Assessing a Bad Developer Program – Webinar links and information

by | Apr 26, 2017 | Developer Relations, Webinar |

Today and tomorrow I am presenting the April 2017 DevRelate webinar “Assessing a Bad Developer Program Site and Prescribing Fixes to Rescue It“. This companion blog post contains links to resources and additional information covered in the webinar presentation. This post will be updated with additional information throughout the week as the five webinar sessions take place. Bookmark this post and come back for additional links.

Assess Last Slide

Example Bad Developer Program Site

Eureka Digital Works (a fictitious company) – used as an example of a developer site with multiple bad practices – http://www.eurekadigitalworks.com/

 

Smells

  • Code Smells – quoting Martin Fowler, author of “Refactoring, Improving the Design of Existing Code“, “a code smell is a surface indication that usually corresponds to a deeper problem in the system”.
  • Developer Program Smells – this is my term for developer community sites and developer relations programs that exhibit less than the best practices you will find on other sites. These smells highlight the opposite of what global developers tell Evans Data about those things that are most important in a program and community. You’ll find complete coverage of developer findings in our Developer Marketing and Developer Relations Program annual surveys

 

DevRelate blog posts related to Best Practices for a Developer Program

Resources

Evans Data Tactical Marketing Reports

  • Developer Marketing Survey 2017 – A survey of software developers’ attitudes about the marketing tools and programs used to promote and sell products to them. Provides invaluable insight for your developer marketing campaign.
  • Developer Relations Survey 2017 – This comprehensive study of over 500 software developers examines issues and elements of developer programs. This report provides invaluable insight for your developer program.

 

What to do if your Developer Relations Program Needs Help?

Send me an email if your developer relations program has some of these bad smells. We can help you to bring your outreach to world class levels with Evans Data primary research, , competitive benchmarking / awareness tracking,  discovering developer personas specific to your technology, developer program workshops/assessments and more. You can also contact the Evans Data Sales team to find out more about our strategic reports and services.

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/

 

Less than Best Practices for Developer Marketing and Developer Relations

by | Mar 20, 2017 | Developer Community, Developer Community Interactions, Developer Relations, DevRelate, Essential Features |

Next week, at the 13th Annual Evans Data Developer Relations Conference (#DRC2017), I will be giving a talk titled “Assessing a Bad Developer Program and Prescribing Fixes to Rescue It”. DRC2017 takes place March 27 and 28 in Palo Alto California at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. In this session, I will take you on a tour of a bad developer outreach program. You’ll see some of the worst practices of developer marketing, developer relations, deliverables for developers, SDKs/APIs, content, social media, videos and more. I could take attendees on a tour of some of the worst examples of technology company developer programs, but I won’t. Instead, I have created a fictitious company, “Eureka Digital Works” that has a developer relations program that has some serious problems. Come to my session and see how I’ve prescribed the fixes to rescue it.

bad developer outreach

Examples of Bad Developer Outreach

Here are a few signs (in no particular order) that you might be part of a bad developer community and the outreach that should be avoided in your developer marketing, developer relations and developer community.

  • Too much sales and marketing in a technical newsletter
  • Ads in technical white papers, technical articles, uses cases, and developer blog posts
  • Developer outreach emails that contain more sales information and less technical information
  • Webinars that are advertised as “How To(s)” but contain mostly sales pitches
  • Quick Start Guides that contain too many pages and steps
  • How To articles that are more than 5 pages long
  • How To videos that are hours long
  • Developer Community site that is full of large sales and marketing ad banners
  • A Developer Conference that is more sales and marketing and less technical
  • Lack of developer tutorials on the developer community site
  • Missing or out of date documentation for APIs and SDKs
  • Unskilled, Untrained, non-engineer staff answering technical questions on a developer community forum
  • Lack of or slow response to critical bug reports
  • The developer feedback black hole – asking developers for suggestions, road map items, etc. but not accepting any of them
  • Lack of new, timely content, blog posts, events, videos, and other staples of a well run developer relations program

 

Developers and Developer Relations Professionals – send me your less than best practices examples

Calling all developers: if you have a list of things on your worst list for developer outreach, send me an email and I will add them to my list. Calling all developer relations professionals: if you have things you have tried that caused your developer community members to push back, send me an email and I will add them to my list.

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/