We Turned Developers Into Journalists  ## Metadata - Author: [[Dev Rel]] - Full Title: We Turned Developers Into Journalists - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #developeradvocacy - #contentstrategy - #writingworkshops Author: Tena Šojer Keser Source: YouTube – "We turned developers into journalists" Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1zHCXqNkCY date created: 2025-08-23 19:45 --- # Title: Turning Developers into Journalists – A People-First Content Strategy ## 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) --- ## 📝 Summary: Tena Šojer Keser, Developer Content Expert at Infobip, described how they built a people-first content culture by transforming developers into journalists. Instead of starting with a strict content strategy, Infobip focused on developers’ personal, team, and company goals—helping them gain recognition, share knowledge, and showcase expertise. Through newsroom-style workshops, theory and practice, and an emphasis on fun rather than burden, developers learned writing skills, published over 100 pieces, and improved collaboration across departments. Writing became a core skill for structuring thought and professional growth. --- ## 📖 Main Content: The talk emphasized: - Developers *can* write—prejudices about their reluctance are false. - Content initiatives succeed when aligned with people’s goals, not just company strategy. - Developers wanted recognition, skill-building, and knowledge sharing. They disliked wasted effort or “extra work” with no benefit. - A failed workshop taught Infobip that people-first design matters. - Journalist-style workshops (no homework, newsroom pitching, continuous feedback) proved fun and effective. - Lessons: avoid academic writing styles, teach objectivity, allow freedom of topic choice, and emphasize writing as structured thinking. - Developers published widely, some pieces going viral and outperforming paid content. - Cross-department workshops improved internal collaboration and empathy. - The eventual strategy was not just content output but durable trust and engagement. --- ### 🗒️ Notes - **00:04**: Aim – turn devs into journalists, learn to write happily and regularly. - **02:17**: Myth-busting – devs do enjoy writing; they’re multidimensional. - **04:24**: Developers’ goals: recognition, communication, learning, pride in work. - **06:31**: Journalist workshops – newsroom pitches, feedback, practice. - **08:40**: Lessons: dump thoughts first, edit later; avoid dry academic style. - **10:59**: Impact – 100+ dev-written articles, viral content, credibility boost. - **13:26**: Writing helps structure thinking, improves professionalism. - **15:29**: Stronger developer relationships outweigh metrics-driven strategies. - **17:40**: Editing ensures fit with brand channels after workshops. - **19:49**: AI/LLMs can help, but dev-authored content adds authenticity. - **21:58**: Engineers writing became a sustainable model, helped productivity. - **24:04**: Prioritize key info upfront, unlike academic structures. --- ## 📖 References: - The New Stack (viral dev-written content results). - Journalism workshop models (newsroom pitching). - Academic vs practical writing comparisons. --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Original: “Developers don’t only think in code. They talk about migrational birds or home appliances on Hacker News.” Paraphrase: *Developers are multifaceted; their curiosity extends far beyond coding, showing they have diverse interests worth channeling into writing.* 2. Original: “Writing is basically structuring your thoughts so that whoever is reading it will read it to the end.” Paraphrase: *Effective writing organizes ideas clearly enough to keep a reader engaged all the way through.* --- ## 📰 Newsletter: 📰 **From Code to Columns: Developers as Journalists** Ever thought your engineers “just think in code”? Infobip proves otherwise. Tena Šojer Keser shared how they turned developers into journalists—publishing 100+ articles, some going viral, all while building pride and cross-team collaboration. The secret wasn’t a rigid content strategy but a people-first approach: aligning with developers’ personal and team goals, running newsroom-style workshops, and making writing fun. Developers gained recognition, new skills, and stronger voices, while the company benefited from authentic, widely-read content. For WordPress and open-source contributors, the lesson is clear: empower contributors not just to code but to tell their stories. Narrative builds trust, skills, and belonging. 👉 Watch the full talk: [We turned developers into journalists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1zHCXqNkCY) --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Apply “developer-journalist” model to WordPress contributor engagement—support devs to write about their contributions. - Use newsroom-style workshops at Contributor Days or WPCC gatherings to turn technical work into shareable stories. - Advocate for people-first strategy in OSPO contexts: align with contributor goals before setting rigid metrics. - Incorporate “dump first, edit later” method into WP documentation practices to reduce perfectionism paralysis. - Position storytelling as a **core skill** for contributors—critical for governance transparency and community trust. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Developer-authored content outperforms marketing-authored content in credibility and reach. - H2: Writing workshops build long-term engagement by aligning with personal contributor goals. - H3: Narrative-based writing increases onboarding and retention in open-source projects. ### 📊 Methodology: - Comparative content analysis (dev vs marketing-authored). - Longitudinal contributor retention studies (with/without writing workshops). - Surveys on recognition, motivation, and confidence pre/post workshop. ### ❓ Questions: - How might WordPress benefit if more contributors wrote personal stories about their work? - Can AI tools assist editing without eroding authenticity? - How do dev-written articles impact recruitment compared to traditional job ads? