Introducing DevRel(ish) - A Show About DevRel ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/677ornDJip4/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEjCNACELwBSFryq4qpAxUIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJDeAE=&rs=AOn4CLA_WRDg3YrmOSgCuVmC1_YbGj8kaA) ## Metadata - Author: [[Certified Fresh Events]] - Full Title: Introducing DevRel(ish) - A Show About DevRel - Category: #articles - Document Note: 1. What was your experience when introducing DevRel to people who didn't know about it? 2. How do you think being a devrel person differs from being in marketing? 3. What have been some of the most successful strategies you've seen when connecting with people in the devrel world? Introducing DevRel(ish) is a show about DevRel, exploring the experiences of those in the industry, such as the crossover between roles like Developer Advocate and Developer Relations, and how they are different when working in marketing. It also looks at the importance of understanding technology, and how they go beyond attending events and bringing people together to create meaningful connections. - Document Tags: [[devrel]] - Summary: Join Erin Makail Staples and Brian Rinaldi as they introduce a new show all about careers in Developer Relations (aka DevRel) and DevRel adjacent roles. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=677ornDJip4&ab_channel=CertifiedFreshEvents foreignthank you all I'm glad to see like we'vegot like 10 people here already and somefolks we know like joining us for thefirst ever episode of devrelish ohRachel is here uh great to hear you seeyou RachelumsoI'm let's just get to it like what'sthis show about since this is the firstever time we're doing this I want totalk a little bit about what what can you expect from this show from Aaron andIum and then a little bit about why we'retalking about devrelum andand all that so anyway we'll get to itsofirst of all Aaron what let's talk aboutlike what what why why we came up withdevrel-ish like why why devrel-ish notwell it all started back when we had afond love of sandwiches pickle justkidding just kidding just kiddingum but first off thank you so much um I see a lot of friendly familiar faces inthe comments so it's very exciting tosee here I love the people here loveworking kind of collaborating with youBrian it's got it it wasn't the firsttime I've been very excited about thisum but both of us realize it's kind of along arduous different not linearjourney into the world of devrel thatinvolved a lot of General ishumto get there and it's usually yourday-to-day Endeavor Dev religion devrel relatedum doesn't really have aone-size-fits-all agendamuch likea plethora of pickles I don't know wherewe're gonna go with this analogy butso yeah um you know I I agree with thatso I've had we'll get a little bit toour backgrounds in devrel but like Imean I've had a long journey in devreland not all my titles were devrelum and and I've seen a lot of companies who do devrel who have lots of peoplewho are like Community managers and oryou knowI had content manager and things likethat that were the titles were were notdevrel but the roles actually weredevrel-ish they were you know they wereadjacent I like to call themum I've been always saying likedevrel-ish because it describes mycareer and that was for like where Icame up with the name and yes and we kind of went with the the relishumwe had fun with the relish part of it soum yeah so let's let's let's actuallytalk in that sense like a little bitabout our backgrounds and like why we'retalking about devrelum what what we do in devrelum so so just like a little bit about mefor those of you I know a bunch of youare in the audienceum but um my background in devrel I startedin a devrel-ish uh was a communitymanager role um but at Adobe and thatwas like 12 years ago devrel was kind ofsomething relatively newum Rachel was who's watching was thereuh she and I worked together at Adobe atthe timeum soanyway uh that was kind of my start butI I got to it I kind of came to itbecause I was already doing like running conferences and local user groups andwriting articles and it just kind ofseemed like like that was what I love todo and while this is an opportunity tomaybe make a career out of thatum and I've wound through a number ofjobs only a couple of them actually weredeveloper Advocateum every other all the others had avariety of titles that were notnecessarily developer Advocate orcurrently on developer experienceengineer um whatever you know these are we kindof throw lots of fancy titles at devrelrolls but I've had a bunch of themum very few being just developerAdvocate what about youyeah so I dropped it in the chat um mydirection into the community deveralspace literally was on accidentum I joke about this a lot I've told itin a few conferences um my careertrajectory literally was I was a productmanager This was 2020. um I was at