DevRel Foundation Ask Anything Session  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Linux Foundation]] - Full Title: DevRel Foundation Ask Anything Session - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [Assign relevant tags or keywords to the notee to facilitate organization and retrieval. Add a # before each tag. Tags cannot have special characters. Do not use the tag #articles] - #devrel - #developerrelations - #linuxfoundation - #roi - #metrics - #community - #advocacy - #education - #personas - #governance Author: DevRel Foundation Panel (Stacy, Marcus, Diva Moan, Anna Jiménez) Source: YouTube Panel Session Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} --- # Title: DevRel Foundation “Ask Anything” — Comprehensive Notes & Analysis ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#summary) - [📖 Main Content](#main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#notes) - [📖 References](#references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#methodology) - [❓ Questions](#questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#future-research) - [💡 Implications](#implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#conclusion) <a id="summary"></a> ## 📝 Summary This DevRel Foundation “Ask Anything” session (Linux Foundation–hosted) gathers panelists to explain why DevRel needs **standards, shared frameworks, and measurable ROI**, and how the Foundation intends to help. They emphasize: (1) **results over vanity metrics** (tie DevRel work to OKRs/revenue), (2) **collaboration across orgs** to avoid silos, (3) **personas, data, and community intelligence** to instrument the developer journey, (4) **skills** like authenticity, empathy, and crisp communication, and (5) **open working groups** building resources (e.g., persona library). The panel repeatedly reframes DevRel as **connective, educational, and technical**—not sales or “glorified influence”—and invites participation via Discord and working groups. <a id="main-content"></a> ## 📖 Main Content The panel traces the Foundation’s origin from repeated industry pain points—unclear role definition, inconsistent metrics, and layoffs that target “siloed” DevRel. They propose standards and open-source assets that make DevRel **legible** to leadership. Concrete guidance includes mapping **program outputs → business outcomes**, building **joined-up data** (Discord/GitHub/docs/support), and running **authentic, human-first** community engagement. The Q&A surfaces practical stories tying community actions to **pipeline acceleration** and highlights the Foundation’s **resource aggregation** to help practitioners adopt **persona-driven** strategies. <a id="notes"></a> ### 🗒️ Notes **Deep outline with time-linked references** - 🎬 **Session framing & goals** — [00:00–00:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=0) - Thanks to attendees; purpose: **AMA** about getting involved and answering doubts. - SME intros before live Q&A. - 👤 **Diva Moan — background & industry shift** — [01:38–02:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=98) - Principal Technology Advocate; ~4 years formal DevRel, longer informally. - Notes **industry shift** motivating Foundation involvement. - 👤 **Stacy — decade in DevRel, need for standards** — [02:34–04:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=154) - Built strategies, docs, education; **pandemic-era** conversations: “we need standards & recognition.” - DevRel are **connectors** bridging product, community, and business. - 👤 **Marcus — global programs & sustainability** — [04:08–06:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=248) - Twilio experience scaling regions (EU, APAC, LATAM). - Saw **burnout & mis-implementation**; wants sustainable, structured DevRel. - 👤 **Anna Jiménez — Linux Foundation & analytics focus** — [06:48–09:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=408) - Data-science background; past DevRel on open source (CHAOSS-adjacent). - Aims to create **research-grade frameworks/definitions** missing in academia/industry. - 🗺️ **What DevRel covers (umbrella)** — [10:00–10:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=600) - **Advocacy, Community, Education, Technical Support**—even if your title differs. - 🔗 **Live Q&A kickoff** — [10:49–11:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=649) - 💡 **Why the Foundation formed (story)** — [11:41–16:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=701) - Pandemic halted in-person; virtual assets helped but **lack of formalization** persisted. - Recurrent community consensus: **standardization**, **charter**, **mission**, **Linux Foundation governance**. - 💼 **Q1: How to get companies to invest in DevRel?