The Future Developer Summit 2021 features a central theme “DevRel, the next day” and is spread throughout the year across 4 episodes, each discussing a burning industry topic. Episode 1 went live on March 10, focusing on moving “From tactics to strategy”. In this post, I’ll highlight the key points from the sessions and where you can watch them.
Andreas Constantinou, the CEO of SlashData kicked off the event, sharing some key insights from our developer research. One big highlight?
There are 24.3 million developers in the world
If you want to know where they are based or which languages they use and their experience level, make sure to visit SlashData’s free tool Developer Population Calculator.
Panel Discussion | From tactics to strategy
Andreas went on to introduce to the event’s attendees the industry panel members: Alicia Spivak (Sr. Director, Developer Relations at Okta), Daniele Bernardi (Staff Platform Growth, Developer Relations at Twitter) and Chris Castle (Director, Developer Advocacy at Salesforce Heroku) who went on to discuss DevRel tactics and strategy.
Here is a summary of all the key points each speaker had to share:
Ali Spivak
Ali’s superpower? Cross-functional collaboration. Getting different groups to work together
Great documentation and especially community-led documentation is an incredible resource [for a company] to have
All companies that are successful, strike a need with their community. People want to be connected to something and connecting it to something more than a product is what makes you stand out
We want to figure out what community means: do we need a community that is closely tied to our company or should we focus on joining more communities?
Everyone wants their own community but whether you should grow or join a community depends on your product, goals and more importantly, the existing community’s needs and desires
Chris Castle
Chris’ Superpower? Creating polished product demos and making the DevRel team stronger
DevRel requires having strong soft skills
We have set a high bar for developer experience and we want our product demos to be fun and engaging
We’re working on finding the balance between a community that’s strongly tied to the company vs a community that’s tight within. Growing the community with an ethos vs just nurturing existing members
Community’s creativity is a very powerful thing that scares many companies from opening up their products to the community
If you want to get in DevRel, just build stuff and create things and share your excitement for technologies, communities or bringing people together
Danielle Bernandi
Danielle’s superpower? The ability to communicate regardless of the channel or medium
Look-alike audiences have proven successful. We highlighted developers who have succeeded in a specific area, so we worked on the data to understand usage and find more developers like these
We don’t build things for developers, we build them with developers
What we really do is join a community that developers have built for ourselves.
You become an influential part of the community by helping the community solve problems. And yet is the community that solves many problems and builds things for us with its very creative members
If you want to join DevRel and are an introvert, don’t worry about it! Just build something and show your passion and have empathy.
Consistency across your offerings is crucial.
The next day of COVID-19 pandemic: How developers work and learn
Kostas Korakitis, Research Operations Manager at SlashData went on to present the latest updates that developers had to share about the way they were affected by the pandemic and how it led to changes in their education or work life.
Here are some highlights:
About half of the developers were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. 30% went fully remote, but only a third think this will last forever.
Beginners in software development were affected the least in the way they work.
Developers working for large enterprises were by far the most likely to go fully remote during the pandemic.
Switching to fully remote work was much more common in the West than in the East.
Young developers (18-24 years old) were the most likely to experience changes in the ways they learn.
Episode 2 is coming on June 9.
The episode’s theme is “Developer-led business growth” where industry leaders will discuss how developers can contribute and even drive a business’s success.
It will also feature an industry panel, a trends update on how developers are influencing business decisions and a Masterclass on building effective communications channels with developers.
Agenda | Episode 2: Developer-led business growth
June 9, 2021 | Time is shown in PT
08:00 Welcome Address
Andreas Constantinou, Founder & CEO at SlashData
08:10 Ιndustry Panel
Tyler Jewell, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital
Kimberlee Archer, Head Of Global Marketing - AR & Camera at Snap Inc.
Patrick Chanezon, GM, Cloud Developer Advocacy at Microsoft
Emilio Salvador, PM, Cloud Developer Advocacy at Google
08:40 Break
08:45 Developer Trends Update Q1, 2021
How developers are influencing business decisions
Jack Witkowski, Data Storyteller at SlashData
09:00 Community Networking
09:10 Master Class*
Building effective communications channels with developers
Christina Voskoglou, Sr. Director of Research at SlashData
10:00 Thought Leader Networking*
* Accessible to Thought Leader Pass holders.