What is DevRel with Salma Alam-Naylor

I sure hope you're hungry.

Hoo. I'm starving.

Wash those hands, pull up a chair, and secure that feed bag, because it's time to listen to Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos attempt to use human language to converse with and pick the brains of other developers. I thought there was gonna be food, so buckle up and grab that old handle because this ride is going to get wild.

This is the Syntax supper club.

Welcome Welcome to Syntax.

On this Friday's supper club, we're gonna be talking all things DevRel with Salma Alam Naylor, And we're going to be just diving into what the heck DevRel is as a career, what makes for effective DevRel, what type of things are Or, like, you know, give you the DevRel ick in that regard. So we're gonna be going through all sorts of really interesting topics in regards to developer relations.

With me as always is Wes Bos. Wes, how's it going? Hey. Pretty good. Excited to talk to Salma today.

Yeah. And, before we introduce Selma, one really neat thing about Selma is that she also works for Sentry, which is the perfect place to track and, log all of your errors and exceptions.

And it could be really cool if, you know, you have some Bugs in your code to load up Sentry and log that stuff so you can solve it for later. So head on over to century.i0.

Use the coupon code tasty treat, all lower case, 1 word, and you get 2 months For free. Alright. With that long intro out of the way, Salma, welcome to the show. How's it going? Hi. Very well. Thank you.

Yeah. It's great segue with the whole century thing.

I've been at century now for 8, 9 weeks 9 weeks this week is going well. Wow. I'm enjoying it very much.

Yeah. Yeah. How's the transition been? It's do you know what? Sentry, at times, feels like a very big company and not a start up, which is very different to the last 2 places I was at doing DevRel.

Lots of people to meet,

lots of things to know, but I kinda feel like I'm at that stage where I feel like I've been here for years already now. So that's cool. Yeah. They do a good job of making you feel like you're you're part of the the squad right away. I had not worked for anybody for, like, 10 years. So when I got into all the onboarding, it was like, oh, I gotta do all this stuff.

Oh, man.

Onboarding is like a whole another world, and I hate it so much because I just wanna get on with my job. But you can't really get on with your job until you have onboarded.

So it's, it's a necessary evil, I believe.

It's a necessary evil. Also, so your past Work history, you are also a senior dev rel for Netlify. You are a developer advent advocate for Contentful, and I saw

that you went to the school For music. Is that correct? Yeah. I did a music degree. Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester is actually one of the top conservatoires in in the world, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I did a 4 year degree writing music. Yeah. I also went to school for music. So Oh. Yeah. Fellow music major. Nice. Yeah. I I actually, I, I've been meaning to write a blog post, do a talk, make a video,

actually, about How writing code is exactly like writing music. Yeah. Yeah. There's the rules. You you can break the rules if you know the rules. You can't break the rules if you don't know them. Perfect. Well, you've nailed it on I don't need to make that talk or video anymore.

Let's get into DevRel.

First and foremost, You know, people listening might not know what DevRel even is. They may have seen the term around. Do you wanna give a high level? What is DevRel? Day to day, what do you do? So the problem with DevRel is that it's

different everywhere, and it doesn't look the same in any 1, 2 companies.

And I guess I've gone head on into the problem straightaway. But what you might see in DevRel is Traditionally, on the outside. Right? So dev rel is a very outward facing role. It's, it's there to serve the community And also serve the needs of the company to help improve the product and help, help the improve the developer experience of the product and generally promote and market the product as well.

You'll see DevRel exist in generally one of 3 departments in a company.

They might be placed with engineering. They might be placed with product, or they might be placed with marketing.

Ideally, DevRel needs to be its own thing, but I haven't really seen a company do that yet. And I think because, generally, DevRel teams are quite small that it doesn't really warrant A whole new organization being spun up in inside a product, company, especially start ups.

So DevRel is is there to serve the community, and that might be through creating content educational content, such as videos, blog posts, Podcasts like this one, and anything else that the community needs. And and those community needs are gonna be different per product and per company. So it's up to the DevRel department to assess those needs and evolve and iterate upon them as, they see fit.

And, One of the core parts of DevRel that often gets overlooked and get gets lost is that need for, Authenticity.

Right? So, generally, DevRel departments are made up of developers.

And There are some nontechnical roles in DevRel, which we can get to later. But at the core of DevRel is the developer.

And You need to be able to speak to developers in developers' language languages as you as you do, And, and you need to have empathy for those developers to understand the problems they might be facing, to preempt some of the problems they might be facing with a product, And to be able to translate that back to product and marketing and engineering as well, often, DevRel is labeled as the bridge between everyone, between the community and product departments and engineering departments and marketing departments.

That can get quite a bit much because you might hear, DevRel People say that they have to wear many, many hats and, which and Deveril is very notorious, because of this, for burnout And, very much overworking because, also, with this whole authenticity thing that I was speaking about, a lot of people who work in dev rel, they do their own things on the side, and I got into dev rel by doing my own things on the side. And often, People who work in this industry will continue to do their own things on the side with their full time job, Serving even more people and, giving even more out there.

And, so it can get a bit much. I have waffled. And I know you like waffling and and talking and going on tangents, and that's good. But, I mean, that's pretty much it. I probably missed loads. It makes sense because, like, I think about

my interactions with DevRel in the past. And, generally, it's When I have an issue with something or I'm confused about how a specific item works is, Usually, that's, like, your your first point of contact. Right? Like, it's not it's not just support, but it's, I'm trying to understand, like, Which of these products would would make sense? Or I'm trying to understand how would I architect this? Or I'm not understanding what I should use in this specific use Often that that role will say, alright, here. Here's an example of of how you do it.