** — [16:33–22:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=993) - **Marcus:** ROI is on **you**; events ≠ impact—**explain business meaning**. [17:01–19:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1021) - Beware **vanity metrics** (views/attendance) without outcomes. [18:57–19:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1137) - **Diva:** define **measurable** metrics beyond vibes. [19:25–21:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1165) - **Stacy:** tie to **company OKRs/KPIs**; stitch cross-platform data with **community intelligence/AI**. [21:50–22:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1310) - 🧰 **Foundation help: working groups & OSS tools** — [23:26–24:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1406) - **Resource Aggregation WG**; **Persona Library** to standardize audiences & attach metrics. - 📈 **Q2: Tie DevRel to revenue** — story-based ROI — [25:03–26:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1503) - **Discord community** → direct DMs → faster **sales cycle** handoffs. - Demonstrates **community-to-pipeline** linkage. - 🧮 **Tools & data access challenge** — [28:14–30:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1694) - DevRel often lacks analytics tools; **partner with data science**; map team metrics to company goals. - 🧩 **Q3: Common issues & Foundation tie-ins** — [30:18–35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1818) - **Silos reduce perceived value** → first to be cut. [30:18–31:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1818) - **Executive buy-in** requires education & **journey mapping** across product/marketing/sales. [31:59–33:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1919) - Industry misperception: “**glorified influencers**” vs. real multi-hat work. [34:00–35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2040) - 🧠 **Q4: Skills that matter now** — [36:01–39:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2161) - **Don’t sell; advocate**; be the **connector** to technical depth when needed. [36:01–37:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2161) - **Empathy** & **communication**; speak clearly to the right audience. [37:13–38:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2233) - **Stacy:** be **authentic**, direct, helpful; guide adoption and retention. [38:43–39:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2323) - 📣 **Call to participate** — site/Discord/WGs & blog recap of questions — [39:39–40:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=2379) <a id="references"></a> ## 📖 References - DevRel Foundation “Ask Anything” (Linux Foundation event), YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go - Mentioned in-session: DevRel book by James Parton & Caroline Lewko (for the “DevRel tree” model). <a id="paraphrase"></a> ## 🗣️ Paraphrase 1) **ROI belongs to DevRel (not just leadership)** — [17:01–19:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go&t=1021) *Original idea:* It’s on DevRel to show results and explain what they mean; event counts without business context are weak. *Paraphrase:* “Your team owns the proof. Don’t bring a travel log—bring the linkage from community activity to company outcomes, and make the translation explicit. - Summary: Don't miss out! Join us at the next Open Source Summit in Seoul, South Korea (November 4-5). Join us at the premier vendor-neutral open source conference, where developers and technologists come together to collaborate, share knowledge, and explore the latest innovations and advancements in open source technology. Learn more at https://events.linuxfoundation.org/ DevRel Foundation Ask Anything Session The DevRel Foundation is a vendor-neutral initiative aimed at building shared understanding, resources, and best practices to elevate the professional practices of developer relations across industries. In response to recent challenges, including industry layoffs and the evolving landscape of DevRel roles, the foundation has established working groups to tackle pressing issues such as metrics and reporting, career support, and resource aggregation. This session offers attendees the opportunity to connect with thought leaders in the DevRel Foundation community, engage in discussions about current challenges, and explore ways to get involved in shaping the future of the developer relation foundation. Key questions to explore include: What strategies can showcase the return on investment of DevRel initiatives to stakeholders? What skills are becoming important in the evolving DevRel landscape, and how can professionals acquire them? How can engaging with the DevRel Foundation’s working groups enhance your career? The final output will result in a report capturing the roundtable's insights and recommendations authored by the attendees, hosted under Developer Relations' Foundation GH organization under CC-BY 4.0. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqs4Zy2-go Okay. So, everyone in the room, thank you so much for making until the end. I know it's a hard time to stay until until uh 4:30. So, first of all, thank you so much and thank you for your interest uh in getting involved in uh the Devil Foundation learning more ask questions. This is the ask anything session. So, um we're going to let me see if I can use this. Perhaps I cannot and I need to go here. So this is well uh okay perhaps I need to be here for a while. Uh so um the goal of this session is to hear what doubts what questions you have. We will go in a bit to ask you a couple of questions and then go to a live Q&A. Uh but before that uh we would like to introduce our subject matter experts. Uh these are people from the developer relations community that we have been uh they have been there since the intent to form and and have been supporting the community together and there are also uh their brothers as uh some of you in the room and uh we would like first to do some intros before jumping into the topic. So, uh, perhaps Diva, you