by David I | Mar 20, 2018 | Conference, Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, Evans Data |
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.

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

Janel Garvin, Evans 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 Cutsinger, Amazon – 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 Jacobi, IBM – 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 Kawasaki, Canva – 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 Chandler, Intel – 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 Ramji, Google – 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 Aglietti, ThingWorx – VP of Developer Relations
Mithun Dhar, HERE – General Manager Developer Relations (Evangelism, Marketing, Engineering, and Product Management)
JJ Kass, Dropbox – Head of Developer Programs
Andrew Lee, Airbnb – Business Development and Developer Relations
Lothar Schubert, GE 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 Scheven, AngelHack – 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 Rasalan, Evans 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 Riley, Fixate 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 Schmidt, DZone – 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 Simpkins, Microsoft – Director, Azure Developer Marketing
Virtual Event ROI: Experiments and Learnings
Larry McDonough, VMware – Director, Product Management
Beyond the Portal: An Innovative Developer Engagement Approach
Desiree Motamedi, Facebook – Head of Developer Product Marketing
Developers and the Future of Technology
Mike Guerette, Red Hat – Global Developer Program Manager
Starting a Developer Program Begins with Data
Lothar Schubert, GE Digital – Director, Developer Relations / Product Marketing
Building Sticky Relationships with Developer Experiences
Marie Huwe, DocuSign – VP, Developer Programs and Evangelism
Developer Market Segmentation: Who are developers and what do they want?
Kris Chant, Salesforce – Developer Relations Director
Using Community to Grow your Developer Program
Scott Burnell, Ford Motor Company – Global Lead, Business Development & Partner Management
WIIFM?
Michelle Little, Evans Data Corp – Analyst
Digging Deeper: Understanding Developer Motivations.
Julie Anderson, HP 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
by David I | Sep 5, 2017 | Developer News, DevRelate |
Evans Data put out a press release on August 23, 2017 that reported results of a recent cloud development survey. The report showed that almost half of all developers working in and/or deploying to a Cloud are deploying and delivering environmental configurations as instances of immutable architecture (46%) in development testing and production, with only slightly less (42%) doing the same with microservices according to Evans Data Corp’s newly released Cloud Development Survey.

In addition to those currently delivering environmental configurations as immutable architectures an additional 37% are experimenting with this technology but haven’t put it into production yet. As for microservices, an additional 34% are evaluating and 15% expect to experiment with microservices in the next year.
“There’s an obvious affinity between microservices and immutable architecture,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data. “Containers in general as well as microservices can embrace immutability which enhances reliability and reduces the dependence on heavy weight installers and configuration management software. The developers are telling us the time for this evolution has come.”
The survey also showed that the most common types of applications that are containerized are Business to Business applications, followed by backend development, and while the vast majority of those who use containers use some kind of orchestration tools, the orchestrator that most use is the one that ships with the container software they use.
VMware, Pivotal, Google jointly announce PKS (Pivotal Container Service)
I attended VMWare’s recent VMWorld 2017 conference in Las Vegas. During the Tuesday morning keynote, Pat Gelsinger (VMware CEO), Michael Dell (Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO), Rob Mee (Pivotal CEO) and Sam Ramji (Google Cloud VP) were on stage to announce that the companies are working together to simplify the creation, deployment, orchestration and management of containers at enterprise scale.

Their work will allow enterprise developers to integrate “production ready” VMware vSphere, Google Container Engine, Bosh, Kubo and Kubernetes. During the keynote it was also announced that VMware and Pivotal were joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation at the platinum level. Pricing and Availability information from the VMware press release: “PKS is expected to become available in calendar Q4 2017. Pricing details to be released upon general availability.”