So they they both help you, but then they also probably turn around and say, we need Better docs on this. We need I need to do a video on this. And, sometimes you see, Lee from Versal is really good at this is When there is outrage about something in Next. Js or when there is, like, a big blog post about how how much Next. Js sucks, He he doesn't say, like, no, you're wrong. But he says, alright, there's some misunderstanding about how this thing works.

Let me explain how I would approach this type of thing. So he he you're both facing towards the community, but then you also got to turn around and say, alright, engineering, maybe we can make this a little bit easier. Doc's team, maybe we can do a little bit more here. So, yeah, you're right. There is you're kind of a bridge between a lot of the Lot of the community and,

the rest of the company. Exactly. And there is a misconception that people in dev route just go and do conferences And just make fun videos online and just get to have fun all day. But there's Yeah. There's a lot more to it, like you described.

And then also that goes further into marketing.

So, like, we advise the marketing departments How best to promote to developers a particular feature, what language to use, what type of Content to use to target developers in certain situations because we are the ones who will usually be marketed to. And we have to then also keep Quite a lot of tabs on how other people are being marketed to and and what marketing works on us.

I like to think that no marketing works on me whatsoever, but there is a particular type of marketing that does work on me, and that is Marketing from individuals.

Right? So say if someone comes along I have a really good example of this. Someone comes along and, you probably can't see this if you're not watching any type of video, but here is a keyboard cleaning brush. Right? It's retractable.

It's got 2 ends. 1 end for this for kind of hairy bits on one end for dust. And I was sold this by a friend, also in DevRel, who really loved it. And they said, look how you can use it. It's great. I love it. It's changed my life, and I straightaway bought 1. Right? And it's the one to 1, Like marketing that works on me, and that goes down back again to the authenticity angle.

Right.

So developers don't really wanna be marketed to by companies.

They don't wanna subscribe to company YouTube channels or follow companies on Twitter, But they will subscribe and follow individuals, who will sell them stuff and market them stuff Much like this keyboard cleaning brush that I am treasuring forever.

Yeah. It's it's so true. I often say, like, developers are allergic to marketing. Right.

Like, one word I promised myself many years ago I would never use is webinar.

Right. And whenever whenever you see a, a company thrown out a webinar, you know that's not coming from DevRel or any developer, you know it's coming from the people at the marketing textbooks. And they the people at the marketing, they know what works. And webinars work Super well, but don't call it a webinar.

Yeah. It's a it's a online meetup or it's a, yeah, connection or something of what yeah. Webinar is always a big red flag.

How much of the the DevRel job is, like, dogfooding the product, using the the the The software that you're working for, essentially.

In the industry, not enough.

And you constantly need To be dogfooding, you constantly need to be building stuff. You need to continue being a developer.

And, there's not enough of that because a lot of the time, you'll get asked to write a blog post about this or a blog post about that, and you need to write 10 blog posts this month For some reason and For some reason. Yes. And so you lose touch of actually what the product is about.

Fun fact, actually, the dev rel team at Sentry, we are currently building an actual product that we want people to use So that we can dog food Sentry, like, more effectively. Mhmm. Because, yes, we do have, like, demo environments and the whole demo app kind of thing going on, But it's not real. It's a demo. It's, there's lots of fake data in there, and we need to be able to, like, understand how real developers who are building real products are using the product or not using the product. You know? So, yes, we are building a real thing together. And, also, One of the things that is difficult about DevRel, when you're building, you're often building demo apps. You're not pushing things to production. You don't have Paying customers.

You're not operating at a grand scale, and you're also not working in a team that's representative of the development teams that are using your product Mhmm. Yeah. Which is very difficult.

And so I'm a big believer, actually, that I've been considering going back to engineering, here and there just to get that real world experience again. Because the longer I'm out of real engineering, I kind of feel like I'm getting out of touch a bit. Even though I'm not out of touch and I'm still building stuff and I'm keeping abreast of all the things that are happening, It's not a real development experience, really, because I wanna work on a team of a 100 people and come up with all these interesting problems that we have to solve about releases and Mhmm. Version control and, you know, that kind of stuff, which you just you lose in DevRel because That's not your you're not building software. You're helping people build software. Well, if sent if Century will let you, we always have things to work on for the syntax site. Let me tell you. We dogfooded Sentry a whole lot on this, new syntax site because,

one, it's just Helpful and handy when you you're you're building this type of thing. But, like, now that we've done a full launch with Sentry as, like, a big part of our tool. Granted, I used it for level up tutorials, but that was like a 1 person effort. Now I'm doing this in a in a team. Right? We got you got Wes and I working on this thing. It gave me a completely different outlook on how to use this tool in a way that is. It's it's real, and and granted we're not DevRel. We're not here to sell Sentry. That's not like The Western I's purpose, but Yeah. I I wanna be able to speak more effectively about it. And to be able to speak more effectively about it, I have to know the product as a customer would. And sure enough, the best way to do that, like you said,

doing something real. Yep. Break some code. Yeah. Yep. What like, What other I'm curious what other things that you do. It's like the the office meme. What it is that you say you do here? Yeah. You know? Like, If you were to rattle off, like, 5 things that you've maybe even done in the last week,

you mentioned blog post is is a big one. Creating content is another one. What else is there? Speaking. So I spoke at a conference last week, but this this is interesting because it wasn't it wasn't about My work in it's quite complicated because it kind of was about my work. So what a lot of the time, people who go and speak At conferences when they are, in developer relations, they'll go and speak about the company they work for, The latest product that has been released, and and they'll put it into a developer context. Right? I went actually, last week to FF Conf In, Brighton, in the UK, great conference. And I was speaking actually about everything I've been doing on my Twitch stream for the last three and a half years, which was what got me into developer relations.