can start and we can go a round of intros first. >> Sure. But don't you think you should introduce yourself too or is that going to be at the end? >> Sorry. >> Aren't you going to introduce yourself first? >> I will do do at the end. That's fine. Yeah. >> Okay. So, hi everyone. I am Diva Moan. Um, I work as a principal technology advocate at Souza. And uh as evident from my title, I am a developer relations professional. Have been for around um 4 years, 3 years officially and unofficially been doing it for much longer. unofficially in the sense that without the title. Um and having done that for so long um I realized that there has been a shift in the industry and uh that sort of um drove my involvement with the foundation and I'm happy to be here and share whatever I've learned and what we're doing um with the rest of y'all. >> Thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Stacy Kruzik and if you were here this morning, you heard me talk about the Devril Foundation already and a little bit about myself, but I'll try and repeat some of that in case you weren't here. Um, I've been in the Devril space industry for 10 plus years. Uh, before that technical marketing, so my path to Devril was probably already established before I even knew it. Um, and I've built Devril strategies, communities, and developer marketing strategies, experiences, documentation, education, all those pieces under the Devril umbrella I've been building and I've have quite a bit of experience with. And this really is my passion project. It's something that I d I would ba basically dug into this summer um to try and get us up to where we were ready to form and thankfully with Anna and the rest of our crew and our our community were there. So, um I'm very happy about that. This has been a long time coming. These were discussions during the pandemic when we kept saying to each other, we really need standards. We really need formalization of Devril. We need to be recognized by businesses, by the industry in tech. We are the connectors. And so that's that's why I'm here. Hey folks, I'm Marcus. Um I have been in Devrell for um over 10 years as well. Um, and I started with DevOrl in a way that I I didn't really I wasn't really looking for a Devril job when I found a DevOr job, okay? I kind of like got into it by by accident. I was a software engineer working for a company and then one day I was given a presentation at a conference just kind of like I've always liked community and uh someone came to me and said, "Have you ever thought about DevOp?" And I was like, "What is even DevOrow?" So this was maybe 12 years ago. Um and uh long story short, I went to work for Twilio. I joined Twilio as a uh as as an IC Devril and then they've asked me to build Twilio's uh international devrow. So I built Europe then uh Apac Japan and then Latam. So I was at Twio for about seven years from being a 200 person company to being like a 9,000 9,000 person company. Um and and then like throughout this time I actually realized that I I really love doing devout like I really love the ethos of Devril and and what it is that we're trying to do. Left Twilio went to work for a couple more companies and most recently in October I started my own company. uh and and it's weird how we sometimes start things out of frustration because I kept seeing uh a lot of people doing deval I kept seeing a lot of companies doing deval and while some of them got it right and let me just say this I don't have all the answers but like while some of them get it right some of them get it really wrong um so it was very common about 10 to 10 11 years ago for people to be doing devril and just burn out like they would do Devril and they would devril so much that they would just burn out and say I never want to be Devril ever again. Um my focus when I was building Devril teams has always been like I want to make this sustainable. Um, and obviously becoming part of the foundation kind of like is it solves one of these issues for me because we just want to make sure that this profession is is sustainable and that this profession this profession is understood that there's structure. So, I'm kind of like in the in the perfect place where I would like to be right now where I help companies establish their devour programs and strategies and all that. >> And hi, I'm Anna Jimenez. I'm working at the Linux Foundation. And actually my first touch point with with this initiative came a bit more than a year ago uh when uh Stacy and more a group of de um they they just we just met uh and it's when they knock at Linux Foundation saying hey is is this possible can we have this sort of initiative being hosted under Linux Foundation and we say yes of course um what do you need Right. Uh and I think it has been a long journey. Uh Stacy, you mentioned in in your keynote that uh we today we announced the intent the the for fully formation but the intent to form came a late uh a year earlier and a lot has happened. So about myself um I I'm my background is on data science uh and I've been a dev roller in my previous organizations uh before I started uh the Linux foundation. I was doing dev for an open-source project called Grimlab that is an open source tool also part of a Linux foundation chaos. uh and I I even though I wasn't called the real it was basically doing the real job like