an open source e-commerceplatform and was getting called in itwas like hey remember that like betatesting community that you were workingon and I was like yeahyou're doing a really great job of thatand I was like cool awesome job boss andI was like he's like I have great newsfor you we need to hire a communityperson and I was like awesome thatsounds great let me know how it goeswhen you're hiring that Community personbecause I don't know what to do with thecommunity I'm just running this betatesting group and they're like yeah Ithink you'd be a great person for ourhead of community and I was like cool I guessum and no I did not get a pay raise orany updates but I was the head ofcommunity and promptly after that IGoogled what does a community person doin an open source e-commerce platformandGoogled and then found myself into thisworld so needless to say um I didn'teven know it was a real job my first jobinto this space and very quickly fellintospace this role the exciting world of it um currently now I am a senior developerCommunity Advocate at label Studio whichis a open source machine learning anddata labeling platform so I get to workin a very coolexciting Tech stock I really enjoy it uma lot of my background is verynon-linearum unfortunately started my career injournalismum product wanted to be a politicalreporter and that was actually my firstinternship was a court reporter so you know ish we're here nowexactly exactly so yeah I mean my degreewas in history it led me here soum upcoming on severalish when do wetalk about where's the politics andhistory episodeyeah exactly so yeah I I thinkyou know it is it is kind of a funnycareer in that sense like I think a lotof people end up in it like not even realizing this could bea job rightum we're just like it's it's kind oflike umyou know by trying to explain what we doto people who don't know aboutum different Bell can be often difficultlike I I tell people who like are not inthe field I'm like I'm basically paid towrite about and speak about and you knowand whatever like others like about our product todevelopers whoumwho say they don't like marketing butI'mlike marketing to them technically soyeah you're like it's just weird butlike not in a gross way like it's and Isay that with love I actually been aproduct marketing person so I feel thatI've worn that hat too andyou know I think one of the things thatwhen you're in these roles I always joketwo years ago my parents used to saythat I spammed the internet umwe've got them to not say that I don'tspam the internet anymoreand more recentlya year ago they used to say I talked tostrangers online for a living is what myparents said I did butwe've got now it's I teach people aboutI mean that's that's very true and I waslike cool so we've got from spamming theinternet now my parents think I talk tostrangers online and somehow get paidfor itum and now they have moved into Aaron teaches things online but not likean MLMyeah so I think I thought I also think Iwant to bring up like it's interestingyour career brought youalso to a company where you were meantin developer relations talking todeveloper relations professionals whichis must have been even especiallydifferentyeah yeah very meta it's very and looking back it's like Iit only made me double down on thedevrelishum like I work for a community toolingcompany and it made me double down onthe devil ish becausethey would be like okay let's and that'sthe hard part right like and I think I'doften talk about there's this spectrumof web development even right like youcould have a you know a card.co site ora Wix site which is a very out of thebox Plug and Play you're not going toget a lot of customization and you're pretty sandboxed in what you can do oryou can have like a completely builtfrom scratch custom code self-hostedsolutionand those are two very different optionsand there's not one option that's betterthan the other it's really depending onyour circumstances and what you need andthe tooling you're working with andthe organization and the goals thatyou're trying to achieve whichmuch like communities and companies anddevelopers like that's also another thing like I'm now working like the techstack I work with is python machinelearning and data scientists which is avery different Tech stack I was workingwith a year ago evenyeahso rightand you brought up the issue of likewhere where do where does it even fit inthe organization I'd be curious like iffolks put in the comment like where ifyou're in devrel where do you sit in theorganization because like um I've beenat a bunch of companies and we were always at different parts of the likeright now we report to the pmm teamum so devrel is kind of like a sub ofthe pmm team but I've been like theoffice of the CTO was a prior one wewere in uh sometimes in engineeringum sometimes in you know reporting intolike you know marketing directly I meanit's like it