I write code for your entertainment live on Twitch, And, it's about all the fun stuff. Like and that's the authenticity about it. So as part of developer relations, some organizations Actually, celebrate the fact that you you go and you do some live streaming. And you might not necessarily be live streaming about the product that you're working for.

But, again, that's the whole, like, authenticity angle. If you're out there in the community and you're building community and you're creating connections authentically with things that you believe in and things that you're passionate about and things that you think are fun and great.

Like, they'll and and if you can make people feel good through that, there's that automatic kind of association with a company that you work for Mhmm. That will make other people feel good. It it's funny because I remember all the different dev so I've had, been building my my community since 2020 when I started streaming. And every time I change company and go and do a different DevRel job, people start using that product Automatically.

It's the whole, like, selling from an individual thing. I'm not selling, like, Century or I wasn't selling Netlify to my community, but they were automatically being sold it by the fact that I was there, like, in that kind of ecosystem.

I I believe that's what Scott calls a legitimizer.

Is that true, Scott? A legitimizer.

Yeah. And and it helps that the product that you're you're working for is, like, actually good. Right? I mean, If you were having to do DevRel for something you didn't believe in, man, how hard would that be to even Yeah. Bring it up as being a a thing that you believed in in some sort of way. Yeah. Legitimizer is one of my favorite words. It comes from a a good friend of mine.

You gotta have a a a legitimizer for anybody to listen to you or or pay attention. Yeah. What what you were just mentioning there about,

working for a product that's actually good.

What's interesting is that I like to work for products that have multiple uses and can be used by as many people as possible, rather than being a very niche little product that maybe only a few developers in the world will ever have a real use for, which there are quite a few of them out there. And So that's what's great about Century, actually. A shameless plug, I guess. Like, you can use it on so many different, you know, projects and programming languages and SDKs. And it's actually, like, a world, away from Netlify in a way, in that Netlify was targeted at specific type of, developer who was building a specific type of site when I started at Netlify, and it kinda makes your, like, circle of Your your sphere of visibility quite small when you're working. You think everyone must know about Netlify, because it's the only thing that you need. And I remember When I, first was given Microsoft MVP, I met some people at Microsoft. I was like, oh, yeah. I work for Netlify. And they're like, What's Nutlify? Yeah. Another what? So, you you can get very, what's the word, blinkered

Yeah. The type of place you work. Yeah. You know what? I just talked to I talked to a friend of mine who works at Apple who's brilliant And does all kinds of stuff. He's very knowledgeable. He's not a web dev per se, but he's web adjacent.

And I mentioned Vercel, And he was like, I had no idea who that is. I was just like, oh, okay. Let me tell you. They're they're they're big in our our niche. Yeah.

Yeah. I if I have any advice for anyone getting into DevRel or or anything, Part of the reason on this podcast why it's not a such a specific topic podcast, it's a Broadly web development podcast is because I would get so burnt out if we were a single topic. Oh, yeah. Podcast where we had to talk about the exact same thing, and I think that's why you do see a lot of turnover in DevRel. You see people jumping from company to company to company, and it's It's probably because you could talk about GraphQL till you're blue in the face.

But if you're sick of touting How amazing GraphQL is and the benefits of GraphQL after 8 months of it. Like, to a certain point, there's You can only care so much, especially when you're like you're you're a hired hand to carry to care so much about something. Like, it's kinda why I love doing this podcast is what do we get to talk about? Whatever I'm stoked on. That's about it. You know? But it's a little bit different when you're you're working for a company, and you're paid be enthusiastic about

their thing. Kind of like the sports player who, like, you know, you got sports team a hat on. You get traded. Toss that head off. It's in the garbage. New team head on. Let's go. You know? You're you're you're having that context switch, though. That that definitely happened to me, I think, when I worked at Contentful. And I was only there for a year,

but I got to the you know, my 11th month. And I was like, well, there's only so much you can really do with a CMS. I'm like, do you even really need a CMS at all? And so the burnout for that is real. You always have to come up with, New innovative ways to use the product when you're not even given any time to kind of come up with that innovation because you've got 10 blog posts to write this month for some reason.

That that seems like a sticking point, honestly, because I wanna say that because it's come out twice now. So The the 10 blog posts a month thing, is that something that you see as being, 1, like a real problem in DevRel, but, 2, like a real thing? Are Are you be are are DevRel folks getting, like, quotas on just straight up, alright, churn out this kind of content? Yes.

That has happened. That is happening. That happens.

And that's generally a, result of The organization that DevRel sits in not understanding what DevRel is and and not not understanding what they're there to do. The quota is a thing. And the problem with blog posts and quotas now the best blog posts in my lived experience are the ones that are not really about the product, but they are product to Jason or, like you say, Wes, General web development things. Yeah. So my most successful blog posts have been about creating an MPM package, Light and dark mode in CSS, and and and things like that.

Toggle. Right? These are my most successful ones and my live coding setup, in OBS on Twitch. Mhmm. Like I said, it's about the whole community thing. If you're you're making stuff that People can connect with you about that's not the product.