uh doing getting contributors to not only use the product but because it's open source also to contribute to the project and so on and also when doing my master in data science I decided to specialize in de so my thesis was focused on measuring the success of de uh building a model that categorize the different developer personas in terms of activity and this was also u modeled and targeted to to de so that is my background it's true that I'm not like 100% de but it's true that my story has a lot of hints and expertise on the analytics side and metric side of their ro so there was a part of me on personal side that really really wanted to this initiative to take shape and even though I've been in the Linux Foundation as a support arm of of that angle uh there's also a personal side of myself a volunteering work that I really want this to take say because in the past I would have loved to have had these resources even for my research studies and to to investigate more to to do more research on on their studies that I feel from the academic field there's a lot of lack of it uh and perhaps it's because we are lacking also a lot of frameworks definitions and models standards to to get safe so saying that I'm going to share with you uh the live Q&A I need to get up because I just realized that if I don't I'm not in front of the laptop I won't be um oh yeah but before jumping into that uh how many of you here are related with that real work. Raise your hand. Okay. So, most of you will know what developer relations is and if you attended to Stacy's keynote, you already know. Uh but uh we want to make sure uh that from from here we we have like the the right definitions. So even though your organiz your role is not strictly deval there are all there's an umbrella definition that also it's about advocacy community engagement education and technical support. So when asking questions about their bra think about also these skills and and take that on mind. Um so saying that uh if you take your mobile phones you can join now the live Q&A. So I have my mobile there and as questions goes to jump in uh I will be addressing those to the states and to our mentors. Uh so you can ask anything about the foundation but also about uh devil advice um community management advocacy uh anything and um we can also if I will until questions start to come in I think I will ask uh here our uh speakers like why why did you get involved in in de Foundation? But what exact topic were you looking for when when starting this? >> Well, I have the original story I think that I could share a little bit more in depth that I wasn't able to share this morning. So I was a Devril lead and developer marketing lead at Sra Technologies when we went into the pandemic and it was a really tough time because we were just really building community redefining Devril rebranding. We had a new identity. We had a uh Devril con that we were doing every other year that I was in charge of and it just sort of put us at a halt. The good news is is that like I shared this morning is that our Devril team was already doing some virtual initiatives. We had, you know, AMAs, we had YouTube talks, we had, you know, all different types of multimedia um content out there and an ability to talk to us live in many different ways. So, that was the good news. The bad news was we couldn't connect directly with the community. And as a dev reer, it was really frustrating for for me because I love talking to developers. I'm inspired by them. I learn from them. And it's partly why I got into Devril because I started in technical marketing in a technical marketing role in the Devril team at Zebra Technologies, but we were surrounded by the sea of engineers. So, I was a lone marketeteer in the sea of engineers. Needless to say, everybody above me on the third floor was in marketing going, why do you have a marketer in developer relations and engineering? So hence I started the first developer marketing program at Zebra Technologies. But more importantly when we got to the pandemic I really needed that human connection. It's just who I am. I'm very extroverted if you haven't figured that out already and I love to meet people in the community and we found Slack channels and Discord channels where we could connect. and Carolyn Leo who is really been doing Devril that we all know uh for 40 years who has an agency but she's been really consulting with a lot of enterprise companies and basically building their Devril strategy from the ground up. um she had helped Zebra before my time there and came back in and uh we just started talking uh connected and we kept saying we need some type of formalization, we need some type of standardization of developer relations, people don't get it. Leaders don't get it. And no matter what we do to try and define that for them, you know, I've had experiences where leaders are digging into my strategy saying this is what it should be and I, you know, that where's the data and what is it based on, right? So, I'm data driven. Um, and during that pandemic on a discord channel with many community uh devro professionals who I was very thankful to connect with, we just kept having that same conversation. we need standardization. We need to be formalized. Why not talk to the Linux Foundation? Why not talk to this organization? And that sat with