Evans Data Cloud Development Survey 2017, Volume 1
The survey of developers currently developing in or deploying to the Cloud was fielded in June 2017 and provides a margin of error of 4.4%. The full 187 page report includes sections on Cloud Developer Demographics, Migrating to a Cloud, Containers, DevOps and the Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Mobile IoT and the Cloud, Security and Governance, and much more!
See the complete Table of Contents and Methodology here: Table of Contents

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 | Feb 23, 2017 | Developer Community, Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, Essential Features |
Larry McDonough, Director of Product Management for the Developer Ecosystems at VMware, is giving a cool looking talk at the upcoming 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference (March 27 & 28) in Palo Alto California. The full title of Larry’s talk is “DevRel Judo: Leveraging your company’s organizational structure to build a stronger Developer Relations team”. Larry has given talks at several of the past conferences and is an intelligent and engaging presenter.

DevRel Judo
Developer Relations is traditionally a centralized function, but what if you don’t have a dedicated DevRel team? Can a decentralized DevRel team succeed? This presentation will highlight the dynamic and sometimes rocky journey that VMware has traveled regarding Developer Relations and the pros and cons of a decentralized structure. I’ll talk about identifying and understanding developer personas, sharing standard developer relations functions across business units, managing resources and clarifying responsibilities, the importance of relationships with the product teams, and of course, constructing analytics to measure shared progress and success. The purpose is to help you strengthen your DevRel teams by exploring your own company’s structure, it’s impact on your success and how you can leverage it’s strengths to improve developer outreach.

VMware {code} covered in this week’s “Learn the Secret Sauce of Developer Relations Programs” DevRelate Webinar
VMware’s developer program, VMware {code} was one of five spotlight programs that I covered in this week’s DevRelate webinar, “Learn the Secret Sauce of Developer Relations Programs“. I also had the opportunity to ask Larry a few questions about VMware’s developer program and developer outreach.
Here are my questions and Larry’s answers.
Q: What are the top three benefits to your company in having a developer relations program?
Good for Us: Health of our ecosystem. Our DevRel program, launched last year, is called “VMware {code}” and it’s main mission is to make sure developers new to our platform can easily get started, learn about our SDKs and APIs, and get connected with the larger VMware community.
Good for Customers: Adds value to our solutions. As a virtualization platform company, we can’t be experts in every vertical market segment. For areas where there are gaps in our solution coverage, or that require specialized vertical segment expertise (like disaster recovery, security and anti-virus, etc.) our partners have opportunities to complete the solution story for customers.
Good for Developers: On-ramp to “Partner” status. Partner engagements at VMware are taken very seriously, and it’s a big leap from a member of a free developer program to our TAP (Technology Alliance Partner) program levels. TAP Access is $750/yr and TAP Elite is $7,500/yr. These programs provide a lot of business value to partners by enabling special integrations, technical support, and customer leads.
Q. Where does the VMware developer relations team/program live inside the company’s organization?
It’s distributed; but there’s a central organization called “ROCS” for R&D Operations and Central Services that’s responsible for hosting and managing all the centralized developer and partner infrastructure that’s used by all the other groups. This is the group where I work. We manage our developer/partner portal, developer and partner programs, partner product certifications, compatibility guide, and coming soon, a centralized marketplace micro-service. Business units are responsible for keeping their developer content up to date on the developer portal. All Developer Marketing, Events, Newsletters, blogs, Slack and social networking is handled out of Digital Marketing. And lastly, all partner go-to-market (non-technical) engagement is handled out of our Partner Alliances team.
Q. How many applications have been created using the VMware SDKs/APIs?
The number of apps is very hard to measure. We have over 100k SDKs downloaded per year and a lot of development is for on-prem purposes. Our Office of the CTO has a site they call “Flings” where a lot of really cool apps are highlighted: https://labs.vmware.com/flings/ It’s not part of VMware {code}, and it’s all built by VMware engineers. But they’re very popular and I’m exploring how to integrate these with VMware {code}
Q. I noticed that the VMware Developer Center and VMware Code are now one and the same. What were some of the reasons for combining them together?
Great question! The main driver is to centralize developer outreach infrastructure. The previous VMware {code} site was a simple WordPress site maintained by our Digital Marketing team. They are really good at community building and hosting events, but they didn’t have any core developer goodies to offer like SDKs, API explorer, Sample exchange to name a few. Developer Center had those, but no market resources to get the word out, organize events, and build community. It just made sense to merge. This has been a goal of mine for 2 years. Together, we’ve now get the strength/weight to strongly encourage the Business Units to build their developer outreach on us and not recreate their own thing. This is where all the micro-site work comes in this year.
Q. Are there any other key performance indicators statistics that you track and provide to VMware management to keep them informed and supporting how the developer program is doing?
Our big focus this year will be member registration and developer engagement. I’ll be tracking how these track to our social media efforts and actual events. Of course, we track closely SDK downloads and community engagement as well.
Q. Is there anything else that you’d like to add about the VMware program its uniqueness and where do you see developer relations and developer outreach going in the future?
We’re going to continue to invest in the DevOps area since that’s a big ecosystem surrounding our products. We’re also going to be encouraging a lot more open source engagement.