They will then automatically connect with the product as a side effect.

And Yeah. Often, we get these quotas because, it's for an SEO play. And, oh, we need To promote this or promote that or, you know, talk about this new feature or we just need more content because Mob Rocket have loads of content.

So we need to be showing up on page 1 of Google so people can view our stuff, Buy our product. We don't get outbid on, like, the links, the the ads links. And so that's the thing. But the best blog posts come from an authentic place, from a general web development place.

And those posts, like any post I have written for a company, gets a tenth or less of the views than the posts I write of my own volition. Mhmm. It's it's hard because I've said this Over and over again in every job that I've had and, yes, as as someone who is employed by a company to do developer to do developer relations, you you have to Do a certain part of your job. You need to talk about the product. You need to write content about that. But I'm a big believer in that You should produce content that is, like, 5050.

Do do stuff about the product.

Do that. But part of your job should be to create content that you just wanna create about things that you love, that you care about, that you had moments about or problems that you solved, Because those are the inroads to new developers and widening the community. Because a lot of the time, The content that you write about the product is really only going to existing customers or developers who are already using the product.

You find new audiences by appealing to different sensibilities and different problems and different solutions, which you can then play the long game and bring them in. But the problem is it is a long game, and a lot of the time, the long game in this Economic climate Yeah. Doesn't really work. Yeah. Fast results. Right? Yeah. For for

A lot of, like, stakeholders in a business will be like, why are we paying for this person to go to a conference Talk about something that is not our product. They should be on that stage talking about our product. You know? And Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand that, and it is a very, very long game and is very hard to quantify as well. How do you measure that type of thing? You know? Measurement in DevRel is

is an unsolved mystery, and I don't think it will ever be sold because a lot of the time, it's a feeling. Right? And it's the long game. And, you know, we've I've tried over the over the course of the years to measure stuff. But once I think Jason Langsdorf said this.

Once you put a number on something, You're measuring that number. Yeah. And you'd and is it the right number? No one knows, but you'll measure that number, and you'll make it go up. But does that really make a difference? Yeah.

And it's it's it's tough. And then, you know, I've also experimented with Bringing in, like, individual community metrics into the measurement. You know, my Twitch followers or my Twitch views or My YouTube views alongside, but then the the blurry line between personal endeavors and job Gets even more blurry, and I don't want a company to own, like, the White Panther brand. Sure. Yeah.

So it's tough.

Yeah. You know what? I thought it was one thing that was interesting. Again, I wanna state that we're not explicitly DevRel here.

So, like, maybe our some of the things that we're doing are a little bit different. But, you know, when we were first brought on to Sentry and we were, you know, pitching to internal Sentry folks about why syntax was important.

One of the things we did was compare the search terms of, which was formerly my LevelUp Tutorials YouTube channel, now the Syntax YouTube channel with the Sentry YouTube channel statistics.

And the Sentry ones were People found the Sentry YouTube channel by searching for Sentry, and people found the level up tutorials YouTube by searching for Web development, HTML, JavaScript, and the stuff that actually developers are actually looking for because you're only looking for Sentry if you're trying to solve a problem, and you're probably Already using

Sentry. Right? Scott, I want to refute that you are DevRel.

Johan, I wanna refute what you said Then you said you're not DevRel. And I think Syntax FM is the purest form of DevRel, there is, and I think that's what Century saw in you. Right? If I could spend my days Doing what you are doing, teaching developers stuff, bringing, you know, people together, serving a community, education, Awareness, fun and games, it's pure DevRel without all of the other stuff that gets sprinkled all around it. I think, you know, the But companies don't see the value in that. Often, companies Century saw the value in it, but often, companies don't see the value in that. And Another thing I wanted to touch on alongside that is that DevRel is often the 1st department To get laid off in a company because the value is so hard to communicate to nondevelopers and other people in the company. And, oh, that's that's that's an expensive, blog post you write. That's an expensive podcast. That's an expensive bit Fun you're having on a on Syntax FM. You know? And, well, it It's tough as well. If DevRel is the 1st to get laid off, can we just date for the record we are not DevRel? I'm just joking. But, again, the burnout comes from being afraid of losing your job All the time. Yeah. Because it's so difficult to show value. You know you are providing value because community Members are telling you. Right? And you are serving them, and people are saying, hey, Samba. You really helped me solve my problem. Thank you. Right? You know that you're providing value to the people that matter to to you as a developer.

But if you can't show that with arbitrary metrics and graphs going up And numbers and sign ups, then, you know, you're gonna constantly be on edge. And I've spent most of my dev route career being on edge, to be honest, and it's, hasn't been fun sometimes.

Yeah. Is so On that measuring thing, is there anything that you you can or do measure to show that you are are doing a good job? Because At the end of the day, people want to see stats on on specific things, you know, and, there There's gotta be some way to to measure this type of stuff. So is there anything you you keep tabs on in terms of, like, am I doing a good job? So it's gonna vary

Across the industry, depending on, obviously, what department you're in. Right? So in marketing, it could be sign ups or workshop attendees or, Email open rate. I mean, that's not really a DevRel one, but it it could be, right, in in a different place.

The the way I look at it for me personally is, I actually look a lot at, Discord engagement, To be honest and it depends where you have your communities.

But, like, active community members, which are defined, I think, by Discord as sending, like, Three messages in a week and coming back and and this I I look a lot at that.

People who choose to go to where I am to say something or share something or say hello.