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Study cultural variations in dev writing engagement (e.g., English vs non-English speakers). - Explore multimedia formats (video, audio) as complements to text. ### 💡 Implications: - Could redefine contributor education in OSS. - Strengthens OSPO case for investing in dev-authored storytelling. - Adds to sustainability by amplifying recognition, reducing burnout. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: No infographics; add visuals of writing flow or sandcastle analogy. - **Aural**: Present in talk delivery; transcripts help but audio summaries could support. - **Verbal**: Strong—storytelling, analogies (sandcastle, duck debugging). - **Kinesthetic**: Workshops hands-on; excellent. - **Logical**: Structured advice, but could add frameworks/checklists. - **Social**: Newsroom model—collaborative, strong. - **Solitary**: Reflection encouraged via personal goal-setting. - **Naturalistic**: Minimal; missed chance to use nature analogies beyond migrational birds. --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Transcript available (screen reader-friendly). - Could add alt-text for visuals/slides. - Strong readability, but workshops may need accessible formats (closed captioning, diverse languages). - Suggest providing simplified versions for neurodiverse learners. --- ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - Inclusive language: gender-neutral, casual. - Representation: highlights global developer community, but could include more diverse case studies. - Neurodiversity: addr - Summary: The speaker is Tenna Shoer, the global developer content expert at Infobip. She discusses how they turned developers into journalists and the benefits they gained from it. They started by asking developers what they wanted from the content team and found that they wanted personal recognition, clear communication, and learning opportunities. They held journalist workshops to teach developers how to create content efficiently and effectively. They published over 100 articles written by their engineers, which received high readership and engagement. The developers were happy to showcase their expertise and receive recognition for their work. - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D1zHCXqNkCY&si=RCTkh208UCDQB9QG uh and I am really stoked for the next talk because I was reading the description and it's something that I want to know more about so we're going to be hearing about how they turned developers into journalists which is really intriguing uh so our next speaker is tenna shoer who is the global developer content expert at infobip so please give her a huge devel con Standing Ovation and give your attention to the talk thank you [Applause] okay hi thank you wow uh second infobip talk in a row thank you for bearing with us so basically this talk is about obviously how we turn developers into journalists and how they benefited from it but it's also uh so you can maybe take some hints about how to get developers right for you and how to do it happily and hopefully regularly we could all use some of that right uh so for a bit of a background obviously my name is t I'm a global developer content expert at infobip which is obviously a mouthful and it's a madeup title but uh what I actually do in infobip is uh my task is to create a Content culture and make sure our developers are equipped with everything they need to write to write happily to write regularly and you know to be a part of our developer experience crew um so I started out as a t journalist and I did some marketing then I went to a developer agency where I hope for a nice cozy job of copywriter but ended up head PM somehow uh then I came back to the place I started but then as a partner and doing the business side and then poof we got acquired uh I'm kidding of course uh if you've ever gotten acquired it's not poof it's a really long and gring process uh but that long and gring process got us time to think about what we're going to do when we get t for Vib to create top developer content no pressure right uh if you haven't heard about infobip or been to B us uh talk just before this one infobip is a global uh communications platform so basically if you get like a text message that your deliver is coming or an Uber driving is calling you and there is some number masking going on or if you're chatting to customer support there's likely some info beeping going on uh but anyways so during the last decade before the acquisition I worked with numerous startups and uh companies um advising them and Consulting on how to do their content how to do PR how to do marketing and I always say you have to have a Content strategy right you can just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks and I see some of you noing your head so you're not going to like my next slide because when we got to infia we us we decided to have like zero content strategy now there's already really a lot of content going on at infab there's like it's created by our marketing department there's the documentation there's sales there's everything so we could have just taken those numbers made an educated guess made a strategy and then adapted it along the way that's what you do right but here's the thing during the long time we waited for the acquisition to go through we thought okay how are we going to make developers right now I've been I've edited hundreds maybe thousands of uh developer blog posts articles ebooks so I know they can write I know a lot of them like writing but everyone kept saying stuff like that's can't write they hate writing don't even get them to try oh they only thinking code they can only write in code just ch GPT it and you know don't get them to do any extracurriculars they're going to absolutely hate you well but here's the thing I know developers don't think in code and talk about code you can just go to Hacker News and see that they're discussing like migrational birds or how home appliances look in City scans and I know a little bit about infobip I mean I know a lot now but before I came I knew