Larry McDonough Bio
Larry McDonough is the Director of Product Management for the Developer Ecosystems at VMware. He has previously presented on his work in numerous topics affecting developers including Developer Relations & DevOps, Developer Evangelism, Home Automation/IoT, Mobile App Security, and Android Development. Larry has a BS in Computer Science from University of California Riverside and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management.
Follow VMware {code} on Twitter
13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference
To see Larry’s talk, six keynotes, additional sessions and network with developer relations program managers and experts, register for the 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference taking place in Palo Alto, March 27-28, 2017 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. You can find the full conference schedule with information about all of the keynotes, sessions, speakers and the all day Sunday DevRel Boot Camp (March 26, 2017) on the conference website at https://evansdata.com/drc/.
Register for the Conference
As a thank you for reading the DevRelate blog, use code DRCSocial17 to save $100 off your conference pass!
by David I | Feb 21, 2017 | Developer Outreach, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Spotlight, Webinar |
As part of my DevRelate webinar presentation, “Learn the Secret Sauce of Developer Relations Programs“, I am providing the links to the secret sauce info for the developer relations programs, highlighted features and other resources that I used in this week’s webinar. As I mention in the webinar, Evans’s Data Tactical Marketing – Developer Marketing and Developer Relations Programs – developer research reports and Developer Program Assessments are based on the years of Evans Data Developer Marketing and Developer Relations Program research, developers tell our clients that they care about many factors in a program and its outreach. I’ve created a long form checklist to do in-depth evaluations of Developer Programs. To get started I use my subset “At-a-Glance” checklist to do a quick evaluation program offerings. The long form checklist and quick check relate directly align with the results of our primary developer research.
Evans Data Tactical Marketing Reports
You can find the table of contents and a few sample pages from each report on the pages linked below. Contact our salesx team if you want to purchase the reports. The release schedule for all of our 2017 research reports can be found at https://evansdata.com/reports/release_schedule.php
At-a Glance Checklist – “Quick Look”
My “At-a-Glance” checklist is the starting point for a quick look that I take when exploring a developer relations program. The items I look for include:
- SDK(s) / API(s)
- Programming languages
- Code / Samples Repository
- Platforms / OS supported
- Content / Knowledge
- Social Networks / Blogs
- Answers
- Forums / Newsgroups
- Spoken languages
- Developer Support
- Events / Activities
- Developer Program Cost
Developer Program Spotlights
Here are links to the five programs that I spotlight in this webinar. I will add additional links during the week.
AngelHack’s Tips and Tricks for Successful Hackathons
AngelHack is this year’s sponsor of the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference 2017 Boot Camp. Here are some tips and tricks that they’ve provided for holding and participating in successful hackathons.

Email me if you need additional help, links, tools, info
I will keep updating this blog post throughout the week. If you have tools, links and other resources to add, send me an email. If you would like me to work on a Developer Program Spotlight for your program, contact me via email.

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/