And I even have in my Discord a, a co working channel, right, where people go and Hang out. They're remote workers.

They put their camera on and just hang out silently and keep each other company. I see that It's very successful because people are choosing to just hang out in in my space, in my vicinity.

You You know, Century has a very big discord. It's very active all the time. But then it's different. When you have a company discord, a lot of the time, people will come to that discord to, tell you about problems that they have, which I guess is a good thing because they are, being proactive about, like, Giving feedback and trying to get their problem solved, but, also, it could show that maybe you're not providing the best developer experience.

So it's kind of swings and roundabouts.

But I there used to be, a product that I've never used before called I think it was called Orbit. I think it still exists, And it existed to bring together all of your different communication channels and link them together with data to kind of show that this person went here I'm here. I'm here. I'm read this blog post and did this, so they're engaged.

And I still don't know how to measure engagement. I think it's Quite a feeling.

I mean, there are numbers in Discord, for example, but, people being in multiple places so for example, you know, Sentry, open source. Lots of stuff happens on GitHub.

I think activity on GitHub, if you are open source and you operate in that Ecosystem is a good indicator of, an engaged community who want to see the product get better And who are using it and who are reporting bugs. Like, no bugs reported means, like, no engagement, really, because people can't be bothered. And you know you don't have a perfect product. You know that there are things wrong with it. Right? And then a a lot of departments will look at blog post views.

I look at blog post views for my own blog post because, you know, that's an indication of people sharing it and finding it useful. And, you know, although I have had a couple of blog posts, be shared on Reddit and Hacker News that still get a lot of, views, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. So it depends where things are shared as well. And it's like quality over Quantity is what I focus on. And, you know, if you have 10 engaged community members who hang out with you on Twitch And Discord, read your blogs, watch your videos, comment on your YouTube videos. Right? That's, like, quite beautiful.

But if you have 1,000,000 people who are just scrolling past your tweets. They follow you on Twitter. Right? But they're just scrolling past, so they don't care.

They that you're just Background noise for them, that's different. So a lot of people equate high numbers on these platforms with success for companies, but I don't think that's always the way, because, again, it comes back to the individual and and the relationships that are forming, but you can't measure relationships.

So Totally. Tricky thing. And I'm I'm curious. Like, someone listening to this right now might might be saying, hey. Like, I wanna get into Something like that. You know? Like, I think that would I love doing web development, but I also like the whole talking to people about it and writing blog posts and creating content and All of being able to communicate to back to the team of what features I would like.

How do you even get into To DevRel, is is it generally someone who's doing it on their own and gets picked up by a company?

I think so.

I haven't seen, or come I mean, they must exist, but I haven't come across many people who have just gone straight from engineering to dev route with no experience of communicating with others about web development.

And it's not necessarily about writing blog posts or making videos. Right? It's, You know, you could get into DevRel through basically being, a proxy for tech support on Twitter. Yeah. Right? You know? It's it's about Communication and speaking to people and having that empathy.

I mean, I got into DevRel because I started alright. So I didn't know DevRel existed, in 2020.

And that was when I started streaming on Twitch in, like, full lockdowns.

I discovered that people were programming on Twitch, and I thought, well, I'll try that because there are not many women doing it, and everyone's doing back end development. So let's do some front end, and I'm not a man.

And, through that, when DevRel moved online because DevRel used to be pre 2020, DevRel was just going to conferences Traveling and being away and and doing all these events, Deborah moved on to Twitch in 2020, and that's how I discovered it was a thing.

And I met people, and I got my 1st job through I raided someone on Twitch, and she knew someone Who needed a new front end developer, DevRel? And that's how I got my job, but I was already, like, doing it. I was writing blog posts. Was streaming on Twitch. I was building a community because it was my hobby. So I turned my hobby into my job, which is not always recommended.

But, yeah, I think you have to be doing Something you need that you need the the want to do it. You know? I think a lot of people, they wanna get into DevRel because they see it as glamorous.

They see it as, you know, you're traveling the world. You're having fun.

You're just, you know, go into the socials and the meet ups. Magazines.

And Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean, I've been in a 12 limousines just this year as Yeah. Already. But there's, you know, there's so much more to it. But if you already have if if you have a desire to communicate with people and help them with anything that they're doing and you have an expertise in something, that's a bonus, Then build your network. Right? And I used to not believe in in this, but I wouldn't have got The 3 DevRel jobs that I got without knowing people.

DevRel is so small as well. Everyone knows everyone. Right? And everyone's got each other's backs. Like, if some if some big company decides to lay off the whole dev world department, we are we are asking around and making, calls and seeing who's got jobs available for these people who've just lost their job, which is nice. Right? It's a kind of a nice, like, feeling to feel so safe in This, like, kinda small group of people. So build your network. Right? Start doing the thing that you wanna do. Try it out. I mean, I know not everyone has the time, with life and families and whatnot. And if not, if you don't have the time outside of work, like, see if your current job We'll let you do some of that stuff. You know? Can I help some customers, or can I write a blog post, or can I go and speak at a conference on behalf of the company And see where it takes you, but, that will stand you in good stead for applying for DevRel jobs and and inside the network? You know, get in there and

Shringle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And where we asked Jason Langstroff this as well. I was like, what's What's the platforms that you should be focusing on right now? Because, like, when I when I grew up, it was blogging.

But now there's a 1000000 other platforms, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Twitter, Discord. You know, there's 1,000,000 places to go.

