Next Week: Evans Data Developer Relations Conference 2018 – Guy Kawasaki, live focus group and more

There’s less than a week until the start of the 14th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Palo Alto California (March 25-27). With 6 keynote speakers, break out sessions, workshops, a Sunday boot camp, round table discussions and loads of time for networking, this year’s conference will be a spectacular opportunity to move your developer program to higher levels of success. There are only a few seats left for this one of a kind conference focused on developer relations best practices, developer program excellence and optimal developer outreach.

Reserve one of the final seats!

Here are a few of the “can’t miss” things that are happening during the conference.

Keynote Speakers

Janel GarvinEvans Data Corp – Founder and CEO
Hot Topics in Software Development 2018
Janel will draw on multiple recent Evans Data development surveys to give a broad overview of the current development landscape spanning Cloud, Big Data, AI, Machine Learning, Mobile and IoT.

Paul CutsingerAmazon – Head of Alexa Voice Design Education
Anatomy of an Amazon Alexa Evangelist
Who are they? What makes them tick? What do they accomplish? In this session, you’ll get a behind the scenes look at how the Alexa evangelism team operates and what we strive to achieve.

Jonas JacobiIBM – Head of Developer Advocacy, Worldwide
IBM and The Developer Economy
Jonas will discuss how IBM has, in less than 12 months, changed its developer engagement strategy, changed the senior executive teams perspective of the developer economy, and rallied the entire company behind the mission to become the most trusted and respected technology company in the World.

Guy KawasakiCanva – Chief Evangelist
Developer Relations “Fireside” Chat
David Intersimone (“David I”), Evans Data’s Vice President of Developer Communities, will host a conversation with Guy Kawasaki covering developer relations best practice and experiences. They’ll also take questions from conference attendees. Kawasaki was chief evangelist of Apple and David was chief evangelist for Borland/Embarcadero Technologies’ Developer Tools Group.

Roger ChandlerIntel – Vice President & General Manager, Developer Programs & Initiatives
Co-Designing the Future with the Developer Ecosystem
For decades Intel has partnered with software developers around the world to define, deliver, and improve their products. Learn how Intel co-designs user-focused platforms with the software ecosystem, makes it easier for developers to better harness the capabilities of Intel products, and helps ISVs to better sell their software products. This talk will provide specific examples from IOT, Artificial Intelligence, PC Gaming, and Virtual Reality to make it all fit together so that end-users are delighted and developers can grow their business.

Sam RamjiGoogle – Vice President of Product Management for Google Cloud Platform
Open, cloudy, platform-shaped: developer relations for a new normal
Open source is ascendant. Digital platforms are shaking up the Fortune 500. Cloud is eating the glass house. As stewards of the profession, we share an awesome responsibility to define new best practices for developer relations in a changing world. This presentation shares what we’ve learned at Google on the journey we all are on to the future of Dev Rel.

Expert Panel, Round Table Discussions, Live On-Stage Developer Focus Group

Future Directions for Developer Relations and Developer Technologies
Our panel of experts will discuss the future of developer programs and how new technologies are reshaping the features, conversations and deliverables for every developer community.
Moderator: David Intersimone (“David I”), Evans Data – Vice President of Developer Communities
Panelists:
Michael AgliettiThingWorx – VP of Developer Relations
Mithun DharHERE – General Manager Developer Relations (Evangelism, Marketing, Engineering, and Product Management)
JJ KassDropbox – Head of Developer Programs
Andrew LeeAirbnb – Business Development and Developer Relations
Lothar SchubertGE Digital – Director, Developer Relations

Hot Topic Round Table Discussions

Join your colleagues for in-depth roundtable discussions on topics that matter in Developer Relations, including: Measuring ROI and Metrics, Utilizing Social Media to Attract and Engage Developers, Scaling a DevRel Team, Running Hackathons and Events, Effectively Communicating with Developers, API success factors, Educating and Training Developer Communities, and the Art of Internal Evangelism.

Live Onstage Developer Focus Group – This is your chance to ask developers what you want to know – a panel of developers answer the questions you submit.
Moderator: David Intersimone (“David I”), Evans Data – Vice President of Developer Communities

Workshops

Kristen SchevenAngelHack – Chief Marketing Officer
Sustainable Growth Marketing: Building a Developer Ecosystem that Lasts
People throw around the term growth hacking often, but very rarely does it lead to community growth that lasts. During this workshop, we’ll build a marketing action plan that focuses on creating a sustainable and diverse developer foundation through content marketing, email drip campaigns, developer outreach and complementary innovation programs.

Michael RasalanEvans Data – Director of Research
Benchmarking Developer Program Offerings and Quantifying User Satisfaction
To accurately target the developer market for your tools and services, segmentation is vital. This is commonly done by classifying developers by the types of applications they create. This typology is valuable and delivers results focused on developer targets, but sometimes you might want to look at developers by other segments. This interactive workshop looks at how various ways to segment the developer population and provides a jumping off point for examining developers that will allow you to expand your reach.

Yolanda Fintschenko, Ph.D.Fixate IO – Co-Founder and Chris RileyFixate IO – Co-Founder
The A to Z of Practitioner Content Marketing
In this workshop, we will define practitioner content marketing and how it compares to public relations, demand gen, and influencer marketing. We will then build a practitioner content marketing strategy with workshop participants.

Matt SchmidtDZone – President
Building the Ideal Developer Community
A key component of a mature developer relations strategy is the effective use of community. How do devs on your team communicate and collaborate? What is the average amount of time it takes them to get answers? What if you could reduce the amount to time your team spends hunting down resources and resolving issues? A productive and engaged developer community can help your company reach its goals faster and cheaper, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Attend our workshop for a hands-on planning workshop that walks attendees through the process of launching an online developer community that is sure to be a success.