really seems to bethis is why I think the experience ofbeing a devrel kind of can adjust to different basically differentorganizations it's like is not only justthe does the scope of the job changeum but also like even just the reportingstructure changes like you know I've Ican tell you for certainthat your job tends to be different as adevrel person if you're if you're inmarketingum versus if you're reporting intoengineeringum you know so so that even that aspect can really change what it means to be adead RealmI'm loving all these different poststhat are coming in like Rachel evenputting like currently I live incustomer support and I've been in roleswhere community and devrel was customersupport you just didn't hire customersupport and that was part of your jobextension when I was on this most recentjob search that was somethingvery intentionallyum internal and external Deborah I'veheard about that happening before andthat's yeah my brain would be like explodingum it's really interesting like um andone of the things I'm really enjoyingright now is like we have we're an OpenSource Products likeI don't largely like it's not that Idon't work with our Enterprise usersum but like my day-to-daylargely is spent with our open sourceaudience and right open source userslike it doesn't mean I don't like myinitiatives are largely around whatbenefits the open source Communityum but it doesn't mean that I don'tthink about our Enterprise users but that's not my primary goal like myprimary targets objectives initiativesand what My Success metrics are aredetermined on those open sourceCommunity which meansthat changes the scope of work verydifferently like they have differentprocesses for Enterprise users andthat's okay but it also likewith open source your kind of your fieldof work can also do this and expand veryquicklyum remember at my old jobum I was working a lot with like whatintegration do we build next and I think very specifically aboutthere is one instance like we wereworking a lot like different tools youcould measure Community activity inand someone every week would ask me whenare you going to integrate with GoogleDocs and I was likelike what like I have no idea why I havelike this makes no sense but because wewere a Community Driven organizationlike each week he had like the lobbyingcampaign for when is Google Docs comingout when is like what is thisintegration Google coming out which iscool but you definitely have to kind of go backto what does that mean for the largerorganizationyep yeah and I saw some people like lotsof people talking about the differentgroups that they report into and and youyou mentioned even having like aninternal and extra I've even seen likewhen I joined long starkly we had twoteams uh I was technically the beginningof the developer experience team whichwas again it was devreli um uh devrelish and and then we had adevrel team and they literally haddistinguished between uh devrel forexternal like basically thoughtleadership type devrel versus uh devilthat was more like about you knowum actually like digging into the codeand showing how to use the product andstuff like thatum and so those teams are now merged butI've heard I've seen other companieswhere like you have a team that's devrel that reports into the engineering andthen you have a team that's Deborahforts into into pmm or marketing or likeeven other places likeum folks I I know at AWS when I've evenI've interviewed there and talked toother people work there and they havelike multiple devrel teams that reportinto sometimes like they have a largerdevrel team and they have smaller devrelindividuals who will report directlyinto the product that they'rerepresentingum so yeah it's I think it makes forit's one of the things about the the role of Deborah like I can say havingbeen an engineer at multiple companiesit was always the experience was oftensimilar like the companies weredifferent but the job was not thatdifferentum and Deborah like really every companyyou go to it can be a completelydifferent type of job so yeah and oh Ijust want to call out sorry I was goingto say I want to do one last thingbefore research topics I know we're kindof but one more thing I don't have adeveloper backgroundum I've never been a developer and so very very clearum and I want to like make thatexplicitly clear as you do not have tobe a developer to be in Deborah howeverI will give the caveat of one of my petpeeves and the thing that I'm startingas I start to move more in senior seniorin my careeris I do strongly believe you should havean understanding of the tech stack thatyou're working withand feel confident speaking and at leastreading documentation or writingdocumentation because being able totroubleshoot the tech stack that you areworking with is a really great way to gain confidencein your organizationum I don't remember who gave me thisadvice but it was a mentorum I believe it