me for a few years. And then Carolyn and I revisited back in late 2023 and we said, "Okay, it's time. We need to do something about this. We need to make sure that if and when we exit Devril that we have contributed to this community and this is what we want to give." And so we gathered a lot of Devril professionals that we had known that were working on the the annual Devril survey and various parts and took kind of all of their expertise and put it in a room a Zoom room and said let's build a mission let's build a charter let's start this thing and by mid uh spring April May we started having conversations with Linux we were introduced to Anna to Chris and everybody else and they really welcomed us with open arms. And it was really the governance and the structure that we needed. And I've even learned more today from everybody at the Linux Foundation and various uh parts of that different teams how much this could affect developer relations and the structure of it and how it's such a great partnership for us. Um, so that's sort of my story, but it's also the story of how the Devril Foundation came to be. And thankfully, my colleagues here I've known uh distantly uh through the community on LinkedIn and we all share many of the same philosophies. I mean, you heard it from both of them, from Anna, everybody. Um, and it's just like the repeating of that just pushes me more to say, okay, let's do this thing. Let's formalize it. Okay, before going any further, we have 13 questions in the Wow. 13. Yeah. So, we're gonna go 13 of you out there. >> I think we're gonna go right away because to to be time wise, I'm going to at least try to answer two of them. So, the first one is um can you discuss how we can make our companies invest more in development from it and how the foundation can help with that? I have an answer to this. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Um I I'll just give a quick answer to this. Um I feel like a lot of Devril people think that the onus on giving ROI is on the company. Uh if you're in Deval, the onus of ROI is on you. Um so the way to get more investment is to deliver results. Um I used to work with some people who and I I had a lot of experiences with with like devo programs. Um but I've seen some people say well you know Devril is really hard to measure. Devrell is like you know you're going to events and you're you get people looking at you and this is like Devril. Um honestly that's not what Devril is for me. Uh this is probably the old way of doing deval like when you know probably when you and I started like 10 12 years ago like just go everywhere just be awesome and like high-five people and this is not like it's not going to work right now. Um, de is about giving the results and and basically the buck stops on you with like if you're doing devo um it's down to you to give the right results but also tell your C levels uh what those results actually mean. Okay. So, you know, not I I wrote a kind of a rant post the other day on the on the vanity metrics of Devril and and there's a lot of people in the Devril space kind of say, "Oh, yeah, cuz I I did this Twitch stream and there were like 2,000 people and it's like what does that actually mean? Like, is that good? Is it bad?" Uh, you know, I feel like 2,000 people is a lot, but like what does that mean for your company? Now, if you're going back to your leadership and saying, "I've done this," or, "I've been to 16 events in the past 12 weeks, what does that actually mean for the company?" Because your leadership, they're looking at it as, okay, so you've been to 16 events, you flew to 16 different places, you've been to 16 16 different hotels, and you like you had your TNE and everything, and what does that mean for the company? And I feel like a lot of times dero people fail to explain this. So the way to get more investments is just like you know show the work that you're doing and show how that what that means to the to the company you work for. Um so to add on to that what I've personally experienced again in the very short time that I've been in a part of this discipline is um that a ROI is important but you also have to have some sort of um metrics to measure them. Uh I'm a huge fan of metrics. Um and I love measuring um the value that I bring to the table personally. Um and yes uh there are different qualities that you can ascribe to metrics like Marcos was saying a lot of focus um nowadays is on vanity metrics um like likes and views and uh whatnot uh uh retweets, reposts. But um maybe at some point they were important and they are important at some stage of the funnel even right now but those should not be the only thing that you get measured on. And as a foundation and as a part of this effort, what we're trying to probably also achieve is to understand how we can better help the professionals quantify that um in terms of um having those conversations like what do I get measured on in terms of metrics or what are those things that I can actually take back to my manager or my seuite and say that hey this is exactly what I need to be measured on because every other function in the company um whether it's an engineer whether it's your sales guy whether it's your marketing person um all of them get measured on very specific things uh so far Deell unfortunately has just been about the wibe like