Campus Ambassador Programs: Scaling Your DevRel Reach  ## Metadata - Author: [[The State of Developer Education]] - Full Title: Campus Ambassador Programs: Scaling Your DevRel Reach - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/b4566daa-e0f3-4674-9b33-69fed3ba31d3 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Postman's DevRel Strategy Insight** - Empowering the next generation of developers is a core strategy for Postman. - Familiarity with APIs through Postman sets students up for future success. Transcript: Speaker 2 And really, you've got to empower the next generation if you're going to achieve that. For those of you that don't know what APIs are, their application programming interfaces. And it's how all of our software talks to each other. So really, it is a critical skill for students to know before entering the workforce. So I would say our role in our company strategy is helping continue to build that mode, making Postman the tool that students become familiar with APIs around. That's what they reach for when they want to work with APIs. It happens to be a great way to visualize and understand how APIs work. So for us, it's fun to get that into students' hands. And we also get the benefit, the other way of having direct feedback from students and like how they're using it in projects. Yeah, so our strategies ([Time 0:06:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a1125808-17ef-46cb-a496-f1bd2f1b1916)) - **Christine Fan's Ambassador Experience** - Christine Fan's experience as a NVIDIA ambassador taught her the value of grassroots student advocacy. - That role inspired her to build a paid and accessible ambassador program at MSI. Transcript: Speaker 1 Building it. Yeah, so when I was a campus ambassador for NVIDIA, that was also heavily grassroots. I will say it's probably the collegiate esports golden era. It was super active pre-pandemic and a lot of students were doing different events. NVIDIA had just come out with the 10 series graphics card and was doing extremely well and they had seen that they had reached the saturation in the market. There were only so many people who were going to buy new graphics cards. So they had started that program with the intention to create more gamers, to build positive experiences around gaming and show people that you don't have to look or be a specific way To be a part of the community. And one of the ways that they did that was having student advocates who would booth at events, travel to events, and get learning experiences and kind of just be that ground level connection With other students because there is a different type of connection that you get when it's student to student peer to peer instead of administrator to student or professional to student. When I was there, it was a volunteer position. We did get a lot of great experiences, but one of the pain points was that because when you have unpaid positions, it can be get kept by students who can't afford to take on that unpaid labor And have loans, rent, and have to also support their own families. And so when I built the MSI Student Program, I really took into account accessibility and ensuring that it didn't matter what background you came from, there was still an opportunity For you to get experience and be able to sustain yourself because if you're spending anywhere from 20 to 30 hours a month doing projects for me, then that's time you're not getting paid Working a job. And ([Time 0:12:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/977c51c7-3c99-44ed-9eb8-d44e7adffd4a)) - **Personalize Ambassador Support** - Provide students with resources and support tailored to their individual project needs. - Meet them where they are and build symbiotic, flexible relationships rather than one-off engagements. Transcript: Speaker 1 At least on my end, there is a lot to manage besides just the student ambassadors. Also, Claire, you mentioned having projects as a way to draw students. We also do that as well. My student ambassadors all get resources to do a capstone project for the year that if they need hardware to put on a demo-based event on their campus, I provide it. They need pricing, marketing support, making social posts, and promoting their stuff on campus. We try to see what their needs are and meet them where they're at, and not every ambassador is going to be able to have the same level of work because they all have different obligations. Really taking into account each person's circumstances and being flexible and communicative when things happen. A lot of it is just relying on incentivizing the clubs to engage with those student ambassadors. ([Time 0:20:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e044d16d-840c-4946-82d6-f1d3f79b7246)) - **Balance Ambassador Workload** - Be transparent with ambassadors about workload and offer flexibility for their life changes. - Teach them to recognize overcommitment and how to manage their time effectively. Transcript: Speaker 3 Your app to mitigate it is a lot of how we manage that that concern. Speaker 2 One thing that helps too is just to set the expectations really clear up front. People know what they're signing up for when they apply. With that in mind, we made sure to set the bar really low, understanding