was umactually Maddie Stratton that actuallygave this to me I believe I hope I'mquoting this right if I give if you givethis advice to me thanksum and I do use it um but it was likekind of the minute that someone else inan organization assigns you your jobyou're out as a Deborah and it's likeand one reason that that's kind of costpeople their role is because if you'reasking a hundred questions about the tech stackyou don't have the confidence and youwill be kind of written off as justanother influencer or a Creator orsomeone who's just playing around whilethe engineers do the quote unquote realwork so being familiar with the techstack and being able to decipher a techstack is really importantand so yes you can come into deveralwithout an engineering background butthat doesn't mean you can't benon-technicalright okay yeah I I would agree with youI think you know it's changed a lot inthe 12 years I've been doing this um back 12 years ago you had to be youhad to come in as like a known entityand which is why I kind of snuck inthrough like being a community managerum because like there wasn't a lot ofdifferent wolves and so everybody whowas like devrel was like uh you know abig big uh you know big name we alreadyknew them from some other work they weredoing so likeum and I love the fact that now thatdevrel's expanded we have all differentkinds of roles and different kinds of backgrounds and experience and it's it'sreally changed and I think it's a muchmore Dynamic role than it was beforeum and and to me a much more interestingrole soum okay so real quickum uh we before we move onum to actually what we're going to talkabout today I want to just kind of givea quick rundown like so because we got alot of folks here and I'm really excitedabout thatum justfor for kind of like let you know whatwe're gonna do with this show going forward today we're going to just kindof hit on some topics that we wereinterested in because this is our firstshow and we just wanted to kind ofintroduce ourselves to you but likegoing forward we do plan on having we'regoing to talk hot topics for death railfolks as well as have some really greatguests and um I've already got oncesigned up for our next show I hope sowe'll announce that soon we and I'mreally excited about some of the namesso likeum we we also some of you all in theaudience our devrel folks who we'd love to have on the show so if you'reinterested just reach out to us um butthat's kind of like what we're gonna dowith the show going forwardum but today we are just going to talkabout a couple of of posts that we readum and and kind of the topics that theybring up so we're going to start withthis onethe devrel influencer trend I don't knowif anybody in the audience read this oneum I saw it it was um I know a lot of a lot of folks here um are alreadyfamiliar with the umthe devrel slack I'm blanking on thename all of a sudden butum Deborah Collective slack which Ithat's where I caught this oneum and and we just want to talk a littlebit about our thoughts on this I think Ithought this was a little bit of a to touse your term from earlier spicy takerightum so and and I have mixed feelingsabout it but I want to hear yourthoughts first my thoughts umlikelet's let's see spicy takes let's putAaron right on the spot on that oneum so going through this postum one of the things that I first offand I say this as someone who hasactually wrangled influencers for arandom freelance contract and actuallyin the beauty industryum again when you do random things topay for graduate schoolumit's like very and going back to my post about credibility as a developerAdvocate and or Deborah engineerwhatever the title isum and again I do not mean this to saythat you cannot be non-technical andwork in Tech or in developer relationsor that you need to have a formallytaught explicit backgroundwhat I mean to say is you will lose alot of credibility with working withdevelopers or technical individuals ifyou don't know the language to speakum there is a tweet or a meme or a ticktock floating around I don't rememberwhere it was the other day that was like um it said something along the lines oflike you know CLI tools it was likedeveloper influencer equals CLI toolsyes and then that was the whole tweetthat it was like you know actualdeveloper here's cool tips of how to usethis in like actual like actual helpthere and you can see the differencewhere someone's just using a keyword andthen someone's actually providing helpum yeah I don't know if you've ever readdocumentation that sucks and you're likewow I actually no you've never read documentation that sucks yeah you'venever heard documentation that sucks alldocs are wonderful uh butI think the big thing to acknowledgehere is that technical expertise and notjust doing it for the sake of doing itactually knowing what you're talkingaboutum and I think that's also comes down toDeborah like again I