quite a lot about infobip uh they have 800 Engineers all the people in Blue uh I know that they can create a whole engineering uh handbook in just 3 days which is uh basically content project we worked uh on with them before we came to the company actually and I know they do lot of extracurriculars in the Academia um in the community open source so if everyone is saying the developers can't or don't want to write or do any extracurriculars then maybe we have to have a people strategy and not focus on the content so how do you have a people strategy I don't know I'm not an HR but uh we decided to put developers in the spotlight and we wanted to get them to love writing it's been a year of this and basically we started out by asking them hey guys what do you want for the content team how can we help you achieve that with content um basically it fell under three different things there were some personal goals like external and internal recognition showing off their expertise communicating clearly learning something new and a lot of them said that they wanted to prove their English Spanish coration whatever teacher wrong because they probably told them you know ah you're good with math you don't need this uh there's also some team and department needs like showcase their work and accomplishment that's pretty much the same as the personal one attracting new hires by showing what the department does uh how to do it uh some of their practices some of their best work and they wanted to learn how to share knowledge effectively within the team to make their jobs easier um also they had some company goals like help rich company goals which is so nice of them also we do have like the eso program and they want to take pride in our work uh so what they don't like to do is doing other people's job doing additional work in their free time and doing extracurriculars that have no uh benefits for them whatsoever even if it's just personal enjoyment and they hate wased effort now ask me how do I know that how do you know that well because we did a really bad workshop with them which was everything I just described so uh we tried to get them to basically create um API documentation for us uh API tutorials and we were like hey do you want to come to this workshop and then write a tutorial instead of us and then just basically you're going to learn how to do this one type of documentation that you're never going to use again so obviously it wasn't very popular and some people did show up which is just to say that developers do like extracurriculars sometimes so we tried to switch gears and we decided to do journalist workshops why journalist well it was a media company we're all journalists it's what we know how to do best and also Journal being a journalist is fun not the part where you're getting sued or the part where people hate you if you write something that uh does not concur with their opinions but we have fun things like Newsroom meetings so we decided to do workshops that incorporated the fun of the journalism with some Theory and some practice so uh we held the news rooms uh meetings which is like um has anyone done any of those ever yeah there great uh so basically you get in a room together and you pit your article ideas and then you get some editorial feedback and then all of your uh peers journalists whoever is there gets to pitch in you get to discuss the topic it's very Lively it's very Dynamic and it's really fun so you know we got to learn something you part done um it's a very simple concept it's a two-day workshop but only 4 hours a day because you know getting them to sit for 8 hours and not do their basic job you're just going to have someone in the Workshop doing whatever they're supposed to be doing that day and if it's just 4 days they get to push it around it can be on-site remote hybrid we do up to 5 to 10 people uh and we do like um 10 to 30 minutes uh Theory Parts where we take them through how to make content efficiently um and then we give them continuous feedback and they have loads of writing time but the most important thing is that there is no homework so you're done with your 4 hours you're go home we have homework we give you additional feedback so it's ready for you tomorrow and then you do another 4 hours and by the end of the workshop you have a completed article uh we do a lot of theory about what makes a good topic what makes it a good title how to edit your own words uh a lot of it we don't expect them to learn everything if they want they can uh but here are some key take ways that we want them to learn uh one that academic writing wrting style doesn't actually work in real life uh because readers have a limited attention span and you have to structure your thoughts and your content in a way that they will read and that will keep them motivated and that's not the Academia style uh you need to research other points of view because developers like all other people have views uh pretty strong ones at that and when you're doing a journalistic type of writing you need to be as objective as possible you need to uh put holes in your own arguments and try your best to basically beat yourself in a debate So eventually you win uh we also teach them to write drunk at it's sober um not literally but you know if it gets them going uh which just means that uh you first write everything out and put everything that's in your head onto the paper what usually happens with developers and people starting to write for the first time is they write a sentence and they go back and see how it can be better and they write a sentence and go back write a sentence and go back and it makes writing a really tedious process and it seems like it's never done but what you're actually doing when writing you're just making a set castle and like 70% of making a sand castle is dumping sand so so is writing you're just basically dumping your thoughts and then you're turning it into something and when they're pouring their thoughts over the paper or whever writing basically they're getting the feeling of hey I can do this this is not that hard screw