If someone wants to do this type of thing and can only focus on 2,

where should that be? Definitely have your own domain, your own thing. Right? Because nothing says legitimate more than your own domain.

You've built your own website. You're writing your own content, and you own your content. You've got a CMS. You've you've got all these tags. You've you've planned out your life on your own domain, and you've you've made things happen.

Then the rest, it depends. Right? The age old, it depends. I've experimented with many different platforms.

We don't need to mention that Twitter has gone down the drain right now, so you can't put all of your eggs in 1 platform at all. I've kinda stopped using Twitter because it was giving me no value, and it was giving me nothing back. Like, no the I'm not paying for Twitter, Blue, So no one's gonna see my posts. Right? No one's gonna see my tweets. So what's the point? I experimented with TikTok last year.

That requires a very specific type of content. Like, I think all these platforms, they you you know this best. I'm sure. You have to repurpose your content in a way that is fit for that platform. Totally.

And I experimented a lot on TikTok with, like, posting bits of Twitch clips And some organic stuff didn't really work. I deleted my account after the tech bros found me and came after me for some reason.

So, again, It depends who you are. Like, if you're a woman, things are more difficult than, if you are a man on these types of platforms. It has to be said. YouTube versus Twitch. Right? Very different platforms.

I personally find live content Far less stressful.

Far easier.

Recording to a camera is I can't do it as well.

And I haven't had as much practice, but for me, it's like, I'm trying. I actually released a new YouTube video today, but I'm not happy with it. I prefer to just do it all on Twitch. So that depends. Right? But things like live content, they're a big investment in your time. Because if you wanna stand out and you want to, you know, Get people clicking on your thumbnail. It's gotta look good. Yeah. And you gotta have some fun going on. And, so that's a big time investment. I mean, it all is.

Understand your strengths and understand what type of audience you want to grow. And I don't think You should focus on all of them to try and increase your reach. I tried that. It's only gonna burn you out. Like, Try 1 at a time. So this year, it's been, like, all in on Twitch for me. I have worked the hardest on my Twitch stream as I could given my life circumstances, and I didn't care about YouTube or TikTok or Twitter or anything, and that went really well. Next year, I might go all in on YouTube And get better at that. But if you do too much at any one time now I used to repurpose. Like, say I did a Twitch stream. Right? Used to create a YouTube video out of it, so I'd condense a 3 hour stream down to 10 minutes.

Nightmare job. Then I'd create a TikTok, And then I create a YouTube short, and then I'd put a separate video on Twitter. And then I'd put something else somewhere else. And It's too much. And especially if you're doing this as, like, kind of like a side thing, it's impossible.

Yeah. And it takes up far too much of your time, so you can't focus on your your job, the one that you're being paid for.

And so, you know, my advice is just find what you wanna experiment with. If you choose For now, it doesn't have to be the platform you are on forever. You can diversify, and you can switch and change. If something doesn't work, try something else. If your TikToks are failing, try YouTube shorts. Don't do both. Who cares? DevRel is about experimentation.

It's about failing fast, I guess. You know, that's the phrase. Like, try something.

Try and get some data if you can measure it. Yeah. If it's not working out for you or if it isn't doesn't feel good for you, then do something else and change it. Get some more data And and rinse and repeat. And, don't feel bound.

See, a lot of peoples a lot of people think, right, I'm in DevRel now. I have to be everywhere.

Everyone has to know me. I need to get 100,000 followers, and, that will make me more valuable, and it doesn't. It doesn't help that some jobs advertise in the job description that the person must have more than 5,000 followers on Twitter.

So that that, again, kind of missing the point. Just do what you want.

Don't do what you think you have to, And the long game will pay off. Yeah.

And trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Because, you know, we have these instincts as developers, don't we, about the type of things that we wanna consume and we wanna make, and there will be someone out there who appreciates what you make. And I always say with whatever I do, If I am helping at least 1 person by producing this, then it has been a job well done and time well spent Because that person will remember me, and I can help them again. And they will share something, and they will come back to me. So you don't need to Help or affect like the masses.

It's a niche thing what we do, and your product will probably have an even more niche community and user base. So it's not about the big numbers. It's about the long game and the the relationships

and the authenticity. Yeah. I I think you nailed a lot of stuff That like, I think Wes and I had both done throughout our entire careers where the experimentation is a big piece. You know? We we've you try something. It doesn't work. You Try something else. But, also, like like you said, you know, very specifically, there are developers who are just like you. And by chasing trends and trying to be Salma or Jason Langsdorff or Wes Bosch because it works for them, that they're already doing it well. You know? You already got you already got that that bug covered. So, like, you're you're best off being yourself, and chances are if you are who you are, there's other people who are gonna be and feel a lot like you and and perhaps latch on to whatever you're doing there. But you do see a lot of people just kind of finding what everybody else is doing and then copying that. Like, how many YouTube channels are trying to do exactly what Fireship is doing right now because because it worked for him. You know? That that's the type of thing you see over and over again. What what's something that people get wrong, when they're doing dev DevRel For company, let's say I I'm working at, DevRel for new company x, y, and z. It's maybe my first I'm in a DevRel gig or 2nd time or something,

and I'm not bringing any value. What am I doing? You know? Sometimes it's not the individual's fault who has been brought onto that team, but the way the team has The way the team's expectations are laid out. So for example, let's go back to that. I want 10 blog posts a month, please.