mentioned I joineda new company in late November earlyDecemberpart of it was a new tech stock Ihaven't been very versed in the machinelearning space but I have written SQL Ihave written python I had data sciencebackgrounds I had done some other things but was getting up to speed and otherelements it's okay for you to say Idon't know this right now let me getback up it's okay for you to call insomeone else but you better be bustingyour butt to get up to speedand I think that's kind of thedifference that they're talking aboutherewell yeah and that I will say likethat's a little bit of my worry so forfolks who didn't read the article itkind of talks it talks a little bitabout this idea that umthat's uh she feels like some companiesare just hiring people for their social media reachum who really are notyou know that's kind of their primaryjob is and so like it's a little more ofa salesy marketing job than devrel andand thatshe worries that the confusion betweenthose people and devrel might undervalue what an actual devrel a persondoesum and I you know and I think there issome truth to that I also worry about being likeand I'm not trying to say this is washer intent but I worry about that youcould take this this perspective andbecome kind of gatekeepy and it's likewell you know I can't let somebody saywith your background kind of like youknow your original background say likeokay you know you can't have this devrelrole because we need you know this wouldbe the that was the devil I came from 12years ago where like you had to be likethe well-known expert in whatever it was you were talking aboutum before you could even get that roleand guess by the way guess who got thatrole it was you know it wasn't it wasnot a veryum diverse group of people let's justsay uh and and so I think you know I'mI'm just I I worry that sometimes if wekind of put these barriers in place likeyou know I think you can come into itbecause you know you're particularly good at talking to developers on socialmedia and have that that ability to toinfluence how you knowum there bring them on to like bringtheir interest into the product and notnecessarily be a deep expert in thatproductum or even a deep like a deeplyexperienced developerum but I agree with you that likeyou would have you should evolve in thatrole and take on more of that um that you know spend your time learning theproduct spend your time you know beefingup your yourability to code and things like thatthis just you can't just and in the endbe like okay I'm just a social mediainfluencer kind of thingyeah and I love whatum black girl bites puts in the commentum I think we are marketers andinfluencers in the sense that we have alot of influence over the products usersI know we steer away from that sayingbecause it undermines our skill but wealso have to say that like technical individuals with strong communicationskills and this is something I want toreiterate reiterate reiterate likeDeborah isn't just development anddevrel isn't just communication there'snot you don't get a or b you have tohave both skill sets and I have actuallyseen and worked with folks that are youknow developers that didn't have thecommunication skills that you knowweren't a great fit as a Deborah andthey didn't make it very long I've alsoworked with you know people who had great communication skills that didn'thave the development technical expertiseand so and exactly what you said Brian Iyou know so I was laid off for my job inAugust I came from a very privilegedposition where I was working in Academiapart-time I'm a professor on the sideand so I was able to take four or fivemonths off from a full-time role inconsult and freelance and teachand research and live my double life inAcademiaumand one of the things I actually hadfour or fivejobs reject me because I didn't have a developer I had never been a developerbefore and they were like unless youhave developer and that was the onething I asked what is the thing that Iwas not qualified for this job and theywere like you have not been explicitly adeveloper or have a computer sciencebackgroundyep and we cannot that is like ourcompany policy we cannot hire itI had one company I begged them to letme take the tech exam just and I waslike can I just take your Tech exam topracticeand they gave it to me and I passed and they still would not hire me and I waslike are you kidding me like and so beaware that that does existbut on my end I did have to learnbecause I was doing a pretty bored poorjob and this is something I'm working onnow in this role is I did a prettycrappy job of posting my technicalcontent on my own site like I had postedit and written technical content for thecompany I was working for but I didn'treally update it on my own site soLessons Learned make sure you'recross-posting that stuff on your ownsite yeah I have two quick things to say uhon this and then um maybe we'll move onto the