Breakout Sessions

Cliff SimpkinsMicrosoft – Director, Azure Developer Marketing
Virtual Event ROI: Experiments and Learnings 

Larry McDonoughVMware – Director, Product Management
Beyond the Portal: An Innovative Developer Engagement Approach

Desiree MotamediFacebook – Head of Developer Product Marketing
Developers and the Future of Technology

Mike GueretteRed Hat – Global Developer Program Manager
Starting a Developer Program Begins with Data

Lothar SchubertGE Digital – Director, Developer Relations / Product Marketing
Building Sticky Relationships with Developer Experiences

Marie HuweDocuSign – VP, Developer Programs and Evangelism
Developer Market Segmentation: Who are developers and what do they want?

Kris ChantSalesforce – Developer Relations Director
Using Community to Grow your Developer Program

Scott BurnellFord Motor Company – Global Lead, Business Development & Partner Management
WIIFM?

Michelle LittleEvans Data Corp – Analyst
Digging Deeper: Understanding Developer Motivations.

Julie AndersonHP Inc. – Developer Outreach Program Manager
Outreach in the Enterprise: Using Hackathons to Create Culture Change at HP Inc.

Sunday Boot Camp

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.

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.

Boot Camp Faculty:

David Intersimone “David I” – Evans Data Corp – Vice President of Developer Communities
Michael Rasalan – Evans Data Corp – Director of Research
Scott Burnell – Ford Motor Company – Global Lead, Business Development & Partner Management
Michael Aglietti – ThingWorx – VP Developer Programs

Date: Sunday March 25, 2018
Time: 9am – 5:00pm

https://evansdata.com/drc/2018/bootcamp.php

 

Providing a Systems and Services Status Page and API for your Developers

When a developer’s app is built using one or more remote services and a problem occurs, users will start reporting a problem. Users will not necessarily know what is causing the problem. It could be issues with a cloud based service’s API, a cloud storage system or a bug in the software. How can your app know what the problem? Developer programs that provides services and APIs should also provide a live, frequently updated status page.  Providing status APIs and pages allows the software, developers, partners, ISVs and even end users to track down problems. Ultimately the solution to any problem is the responsibility of the app developer (and company) regardless of where the fault is. Well designed and implemented developer programs should provide an API to check status and receive notifications for apps to fail-over, recover, fail gracefully and display problem information and solutions to users.

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Developer System Status Pages

Here are a few developer program system status pages that I’ve found in my research and assessments. Some sites also provide APIs, feeds and subscriptions to program and API status information.

Status Page Hosting and API services

Altassian, for example, provides to customers a status page hosting service and API. You can find details of the developer service at https://www.statuspage.io/. Here is a list of some of the companies that use the hosting and API service:

 

3rd Party Status Check Sites

There are several 3rd party status check sites that monitor popular sites and provide an edit box to input a URL. You can use these services to see if another site/service is up or down. Some, like DownDetector, provide APIs (for a fee) to check on service status.

 

Do you provide a service status page and status API as part of your developer program?

If you have your developer service status and API, send me an email with additional information and the links to the status page and API.

David I Facebook Avatar

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/

 

 

 

 

Running a DevRel Program in the Cloud

During my Evans Data Developer Relations Conference 2016 technical session, “Best Practices for a World Class Developer Relations Program”, I presented a slide that was titled “DevRel Program in the Cloud”. The ideas on the slide included the cloud based resources (many that are free) that could be used to run a “virtual” developer relations program using readily available services. Here is the list, with links, for the services I talked about during that portion of my presentation.

DevRel Program in the Cloud

  • Content Sharing/Storage – You can place your white papers, articles, blog posts and other files on many different sharing sites including: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc. Check out the article “Free Cloud Storage” on thebalance.com.
  • Videos – Every company can have a YouTube channel and most do. You can organize your videos into playlists, track subscribers, watch times, and more. Facebook also allows video uploads and streaming.
  • Webinars – There are many ways to give live video presentations and webinars. Here are a few of many: FaceBook Live, YouTube Live, LiveCoding.tv, Skype Group Video and Twitch for Developers.
  • Feeds – to track developer news, articles, competitors and more – there are many RSS feed readers and systems available including: Feedly and InoReader. There are many others.
  • Questions & Answers – StackOverflow is the one you want to definitely use for developers. StackOverflow is the first place most developers go to ask questions and find answers. Remember to use tags appropriate to your company, brand, products and services.
  • Feature requests – Wantoo, Userback just to name two free and fee services. You should also check out Uservoice. There are many others you can try.
  • Code Sample repositories – Here are the “big four” if you need version control for your code samples (see content sharing/storage above if you just need to put files up for download) – GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket, CodeProject.
  • Event Calendar – TeamUp and Google Calendar just to name two. Also check out Bitrix24.
  • Social Marketing Sites – create your own pages, groups and more – the top four to definitely use include LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, Google+.
  • Social Marketing Tools – Buffer and Hootsuite have free service levels.
  • Newsgroups – Google Groups, Tumblr, Google+, Reddit (Note: when your Reddit account is more than 30 days old and you have acquired a small amount of positive karma, you can create a subreddit of your own)
  • Finding content about your company, products, services – Google Alerts
  • Meetings/UserGroups – meetup.com – find like minded developers and visit with them or create your own meetups, schedule meetings and go meet with developers.

What cloud based services do you use for your DevRel program?

DevRel Program in the Cloud davidi_tiedye_sm_180x180 David I in Polo colored

There are so many cloud based services that can help you run your Developer Relations program. I have only quickly scratched the surface about what is possible. Send me an email and let me know what cloud based services work for your Developer Relations program. davidi@evansdata.com

PS: Check out my recent blog post about the tools and services I use for developer evangelism.