your developer program. Concentrated sessions in this one-day instructional program provide the insight and actionable information you can use to build your brand and establish strong relationships with your developer community.
New Interactive Workshops!
After each session Boot Camp attendees will break into teams to work on projects related to each topic. Each team will report back to all attendees and discuss their findings and solicit feedback.
Benefits of attending the Boot Camp
- Grow your developer community with the right members
- Use best practices to drive business success
- Reduce your DevRel costs and Increased your Program’s Scalability
- Improve developer experiences on your Community site
- Leverage developers to increase business value
- Satisfy developer pain points
Boot Camp sessions
- Program Strategy, Getting Buy-In and Framework for Success
- Essential Developer Program Basics
- Know Your Developers: Developer Personas and Segmentation
- Crafting a Win-Win-Win Strategy for your Developer Program
- Best Practices for Successful Developer Relations Programs
- Effectively Communicating with Developers
by David I | Jan 10, 2018 | DevRelate, Webinar |
Developers are a special category of computer users. Effectively communicating with developers involves creating the right content, including technical information, and speaking in terms that developers appreciate. The January 2018 DevRelate webinar discusses several ways in which you can effectively communicate with an audience of developers.
Presenter
David Intersimone “David I”, Vice President of Developer Communities
Agenda:
1) Choosing topics of interest to developers
2) Preparing your technical communication and information details
3) Creating effective in-person, email, social media, and online communcations
4) Q&A
Additional Webinar Information and Links
Aspects of Effective Content, Events, Emails & News – here are some of the area that I covered in the webinar
- Compelling Topics
- Awesome Developer Success Story
- Source Code, Template Projects
- “Boring” content formatting
- Development Journey / Learning Paths
- Great presenter/author
Topics of Interest to Developers
- Answers
- Tips and Tricks
- How To(s)
- Modern Methods
- Use Cases
- Getting Started
- New Skills
- Technology Directions
- Product Roadmaps
- Business Opportunities
Evans Data Tactical Marketing Reports
Evans Data reaches out to its global developer panel to produce two annual tactical marketing reports: Developer Marketing Survey Report and Developer Relations Survey Report. The Developer Marketing Survey contains software developers’ attitudes about marketing tools and programs used to promote and sell products to them. This report provides invaluable insight for your developer marketing campaigns. The Developer Relations Survey examines issues and elements of developer programs. This report provides invaluable insight for your developer program and advocacy.

by David I | Nov 8, 2017 | Developer Outreach, Developer Population, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Newsletter |
We often get asked how many developers there are working in the world. This sounds like a simple question and at the same time the term “developer” does not fully convey the spectrum of how a developer self describes who they are and what they do. If I refined a developer more specifically as a “professional developer” would that create a clearer definition as someone who gets paid for programming? Is having the professional developer moniker mean that they have a related job title, use a specific number of programming languages, spend a specific amount of time developing, know a wide range of development tools, platforms, frameworks, libraries and architectures? Depending on who you talk with, there are many additional titles and terms we use to talk about who and what a developer is.
How Developers Self Identify?
There are many ways to talk about who writes programs for a living and for fun. When Evans Data (EDC) works with our clients, we are often helping them to understand how many professional developers there are in the world and how this number is growing. The research results are published in the EDC Global Developer Population and Demographic Study and also appear in EDC press releases, infographics and presentations:
EDC research shows that there are approximately 22 million professional developers in the world today. At this year’s Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC 2017) Tim Cook announced that Apple has 16 million registered developers for their devices and platforms (up 3 million from the previous year).
What Developer Titles do you Track?
In a developer relations program, depending on your product, service, device, platform, framework or other offerings, you’ll reach out to a range of different types of developers. You will need to communicate and create content that speaks to the various different developers and expertise levels. Here are a few (of the many) ways to name someone that builds software for a company, for their customers and for themselves:
- Professional Developer
- Application Developer
- Systems Developer
- Full Stack Developer
- Modern Developer
- Programmer
- Software Engineer
- Hacker
- Maker
- Coder
- Hobbyist
- Situational Developer
- Occupational Developer
- Citizen Developer

What types of Developers does your Developer Relations Program speak To?
if your developer outreach program identifies additional developer personas, send me an email with the job titles that you reach out to.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://devnet.evansdata.org/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
by David I | Aug 11, 2017 | Developer Marketing, Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Webinar |
As part of my August 2017 DevRelate webinar, “Developer Marketing & Developer Relations – Similarities & Differences“, August 8 & 10, I’ve put together additional background research and information about several high level aspects for each team member. In this blog post I am focusing on the audiences, metrics and ROI. Take a look at each of the aspects and let me know what you think about the details related to your own experiences and knowledge of industry experts you interact with.