next postumbut those are all excellent points uhand I would say first of all justbecause you're a good developer doesn'talso doesn't mean you're going to begood at this job right so like I've I'veactually known lots of people who werereally good excellent developers who didnot do well at this in fact didn't likethe job because I used to warn them likehey by the way they're like you know this isn't really a job that's all aboutcoding like if you really love to sitand codeum all the time this probably isn't thejob for you I'm like you know I I I'mlike I spend a lot of my time notactually coding stuff and soum and I think most folks that I'vetalked to it's it's very similar butthen umthe second point is that you can also inthat windy path of devrelish findyourself uh outside on the outside kind of having to prove yourself all overagain like when I wanted I had taken arole I kind of gotten promoted for awhile and I was like a director levelrole and it was you know in title wiseespecially it was more of a managementrole and then I had to kind of I wantedto get back to deveral I kind of went totake a step back into like actual devrelstuffum and and I I but the way I keptinterviewing and people were like uhyou've been a manager I'd only beendoing this world for like a year and they're like well you know you're amanager you're not really like a devrelcan you actually code anymore it's likeit's like I was a developer for 20 someodd years come on like right I stillcode even it was hard to even prove thatto them that I did that so I sit there Isat there and like the way I got my nextrole was I just I started posting on ondev2 and on my blog like every singleweek for I think it was like 40 weeksthat I I went on every single week Iposted something without fail you when I was on vacation because I'm like youknow this is gonna like I need to justkind of beef up my resume in terms oflike what have I done lately like okayso yeah I'm a manager at my job but I'malso doing all this stuff soumsoI was looking at Cody's talk the guyhe's the guy who does a conference talkand it disappears for an hour or two torecharge his soulyeah I I hear thatum so uh it's better than being the ones like I used to go to a lot ofconferences where there was people whojust the devil folks who showed up forthe talkand then left and I I'm not a fan ofthat to be honest it's like you got tobe there you got to be there part of itspeaking of conferences participate yeahyeah speaking of conferences so we'regonna talk real quick uh our last topicfor the dayum it's actually about a post that Iwrote that likeshocked me thatum it it kind of caught on like I've I I um gotten so much so many comments uhabout this post and it showed up allover the placeum yeahum yes Cody I'm self plugging myselfbut we were cut we were talking abouttopics in this this was one that likeseemed to be a very strongumhad a lot of impact on people like inthe devrel community who came back andsaid like yes I've seen the same thingbecause I mean one thing's about Deborah folks that first of all a lot of uswe're not just speaking at events a lotof us actually actively running eventstoo soum so I think that you know it includingmyself I've run events forI guess like 15 years nowum in various capacities both online andin person and big company events andsmall uh you know Community conferencesand stuff like thatum and you know and it so it's Deborahfolks were like Deborah at least folks we areinvolved in in events all the time likeevents are a big big part of our roleum and I you know I wrote this post kindof likeafter the past year or so since eventsuh opened back up going to them andbeing likeyeah things don't look really good andandum and I talked to the organizers atalmost every event I'd go to and justkind of validate some of what I was seeing and andyou knowI mean I've talked to a number oforganizers and just kind of seeing alsoother events that just called it quitsthere's been a few big events they callthe quits in this this year alreadyum and so I'm worried about aboutdeveloper conferences I I think I don'tknow I I think the you know thereinvents and the builds are gonna gonnasurvive oh yeah I'll share that link so uhoh you did okay okayum sorrysoum yeah I just I don't know that the youknow outside of the reinvents and allthe stuff like how many of theseCommunity event run eventsum that we've kind of been used to ornecessarily going to survive2023.so I don't know I mean do you what's your feeling on on events I havea I have a ghost pepper take I thinkwe've discussed earlier pickled ghostpepper take from earlier in the chatpickled jalapeno pepper yeah maybe someof them shouldn't survive and I don'tmean that in aI wish that these events should die offsort of phase I meanwere these events ever inclusive to theaudiences that they should be inclusiveto in the first placewere these events you know I I know I know quite a