Yeah. But what, like, training are you offering this person who is new to the the the job? What, like, research time are you giving them? What Practice time are you giving them? What experimentation time are you giving them? And what's difficult about DevRel is, as I was talking about earlier about time to build stuff Time to build stuff and dog food the product is really good also against, alongside time to research And just to know what's going on in the general web development world.

You know, what are people talking about? What's the latest Thing about web components. You know? What's the newest CSS selector? I have, like, so little time to, like, keep up with all that stuff even now.

And, you know, that's where podcasts like Syntax FM comes in, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Say you should listen to Syntax. We talk about that stuff. It's Support. Right? Because a lot of the time, these dev rel departments are not led by developers.

And so they off often, people in DevRel are brought in and treated as content creators Only.

Marketers only. Content machines only. And they've come in to be a developer and to build stuff, but now they're expected to, you know, Be these expert SEO content writers with no training.

It's funny.

In my last 2 jobs, I learned so much about SEO because I had to.

You're gonna be SEO consultant now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I probably could be.

But don't no shade to SEO consultants because it must be it's a very difficult job. But, you know, I have so much knowledge that I never even thought Would be possible on this topic because I had to go and find it myself because of what I was being required to do and how I was being required to operate. As I said before, DevRel in every company is gonna look very different.

And so often, when people are, like, not offering value, it's because they've been hired into the wrong position or the wrong job or The company doesn't know what they actually wanted, and they didn't advertise it correctly. But, also, then priorities change. You know, In some places, every quarter, you're completely pivoting on what you need to do in dev rel because the company has pivoted. The company has new audience now.

We need to go into this market with this type of customer. So, DevRel, you have to now talk to that market, please, Even though you would know nothing about them? Reactive marketing. Yeah. It's tough. So it's there are some people who, you know, maybe they wanna go into DevRel, And it's not for them, and they realized quite early on, and then they might not be bringing the right kind of value. But I think most of the time, it's an organizational issue.

It's a And a confusing issue because companies are confused about what DevRel is and what they need, but also companies keep changing their minds about who they are.

So It's just a big mess sometimes. Here here's a good question that's just for you. What are your thoughts on in general speaking at conferences? Maybe not necessarily in the context of DevRel, but just in general. You know?

My answer would have been very different, six 6 years ago before I became a parent, as a parent now, I do not like being away from my family.

And a lot of conference speaking when you're traveling to in person conferences involves being away for days at a time Like I was last week. I actually had to miss my son's 6th birthday because I had to go and travel down to this conference. And But it's a good conference to speak at, but, so there are people, right, who I think most of the conferences now have moved to In person again, I really enjoyed when they were virtual, but it's not the same conference experience when it's online.

And, you know, I've spoken at virtual conferences.

You you've you've finished the talk. Mhmm. You you turn the camera off, and you're like, what do I do now? I need the, like Yeah. The post a beer by yourself? I I need the post talk, like, adrenaline, like Yeah. Release. It's it's Yeah. I'm so over the the online conferences. Like, they're they're fun for

every now and then, but, like, I I about a year and a half into COVID, I was like, I'm done speaking at these. These are these are not enjoyable for the amount of work that takes the prerecorded ones. It was no different than making a YouTube video. So for me, So easy effort. You just pop it out, and you're done. Yeah. Well, for me, it's not easy. It's horrible. I hated every minute of it.

But the bottom line, I think conferences, I had a great experience last week. I've made some new best friends, but that's nothing to do with tech. It's like I might have met these people anywhere. Right? I think conferences can be very difficult for some people to attend and speak at, which could be excluding Quite a lot of the population who would like to do it, and that's just the nature of going outside, I guess.

Some conferences can be very, exclusive and choose the same kinds of People every time to speak at their events and not open their CFPs up to, like, the wider world, and Not be that, like, inclusive of all types of people. I've seen that a lot.

I I've always been open to the wider world. I was like, Hold on. You said that as well. But I did I did pick yes. I did pick that up just basically.

I mean, it's because it's in your head. Like, the Subject to what I was saying, but then you were loud, wasn't it? Reality. That's what we were hearing. Yeah. But yeah. So, I often, I don't like to submit many CFPs, because I don't want to travel.

And, I know I'm probably not gonna get selected anyway because of the types of people I generally see on most conference lineups. So it's a tricky one. It's a great experience when you can get to do it, but there are lots of barriers, lots of downsides. And, also, writing a talk Takes forever. Some time. Yeah. Oh,

forever. Like, sometimes I work, like, a week on a talk, and then you give it to, If you're lucky, a couple 100 people. Yes. And then, like I flew all the way to Romania

to give a talk for less than a 100 people, And it was, like, the most soul crushing thing in the whole world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Again, and It Then Luckily, we can And repurpose it for us in tax Exactly.

Not everyone can. Right? Yeah. So I I spent 2 weeks on this 40 minute talk that I did last week, and I now Oh, need to submit it to so many other places to make the 2 weeks I spent on it worth it. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's a very niche talk That doesn't really fit in too many CFPs,

so good luck to me, I guess. You could probably get, you know, 30 YouTube shorts out of it.

There you go. I could. Yeah. Thanks for the idea, actually. On the flip side, yeah, the the beers you have with people are invaluable. You can't get that

anywhere. Yep. That's true. That's true.

The whole community thing. Alright. Last question we have here is, what do you you use to stay up to date with what's going on in the web development world? This answer has changed over this year. It used to be Twitter,

And, it's not Twitter anymore.

It's mainly people I know sending me tweets.

Did tweet

Curated. Spicy stuff that they think I should, you know, be aware of. Yeah. That's good.