Audiences
What are the audiences that Developer Marketing and Developer Relations team members focus on? In creating the documents, messages, presentations and preparations for meetings, there are many audiences that will be targeted. In my years as a developer, manager, executive and advocate, I have talked to customers at all levels of their organization. I’ve given presentations to focused audiences and also larger diverse audiences. Here is a list of common audience members that Developer Marketing and Developer Relations members talk with, present to and write for.
- C-Level
- Division/Department Manager
- Technical / Development Manager
- Project Lead / Team Leader
- Developer / Software Engineer
- Software Architect
- Researcher
- Product/Marketing Manager
- Business Development
- ISV
- OEM
- Students
- Hobbyist/Tinkerer/Maker
- Thought Leaders
- Authors
- Editors

Metrics and ROI
Measuring everything that Developer Marketing and Developer Relations team members do is key to constantly improving outreach, messaging, lead generation and enhancing a company’s top and bottom line. Some metrics and ROI measures are direct and straightforward. Other metrics and ROI measures are harder to directly attribute to specific events, content generated and interactions. Several sure ways to track more results is by coding everything via calls to actions at conferences, meetups, hackathons, meetings, presentations, panels, etc. Adding short URLs for follow up activities, codes to include in product orders, and spaces to tell everyone what why a developer made a decision, purchased a product, attended a follow on event will help add to your metrics and ROI calculations. Here are several metrics and ROI measures that Developer Marketing and Developer Relations team members should track.
- Leads
- Revenue (Direct/Indirect)
- Developer Satisfaction
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Market Share/Growth
- Technology/Product Adoption
- Product Quality/Improvements
- Developer Retention/Renewals
- Content Creation
- Followers/Likes/Reposts/Retweets
- Developer Credibility
Additional Webinar Information and Links
You can find additional links and information for the webinar at https://www.devrelate.com/devmktg-devrel-infolinks/.
How do you Measure Developer Marketing and Developer Relations activities, time spent, and budget spend?
Send me an email with additional metrics and ROI measures that you use to track your successes, improvements and things to fix. If you have additional developer focused audiences, pass them along as well.

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/
by David I | May 24, 2017 | Developer Relations, DevRelate |
With the recent WannaCry ransomeware attack on sites around the world, you might wonder whether your Developer Community site is secure. You might also consider helping your developer program members ensure that they are using security best practices as well.
Cyber security has become one of the hottest issues today, but Evans Data’s just released Global Development Survey shows that only 31% of software developers say their company has an overall formal security policy that is uniformly adhered to throughout the organization. More companies, 34%, have an informal policy that is adopted by various departments throughout the company, while another quarter either have no particular policy or one that is piecemeal and defined by the various departments themselves.
In last November’s DevRelate blog post, “Security Chops for your Developer Relations Program and Team Members“, I encouraged all developer relations team members, whether they are part of a security based company or not, to be able to speak to the security aspects of software development. DevRel advocates should also be able to assure their members that the developer community site and APIs developers use are safe from security problems.

Less Than a Third of Companies Have an Overall Cyber Security Policy
Evans Data’s recent press release, “Less Than a Third of Companies Have an Overall Cyber Security Policy“, reports that developers within the APAC region are the most likely to cite an overall formal cyber security strategy, according to the global survey of over 1500 developers in conducted in six languages over four major geographical regions. In North America and the EMEA region companies are more likely to have an informal policy that does not extend across the whole enterprise. EMEA is also the region where more companies with no particular policy at all are found.

In addition, only 26% of developers worldwide say they are developing their apps to run on secure and trusted systems. However an additional 19% expect to be doing this within the next 6 months.
“Recent events have highlighted the need for enhanced cyber security,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, “but security has been a top issue for software developers for quite some time and across many disciplines. We have consistently seen the developers themselves citing security as a chief concern so there is frustration that their companies aren’t taking an overall approach.”
Evans Data Global Development Survey
The Global Development Survey is conducted twice a year with broad topic focus on issues such as Platforms, Languages, Development Lifecycle and Tools, Blockchain development, Artificial Intelligence and Big data, Mobility, Cloud, High Performance Computing, Databases, Security, Game Development and more.
See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents
Practice Secure Computing and Help your Developers Members Do the Same
Do your developer relations team members have security chops? Do your advocates keep track of the state of the art in secure computing? Does your developer relations site have the right security features? Do you help your developer community members practice secure computing? If your answers to some of these questions are no or I’m not sure, now is the time to increase your security chops!

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