few of them and and I thinkthey were inclusiveum so I don't know that that was theissuelike it's just like the events acrossthe boardin any conference regardless like almostany conference regardless of how greator not great they are are down like 40percent pre from pre-covered times sobut like that's is it this are wegetting new people thereum are we getting I attended API days New York last year andit was like I there was a few greattalks but the attendance was reallyreally really really really reallyfar down and like even this year likewe're looking at our event schedule andit was very hard to justifyyou know as a devrel part of my job isto justify the cost to spend on aconference andpart of it is like okay if we're notspeaking or we're not what is worth us goingand like what conferences are with uswhich is a hard question to answer whichthen it's like you get and it soundsterrible to say that because then you'relike okay if we're not speakingyou know is that a very selfish way tolook at a conferenceyeahum sues has an interesting point whichis she says that if they were not ifthey were in person only they weren'tinclusiveumand I would say you know I I wrote aboutthat part too because it's easy to like I think there's a there's some truth tothat but it's alsoum I'd say it's tough becausedoing hybrid events is actually reallynot just difficult it's expensiveum and so that like that cost it onlyadds to the costum and often really doesn't bring inenough Revenue to justifydoing both um from a you know like it's it's mucheasier for like say aum you know Amazon in the AWS re inventto do to broadcast their stuff or likebuild I mean they they've got these aremoney losing events to begin with butyour community event that like you knowthe the AV Equipment to do that asexpensive the internet to do that isoften expensive let me close this windowthis is brightumyou know so like and not necessarily reliable so like it's it's not so it's II hear you sues but I'd say it's not sosimple from an organizer standpoint tosay hey we're just going to go hybridum it's it's actually a very difficultand expensive thing to do uh andand doesn't like it adds a lot of costand oftentimes that cost isn't made upin the ticket sales that you'd have byadding hype you know a virtual versionof the event one thing I thinkI think because we can all admit likeit's a downturn we've seen our peerssuffer layoffs whether they're fair ornot or I think we're all kind of feelingitinsert current crisis of everythinggoing on points to universe and cries alittle bitumbut I wonder if it's a shift from theconference because you're right I don'treally see like an AWS canceling you know and reignite oryou started so much but likeI do see potentially a rise of a smallerMeetup or those Mo the smaller groupspotentially like the more GrassrootsumVenture and like personally I like thosemore a little bit maybe because I'm anawkward human and that's more my speedbut like I can be my own little awkwardselfum again and or like we're gonna have alittle bit more creative approachesum to your point on hybrid events uh I actually have experienced one goodhybrid event and the person who has ranit has actually been the mostunique person that I would never havethought would have ran it and it's comefrom the world of Academia so duringlike the last semestersum NYU actually has a policy all of yourevents and all of your classes have tobe available hybrid because of covidand so if anybody has been exposed tocovid or is feeling sick they have tostay home you're not allowed into the buildingsdespite class being offered in personand we have these like owl things in themiddle of the classroom and everybodypulls up class on their Zoom and soeverybody has zoom up on their laptopsand you bring laptops in and again likeI recognize like the privilege like thisis a graduate student environment whereit's 30 40 sometimes 50 peoplebut it actually allows in using toolslike notion and sigma and having 360cameras allow it fora unique take on the hybrid space so I'm curious to see or like um I spokeat mozfest and I volunteered at mozfestwhich is ran by Mozilla and they've donesome really cool things remotely so Idon't know I I want to see more creativeapproaches herereally amazing I agree that's I thinkthat's kind of where that's where I leftit like I don't have any answers tosaving it I think we're in a phase wherelike we just need to see someexperimentationum and just you know somebody's gonna kind of figure out whatthe future of of in person and virtualevents look likeum you know I think I I lean towards thefuture of in-person events is going tobe moreum because I've noticed the people whogo to them in person now really wantthat connection with with peopleum and so I think it's it's we'vefocused so much before on content and Ithink umyou know the content's always going tobe important but I think maybe puttingas much focus