you get measured on the wibe for a lot of people that I have um seen been working in this space. So, I I feel like that's a very strong core part of what we're trying to do here. And uh please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. No, you're right. And I you know, I'm just going to add my two cents worth here and it's going to be very short, Anna, so we can get to more questions. You're asking about ROI and you're asking how the Devro Foundation is going to help. ROI. Tie your metrics to company goals. Your OKRs or KPIs need to tie to their OKRs and KPIs. The beauty of AI is it's helping us see that bigger picture and AI is built into the community intelligence platforms. I recently talked to a company that's moving from open source to enterprise products and they're trying to figure out how they can convert open source developers into building that into an enterprise uh product, but they're only going and they're jumping from Lilyad to Lilyad, GitHub to this to Discord, but they're not tying it together. They don't know who it is and they don't know what the behavior is and they don't have the data. They don't have the data on how many times they've engaged with you and they've done more. They've forked your GitHub repo. And from the community standpoint, one thing that I've learned, especially in my past experience over the last year, is when we're out in the community and we're engaging with them one-on-one, the ROI is we're connecting with those developers, the development leaders, the directors and above who are coming to us and saying, "I just have questions, technical questions, and I don't want to talk to sales." Okay, we're here to tell you. So remember this. These are the facts that can tie in. >> I wanted to add to that that right now there are working groups at the developer relations foundations that are working on projects. The resource aggregation working group is working on open-source projects to help uh not to solve that issue but to frame those things. Like for instance there is the um persona library open source project to uh to map different developer personas. So knowing because I think this is something that deel is different from who you talk because you need to know your audience and the audience are so different. What if there is a foundations that creates standardizations and frameworks for everyone to use that can help you identify those personas and perhaps can be attached to specific metrics. So this is still work in progress but you mentioned how can the foundation help? Well, there are already open source initiatives being cooked there and I encourage you to to help out and give your advice on that. >> Build resources. That's what we're doing. But we need everybody's help because everyone has had a different experience and that adds more content for us to build that with. >> Uh the next most voted questions because now we have more. How do you tie their real metrics to revenue? companies do care about that. How is the DER Foundation helping solving this issue? Somehow related to what we have discussed, but if you want to add something else. >> Yeah, we're really talking about ROI. I'm going to give you a situation. Um, I started a Discord community for the last company that I worked with. They never had anything like that. They gated everything. They gated education. They g gated uh developers trying to come in and use their open source edition, use their enterprise edition. They wanted to know everything, your whole life story. My me, I would not tell them that. I give them, you know, one of my random Gmails and I'd hop into the Discord community and see what's going on, right? And see if there's anything that I can build with. And that was the platform that I wanted to drive for that organization to say, "Hey, look, they're going to come in and they're they're going to engage with us." Two really good stories about that. As as the community continued to grow, I connected with people one-on-one. So, as a community manager, I went in and I DM'd them. Are you getting the information you need? Uh, the tech doc that I sent you, does that answer your question? Do you need to connect with someone? Do you are you with a company, one of our companies that we're working with? If so, maybe I can escalate this to support if you're still having trouble. And I would get a response, thanks so much for your help. No, I'm just evaluating. I had someone evaluating at the same time two people. One evaluating the community to see how responsive we were and the other one evaluating our company's tools and platform. Both of those were prospects for our India group and I was able to convey that information over to them and that ended up moving that a little bit faster in terms of the sales cycle. So you can tie it to revenue. There are moments like that, that aha moment where it's going to happen. Uh just to tie in with a snippet of my oath. Um so when we talk about metrics, I believe Anna showed those four circles, pillars, whatever you call them, right? Um a lot of the metrics that I personally work with back at our organization um tie into these uh at a very high level but then they also tie into the higher OKRs like Stacy had suggested. So maybe it is as intuitive as figuring out um you know what you get evaluated by in which of these circles or pillars