Serendipitous Scheduling or Trending Influencers?
Our recent podcast guests and meetup speakers could be accused of creating an echo chamber...or do we just have our finger on the pulse?
We focus on delivering guidance and knowledge to developer advocates and other adjacent functions within the developer relations sphere. It’s a big sphere. There are sooo many things and tasks required to deliver in a developer relations role that we take a very broad view of this whole field of endeavour. And people have been endeavouring to codify and clarify developer relations for a long time (sorry Conor and PJ! - I’m not suggesting we’re all old!).
Of course the layoffs in 2023 continuing in to 2024 are only heightening this sense of almost uncertainty around DevRel. Not to mention the introduction of AI and the promise and/or threat forms of ML, AI and LLMs may usher on to the field.
So it was my very great pleasure to discover when I was looking back over the last couple of weeks that the podcast episodes and meetup speakers are almost presented as a course of conversations with experts on two pressing topics: DevRel as a career and AI.
Finding needles in a haystack. How to be the needle!
Conor and I have known each other a long time and have been active developer advocates and proponents of developer relations for as long as we care to remember. In this conversation, he and I discuss the almost paradoxical apparent mass layoff of devrel professionals and the difficulty to fill a developer relations role. Listen and you’ll understand why.
Conor O’Neill’s podcast episode
When Star Trek starts to look primitive
I loved this chat with Rex as we got to indulge in discussing the cool tools we thought were ultra futuristic years ago and now seem old hat! So what do we do as developer relations experts when the machines are coming for our jobs? First, don’t panic! You’re just in a recently shaken snow globe and everything will settle. Listen to Rex to understand “creator relations” and how it might be useful in making progress with these new developer tools and increased expectations brought on by AI ubiquity.
The discussion opened up to the floor
The absolute beauty of a virtual meetup is the ability to bring speakers and audience from all over the world together for an hour to share and discuss ideas and experiences. January’s meetup was a perfect example. PJ and Marc joined from the US and Canada respectively, and the audience was in Brazil, Serbia, Ukraine, US, Ireland, Germany… and I’ve probably missed a few places.
Despite the geographic spread, the topics were shared. They formed the perfect underlining of the podcast episodes above! PJ gave us his take on the role, career and opportunities for developer relations professionals for the year, while Marc walked us through a deep dive of LLMs with a focus on Open Source examples to encourage experimentation.
We had a blast, with warm, humorous guests and so much chat in the comments from our great audience - thank you for making these meetups what they are!
Check out the conversations here: Meetup with PJ Hagerty & Marc Laventure (devrelmeetup.com)
And a selection of podcasts and videos can be found on the Voxgig - YouTube channel too.