onthat kind of connection and piece of itisum is going to be the way we we kind offix those because and and also maybe toshrink the events a little bit part ofit is there's a bit of a covet hangoveras well which is hurting a lot of theseevents which is that they had contractsthat you know you signed with to savemoney you sign with a hotel and you sign this multi-year contract and now youpostponed it in a year or two for twocouple years for for covid and nowyou'reum you're back and you're paying thisyou're on the same contract you werepre-covered but you're down 40 inattendeesumyou know the hotels not thatunderstanding anymoreet cetera et cetera so it's it'scomplicatedum but I do think there's we're going tosee some Innovation here and hopefullynot just good events disappearing so on that note I am gonnawhich is super important which is themost the mostquestionably most important thing ofthis entireevent unquestionably unquestionablyumwho likes the technical fact um so I think we should kick us off witha little bit of literacy since we'reboth some liberal rights liberal artsfolks here in the world of devil youknow to keep it on their ish trendum so fun facttoday if you were to say if you say thatyou're in a pickle it's kind of a way tosay that you're in a Troublesomesituation like the state of developerevents they're a little bit in a pickleor you've gotten us in a pretty picklehere with developer events but 400 years agoModern English actually borrowed thatfrom the Dutch which they expressedpredicament but the phraseprobably butchered that so for Dutch I'mso sorryum I'm sure it was 100 correct that'sthe way that was 100 correct like takeme back 400 years no one's time has atime machineum if you do hit me up that'd be prettydope let's go explore some thingsumwhich literally translates to sit in asalty solution used to preserve meats and vegetablesum this was found in Shakespeare'sTempestwhich when Alonso asked trinkulo howchemist thou in this pickle and LordByron's Don Juanthe Turkish batteries thrust them in afail or like a good boxer into a sadpicklesand first off uh there's got to be adevrelish hot ones crossover let's makethat happen I do agreeepisode one and we're setting our sights high for the seasonyeah I think you know I I love it I Ithink this is why I was so glad that youagreed to host this show with me becauseif you were willing to like lean intothe relish aspect of devrelishum I mean I havepitched uhsubmitable times to a couple ofconferences about how developerrelations is like fermentation and no one so weird fact about me Idon't know if you knew this Brian whenwe agreed on the pickle theme instead ofmaking bread during the pandemic Iactually did get into fermentation Imake kimchi and there's actuallyhomemade pickles in my fridge right thisinstantI did not know this soit's just kind of it all just cametogether but I do ferment thingsandI have submitted a cfp that has beenrejected twice so if you need someonethere's an entire cfp and prep already ready to go so someone invite me to yourconferenceso I can talk about fermentation anddevrel or I'm a parent I'm not obsessedwith pickles or relish um I do love agood hot dog uh but I like that withsauerkraut which is I guess you knowpickled something but um pickled cabbageum but yeah so but apparently I have alike an obsession with food themedthings like I was you know certifiedfresh events started out like the logowas off of like a fruit you know like you see like little stickers on fruitum we are first you know this I had athe first podcast we started on the sitewas was code sandwich hour and I haveanother site another project I've beenworking on called which was the wholeenchilada so you know it's likeapparently I like food themedthings for developers so that's uh Ididn't even know I just somebody pointedout to me actually Sean who hosts the other show he's like you know you youkind of love these food themed things Ilike I guess I do yeah soanyway with that um we will we will wrapthat upum yeah so I really appreciallyyeah it's been so exciting to see likeall these comments and just it you knowfor our first showum I I'm excited about our first guestif you know so just kind of keep youreyes on cfe.dev for who that's going to be uh we'll be announcing that soon soand hopefully you'll all join us againum so thank you thank you thanks Aaronthank you I can't wait to keep thisgoing and uh we'll see you all againnext time yeah we'll put a lid on it Iguess I'm gonna steal that from Nickthank you very much and if you have anycomments questions concerns feedbackwant to shamelessly promote your blogpost um drop it in the cfe.dev Discord Idropped the link above but you can alsofind it right here I'm gonna copy it in the chat right here and just find me onthe interwebs and we'll keep it goingbye, Introducing DevRel(ish) - A Show About DevRel, Certified Fresh Events, 01gw2c43nk6n4cnqkn2hrzzkxv.