and what effectiveness looks like when you talk about that metric like in this example that Stacy mentioned uh you know the person was evaluating what does success look like really when you're evaluating as a community user uh what Does um success look like when you're evaluating a product? Does it mean like you sell the product or is it just awareness? What are you trying to achieve when you are talking about each of these that that is very important and clearly defining that is very important in my opinion when you talk about metrics as well. Um so I know that we have um a working group metrics um which has been highly inactive and I take full responsibility for it as well. Um but we are trying to get that restarted in terms of the efforts that are going in to ensure more metrics um are available and we are able to provide them uh to the larger group of people out there. Can I just I'll just add one thing to it which um a lot of the the companies I work with today they I go and I talk to their devro teams and they go like I I don't really know how to tie the metrics because I don't even know where to get the metrics from. Uh one big problem in in Devril is like it's a team that usually sits under sometimes marketing sometimes engineering but they don't necessarily have access to the right tools. Um and and this is a problem. So the the first thing that I do when I kind of start working with a company is I find out what are the tools they have for metrics and then I help them out with mapping the tools they have and the metrics to the company's goals and Stacy mentioned this before which is like a really good point like we have AI to help us out right now. So if you take your team's OKR and you give that to CH JP or like whatever you you like and you take the company's OKR and you try and find a match, uh most likely will help you find what is the path. So the one thing that you need to make sure you do is you have the metrics or you have access to the metrics. And sometimes what this means is like you know you're going to have to sit down with someone in data science for example and and just ask them to help you out with with getting those metrics and getting the tools like whatever tool your company uses u and then tie those together. Um another question uh what would you say that are the three most common issues that you are facing or you have been facing as de lead and sorry I will add to that just to attach to the foundation. Uh are any of those issues that you mention somehow can be um uh seen or some and some sort of activity in the foundation? If if you have some ideas if not you can just ignore >> just one idea I have here is um like when it comes to issues is exactly this like the what is the what is the perceived value that your team actually delivers to the company. Okay. Like you can be doing devo in a company and you can be kind of like siloed and think you're doing great, but the reality is everyone is looking at you and going like what are they even doing? Like these people just keep on like jet setting from country to country and and what is it that they're delivering? And I've seen this happen time and time again. Like I'm not going to go through like three issues, but I'll say the biggest one that I see is where a devro team just stays so siloed and they don't work with anyone. Because the reality with Devril is like you can kind of be your own thing. Like you can kind of like be your own vertical um inside the company, but what you need to make sure you do is that you're not siloed because um this reduces your the value that you deliver. And then what happens is you are the first thing to be cut as we've seen happen a lot over this past few months and years or so. >> Yeah. And I would just say a couple of things. Buyin. You need buyin from your execs, your seauite, your investors. That is tough. An investor thinks that you should be calling a developer on the phone and trying to sell to them. Your Devril team knows, uh-uh, we're not doing it that way. How do you get the buy in? How do you convince them? Right? So you need to build those data points that provide the data that show what the journey is for the developer, how it aligns to the journey with marketing, product, sales. You all have to work together and collaborate. So collaboration is the other key. A dev reller, as many of you know, wears about 15 hats, right? We're jumping from lily pad to lily pad, as I say. And that's a tough space to be in because we can't really dig down deep into the actual strategy and implementing it. So I would also say being able to step back, take it a step back and educate internally. The first thing that I did at my last position is within a month I was on the stage with the sales teams telling them what Devril is, right? It's the four circles there, but it's also marketing. Uh there's a a book on developer relations uh written by James Parton, Carolyn Leo, and it has like the Devril tree. I call it the Devrell umbrella and everything under there. You have to explain those pieces like marketing or docs documentation or education or any anyone or experience could be si and advocacy could be sitting in different places in the org. Now you have to collaborate with them. So you are the key connector internally and externally. >> And um I know both of them spoke at length about um