I've tried to get into the whole, like, RSS feed game, but not enough people have RSS feeds. I have an RSS feed, by the way, quick plug.

But I've never found the right RSS feed reader.

I've never, like, I've never it's never become part of my life, but I want it to be part of my life.

I I watch a lot of YouTube, but I don't watch any tech on YouTube because because it's the same old people doing the same old stuff. So I I'll tell you how I do keep up to date. So I keep up to date by building stuff.

Right? And and I'll have problems to solve while I'm building stuff, so I will, like, Google that stuff when I need to do it. So for example, I know you don't know what you don't know, but, like, say if I'm doing something complicated with CSS.

Like, what if I could do this with CSS? And I'll Google it, then I'll realize, oh, it's a new selector or something. You know? So the way I learn is just by building stuff and then solving the problems with the new technology As it comes up because, you know, you can get very overloaded with just mindlessly consuming feeds of content. And, You know, I've done it. I used to bookmark so many things on Twitter. Mhmm. Need to need to look up that. Need to use that new CSS selector. Oh, that's a new kind of gradient.

I'll use that. And it's just like bookmark fatigue that you never ever, like, look back on. And so I like to use things when there is a timely use for it As I am building something, something stupid usually, but I guess that's how I keep up to date. I like it. Beautiful.

Alright. Last section we have here is a sick pick and a shameless plug. Do you have either of those for us? Yeah. My sick pick

It's it's a website that doesn't exist anymore, but you can, get it on the Wayback Machine. And there is a whole, like, Wikipedia page of all the law from way back when.

One of the first websites I came across when I had the Internet in the nineties, was the most mysterious, fascinating, enchanting, yet Scary website I've ever seen.

It's called hell.com.

Right? It doesn't exist anymore.

And I know how it's built now because I'm a developer, but, like, back then, it was so mysterious. Random things would happen at random times.

It would tell you you were in a restricted place, and you must go back, and you must go home.

And, like, prompts would come up This says you're you're this is a private web. You're now being redirected to the public information site, which was just Google.

And, you know, Scary images would be there. It's be like you're falling into this black hole. I love this site so much that I created, I recreated it kind of, using Astro and jQuery because, you know, nostalgia for the web.

And I used a combination of the Wikipedia pages that Describe the user journey and some of the things I found on the Wayback Machine.

It's definitely not finished right, but I wanted to recreate the magic And and show my Twitch community, like, my most, like, famous favorite website in in my whole Life, world, I can't even speak because I'm so excited about it. But, hell.com.

Right? It's just like it's the Internet of, Like the original Internet, and it's we wouldn't be here without stuff like this. And I want the web to be more like this now.

You know, like, just Mhmm. Not be so serious, but also be clever and mysterious and not just selling products everywhere and side hustles. And it was made by an artist, who just wanted to promote his art, actually. But, like, It's brilliant, pure, like, marketing, but no one really knows about it. But it is look it up on Wikipedia. Include a link with the show notes or whatever. But, like, it's The best thing and I encourage you I implore you to get lost in the law and explore the way back machine because you will have a lot of fun. Do you remember the website

found.com? Was that over 1 night? I don't. You were No. Okay.

I'll I'll Post a link to the Wikipedia article for this from my, per spec what you're talking about reminds me very similarly of this website. It was a Kind of like a Instagram feed before there was an Instagram feed, but it was just curated art from, like, 1 or 2 people. So it was just like a a daily one post that was just a Piece of art, and and it could have been, you know, stuff you've never seen before in your entire life. It's gone now. It it defunct as of 2017, but it was One of my most visited sites back in the day. This reminds me a lot of that. So I'll post the link to the way back for hell.com as well as the hell.com Wikipedia.

I love stuff like this.

Original web stuff. I my next job, I want to be, like, an Internet archaeologist.

Mhmm. You know, like, go back, Just spend my days in the way back machine, like, collecting data, like, looking at the relationships people had In those days, how the Internet worked differently, like, what's changed, why has it changed, is it bad, is it good, and

Maybe I'll do that when I retire. Wish angel I wish there was a whole archive of every Angel Fire site that ever existed or, yeah, any of those geocities.

Fascinating. I don't wanna lose it. Right? I don't wanna lose it. I wanna keep it alive so, like, the next generation doesn't forget about it. There's a a really good web Site and Twitter account, web design museum. I I I followed that. They they do they do exactly that, and they had posted a bunch of, like, early grunge.

And a bunch of people tagged me on it, and I I I shared a bunch of my favorites as well, but, like, love love that website and, like, fantastic Preservation

of of what the web used to look like. Old, aren't we? We're like, oh, back in my day, the Internet Back. Yeah.

Oh, that's good. Awesome. Well, last thing we have here is shameless plugs. What would you like to plug to the audience? Come And, be entertained by me writing stupid code at twitch.tv/white

pantherwhitep4nth 3 r. If you use a screen reader, the name started off as a joke, and I'm stuck with it now.

But come come hang out on Twitch. I stream, regularly on Thursdays Fridays.

Might not be very US time zone efficient.

It's about 12 PM UK time, I start. But I do the odd stream here and there in different times, but come hang out. You can watch the VODs back.

You can learn some stuff, and,

It's just a lot of fun. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been awesome. It's been illuminating.

I found out that I'm DevRel, and I'm really excited about that. So thank you so much. Yay.

Hey. Join the team. Join the team.

Awesome. Thanks again. Thank you so much.

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