your English teacher and writing is actually fun so they've published around 100 plus pieces uh written by our Engineers um they have been published both on infobip channels but also on uh some engineering media basically if our developers have a media in mind that they would want to appear in and they say oh look I'm really set on this we'll try to make it happen it's like additional effort uh that's making it worthwhile for them uh also they're super happy when they see uh when they get a newsletter or something with their own uh article in it so they're sharing knowledge they're showcasing their expertise sticking to the English teacher uh some of the actual content has had like tens of thousands of reads um this is actually from the new stack so B basically the pink is we had like a sponsor session with them the pink is results of our sponsor content and the purple is like the sponsored content standard so it outperformed four times uh some it was tweeted by Dave Farley it went super viral so I guess we did manage to put our developers into the spotlight and they were pretty happy about it so uh one of the things I also mentioned is is that you have to give something back you can't just say oh hey come right for us we need content so what are you giving back uh we try to support their own uh project through writing like uh Christina here uh she was or here uh she was trying to uh educate developers turning to managers what a kind of a shift in career that is so that's those was her agenda our ABAC team uh launched their open source education uh about app security and we also tell their stories whatever you need uh whatever you're writing is completely free topic that goes with a you know uh no content strategy so we did manage to get them to write regularly not all of them but a lot of them keep writing we have this uh back and forth they send us ideas we give them feedback they send us draft we give them feedback and it kind of works so we'll skip turning and I quite like it uh we even uh started a developer magazine it's shift Mac it's uh infobip powered but editorially independent so if you have your developers writing and you don't know where you would like to publish it please give us a shout out uh we can see if we can make it happen we're more than happy to and okay yeah so I said how we are going to talk about how the writing benefited them well first of all writing is a course skill uh incidentally the slid is also where you should just you know get five lines of code and have ch GPT do the rest for the article um writing is basically structuring your thoughts writing effectively is structuring your thoughts so that whoever is reading it will read it to the end uh it's questioning your views it's spreading your own arguments and in the end it makes you B basically understand any topic better and it makes you a better professional whatever you're doing it's like talking to the duck but to other people lots of other people uh so and also same rules apply whether are you're writing a blog post whether you're writing an article a super long slank message I know the other developers love those as well yeah but a bit more structured so a work Handover confence post project documentation Grant application whatever you're writing uh it's mostly the same rules so you're getting better at everything you do and something not to be sneak that so we do do some workshops that are topic related uh so you know just maybe security or just one product but also we have like open workshops where anyone can come so as I said infobip is a really big company it's like I mean really big it's 4,000 people companies so here we have in the same room people from databases sis admin platform corporate it Telco infrastructure quality Engineering Management and different uh basically infobit products who do not actually get uh to sit in in the same room together often and this is a unique time when they get to see what other people are working on and why they're doing something the way they're doing something because if you don't have that contact often you're thinking H the team is doing such a good job and you don't even know uh why they're doing it the way they're doing it so basically it makes for a better collaboration and better understanding within the company okay now if you think that this kind of makes sense and you want to do it and you don't have the budget well I think that buying Media Company might be an Overkill not for infobip great thank you infobip but you know uh the thing is that you don't need to do these workshops uh are super simple uh you need an editor or a person who knows what they're doing and can basically teach it to other people knowledge of writing tools tips and tricks you need lot of enthusiasm to get it going to uh get people to sign up and you need willingness to help solve other people's problems because because as I said it's not about what you need from them it's what you can do together okay uh but I think as a devil you already have that right that's kind of your job uh by the way we did end up with a Content strategy uh so um but here is the point I'm not saying ditch your content strategy I'm saying that if we started with a Content strategy and then changed it along the way we would have a content strategy now just the way we have but now we have a really strong relationship with our developers uh we have some good results we decided not to care about those results we decided to care about uh building this strong foundation for all other content we are going to create you know as Dev you're kind of on in this uh position where you're uh you have to be concerned about what external developer needs uh what they need to use your product and you know it's easy to to think about oh what do we need from our I don't know engineering team what do we need from our marketing team or whatever but you know especially in a time of tight budgets maybe we can think about okay what do we need from them and what can we help them achieve so how can we work together and be more efficient okay thank you for bearing with [Applause] [Music] me thank you uh hands up here we have time for a handful of questions yeah I saw Wesley first when you do the workshops or when you act as Editor to the engineers is there um brand guidelines and all that added to it or is it just making sure it's structurally and grammatically correct um well regarding the workshops it's just making sure that it's structually sound and makes sense that it's engaging so that's what they have to think about the thing is when we're done with a workshop it's like 80% done because sometimes we don't know yet where we going to publish it are we going to publish it on our own channels are we going to publish it somewhere else so you know the 20% you know that's kind of the work of the editors to you know make sure it fits wherever it's going um what was the biggest hurdle or the hardest part to do to actually get the engineers into that work room yeah uh so I've mentioned that they hate was wasted effort and so uh as in N company INF for also had you know a number of engineering blogs and content projects that have been started and then Sunset and then discontinued uh Fallen forgotten so uh basically it was us saying hey we're starting this content project come join us we're not going to die like all the rest please so they were pretty pretty you know um they were sad that they put in all that effort to write some kind of blog post and everything and then it didn't happen and they felt it's going to happen again hey uh I have a quick question so I think a topic a lot of people have been talking about lately is that know you can use large language models to help generate a lot of writing fairly quickly and I guess one of the things we've been thinking about in our Dev World programs is you know are we getting to a point where like text based writing is somewhat commoditized and so you need to differentiate your programs in other ways in order to get like the ROI out of them so I get the concept that like you might be able to get your engineering teams to publish articles which is great because it get some exposure and showcases the cool things happening there for sure but do you put a different level of value on like video content or like how do you sort of justify like what types of content your groups are creating well for one it depends on the results you know you're not going to do a ton of video content if it doesn't make sense uh I'm all for using like large language models if they're going to help you know um write it faster make a better paragraph but then again you know these people are creating your product and there is no one who knows the product better than them uh again we have in our no content strategy strategy uh we decided to you know ditch the keywords we don't care what's uh uh what's going on in Google uh we're not going to care about uh stuff like that so basically um yeah I completely lost my thr thought wait oh yeah so uh basically we let you know devs write about whatever they want and they had great results because they're part of the community uh you know you can get CH GPT to write you know uh why is CSS different than python like because of everything and it might be like super keyw wordy but you know it's you may have created it fast but it's not it will not get you the results I hope that kind of answers your question I have uh met a lot of the same OB and resistance to U Engineers writing for a company blog um a lot of it around like they just don't have time it's on top of their full-time job I was wondering if you had to seek alignment from engineering managers or other um leadership and stakeholders to a lot time for them to spend on your projects on top of their everyday work yeah I I think that's a reality for all of us uh we had the good luck that you know they kind of paid money for us so it wouldn't be worth it if Engineers didn't actually contribute so at first uh there was a a push from engineering managers to join okay you can have the time um and then it's there was kind of a switch and it was like hyper productivity but people still wanted to join and wanted to push and then we decided with engineering managers and with product managers we're just going to go and do the same with it as developers we were going to come and see hey guys what do you need oh you got new product coming up we can help you right about that so uh actually it's it's the same model and it works hi there thanks I noticed you mentioned dropping keywords and stuff like that ditching keywords I think you said and uh so uh how uh do you have any advice for SEO uh you talk about writing but finding is also critical I think I mean do you write for SEO increasingly we use content you know analysis kind kind of stuff uh actually we're writing for robot already yeah true yeah that's why we didn't uh you know uh just focusing on the keywords it just doesn't get you anywhere think we have time for one more question I do like the analogy of uh building Cent Castle comparing to Academia uh I never did well in Academia well not exactly true but my question is there anything from Academia which we can still use in devil or is it all a sent Castle sorry can you repeat the question anything from Academia that you can use in Dev oh yeah definitely uh it's uh the research that's going into writing anything that comes from Academia it's uh actually what we usually do uh when developers write in the Academia style so they write everything y y y y y and they put the most interesting thing in the conclusion because that's what you do to your Academia and we just like copy paste it to the beginning so it's not completely useless you just have to get out of the mindset you know you have to provide the most interesting and important information first and we're all taught by you know uh universities and Academia to kind of hide it somewhere in the middle so they have to read everything that's not what we want to do here awesome well thank you so much give her a huge round of applause please thank you another fantastic talk oh, We Turned Developers Into Journalists, Dev Rel, 01hd3y032a8234dawm51yzqf5z.