you know the lack of awareness and the perception of being something entirely different as opposed to what you're actually doing. And uh this is very much true on a um 10,000 ft level as a whole discipline as well because I feel like uh from the perspective of the entire industry developer relations just looks like a glorified tech influencer which yes there is one aspect of it that does focus on not influenc influencing but advocating for your project or your product in case you're in the proprietary side of things. But that's not all that you do. And like Stacy mentioned, there's an entire umbrella of things that you're responsible for. You're wearing a lot of hats. So coupled with whatever they said of course internal education and internal advocacy is important but the fact that is more harmful and has been detrimental to the kind of um I wouldn't say content but the kind of um direction this field has taken currently is the fact that we are glorified or rather perceived as glorified tech influencers who just jet set across the globe and are in a new uh location every single day clicking photos at conferences and having beers or thereafter which may or may not be true but that's not the only thing we do. So yeah uh so the next question uh which skills are becoming increasingly important in dero and how can teams systematically prepare for them here. Oh sorry I will repeat. So which skills are the most are increasingly important in their role and how can teams be prepared? So assuming you are talking about developer relations in this industry tech industry which I assume it is because the name itself has developer. So um so developer relations in my opinion um I I function on this basic principle that developers when you talk to them if you try selling stuff to them they smell that from a mile away. So the first thing that you should not be doing and this is a skill um is that you are not supposed to be selling things to them. You are supposed to be advocating about your projects, your products um and talking about those things um from the perspective or getting them to talk to a person who can um actually talk to them more technically if you are not technical which is fine. Uh but being that connecting piece is extremely important. So that is number one. The second thing is having empathy. Um I know this is a soft skill but it's um it's one that a lot of us lack because a lot of us are focused on getting our numbers which is a very marketing thing to say but it's it's really the case. We are trying to um figure out what to measure ourselves by what to rack the numbers up against. So we need to have the empathy to also understand that the people we are talking to are not um pieces of software or not not lines of code. You have to have the empathy to go on the human level and talk to them and understand what their problem is because software is meant to solve problems. It's not meant to um you know just be there for the sake of it. It's not art. Uh so you have to put yourself in the um place of the user or the person that you're speaking to and figure out their personas and that's again tying back to the some of the work that we're doing with respect to developer personas or personas in general. That's the second thing. And the third thing is communication. I think as developer relations people communication is obviously one of the things you have to have as a de facto thing. Um but I would like to add that in for good measure because not everybody who's a good speaker um actually communicates well. You have to get your point across. Um you can speak beautiful pros but have nothing come out of it. You need to convey stuff and you need to convey the stuff to the right people. So that's it. So, I'm gonna make this quick because I I want to give Marcos a challen a chance to talk, too, because I know he would probably have a lot of things to say similar to me. Um, I'm going to say be authentic, right? Be direct. None of this fluff, right? I've been in marketing. I know what that is. And I've been the technical editor to bring it all down back to the basics. You are there to help the developers on their journey. You are there to help them solve their problems. That is your job and you are help there to help guide them through that journey so they adopt. And then there's retention. So I would say skill set authentic be direct and make sure that you're helping them. >> Yeah. >> All right. So I think >> just to wrap up um the the last thing I will say is join the foundation there is the link there uh devil.org org and uh for all the questions that has been served these are not going away. Uh the idea is to use take those questions, share it as a summary blog in the Devrell Foundation blog post and uh share with the community and you can uh be in touch by joining our communications channel in Discord, exploring the working groups to become a contributor or using the tools uh and learning more about the resources at the website. >> Also, we love talking to people. So, if we didn't answer your question here and you want to ask that question directly to us, uh, we'll we'll be around. So, uh, hang >> out. Yeah. We're here to help. >> Thank you, everyone. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you., DevRel Foundation Ask Anything Session, The Linux Foundation, 01k4g01r8bzknefg8yjfnkecmw.