that students are busy, not that what they do is minimal by any means, but for example, only requiring one workshop Per semester. That's already a lot. But trying to make it clear, okay, here's your end of the bargain and here's what you get from us. While you're designing that criteria, just keep in mind, these are busy, busy people. What's the bare minimum you can ask of them and also what's the maximum you can give them? If you can get the sweet spot there, you'll have people signing up for your program. Speaker 1 I hugely agree. It's always about being transparent and setting the bar not exactly low, but within reason and understanding that if I'm having students create an event for me, it's not so simple as Just finding a room and telling people to come through. It's what's the process for room bookings on campus? Do they already have an active social media channel to communicate to that community? Do they have club members who are willing to be involved and support other logistics? Understanding that all of that stuff takes a lot of work and if they're doing multiple projects at a time, taking classes, a lot of my ambassadors have multiple jobs because they are Truly, truly passionate. Understanding that all of that stuff takes a lot of effort, mental load, and being very transparent communicative that telling them, okay, you've suggested that you want to do this Project, but think about all the steps that it's going to take to get there and tempering their expectations so that they can recognize when they're overcommitting and building that Skill set themselves because, you know, we're not going to be there for that long. People are not going to hold their hands forever. ([Time 0:24:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9eca703a-b642-458d-8bac-286818d772d7)) - **Set Clear Ambassador Expectations** - Set clear, reasonable expectations upfront for student ambassadors. - Keep requirements minimal to respect their busy schedules and enhance participation. Transcript: Speaker 2 Thing that helps too is just to set the expectations really clear up front. People know what they're signing up for when they apply. With that in mind, we made sure to set the bar really low, understanding that students are busy, not that what they do is minimal by any means, but for example, only requiring one workshop Per semester. That's already a lot. But trying to make it clear, okay, here's your end of the bargain and here's what you get from us. While you're designing that criteria, just keep in mind, these are busy, busy people. What's the bare minimum you can ask of them and also what's the maximum you can give them? If you can get the sweet spot there, you'll have people signing up for your ([Time 0:24:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/528d41cb-aef4-4278-b6ed-1b92ecdd8d2f)) - **Key Traits of Successful Coaches** - Successful coaches show intentional long-term impact on their communities. - Role-play interviews reveal how candidates handle tough, unexpected situations at events. Transcript: Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. So there's two things that I want to talk about in particular. The first one, I've just set a series of questions we ask about the what they've left behind or what their impact on their local club has been. I think it speaks really well to people who are really intentional about the work that they're doing. A lot of the people who apply for the coaches program are hackathon organizers and all of our organizers are also the amazing talented folks, but there's a certain breed or class or whatever You want to call it, the organizer really thinks about their hackathon in the long term, really realizes that they're going to be in college for four or five years, however long, and Then that program's going to go on with help them. And so I really look for folks who have this focus on that program, that hackathon, that event beyond just their own time. And that's one of my favorite things to look for. I think that helps a lot in the coaches program as well because they're then going to all these other events and kind of spreading that ideology to other people and things like that. The other thing I really swear by for interviews, which I think is maybe a little bit more out of left field. I really love to do role play interviews with folks. So we will do a kind of like a theater of the mind, a lot of exercise with our coaches as they're interviewing, and we'll give them like really ridiculous tough conversations to have or Somebody's laptop is missing a hackathon there at or sponsor gets reported to the organizers for being inappropriate. And it's these really challenging tough conversations to have. And it was a great way to kind of showcase how they handle pressure and how they handle unexpected situations. I think everybody goes into an interview ready to talk about why they wanted to apply for a job. I don't think a lot of people have prepped ahead of time to figure out what to do in a situation where someone's laptop gets stolen nearly a lot about how people think of their fee and how They handle those tough kind of hectic situations that come up at events. ([Time 0:28:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9839e971-d844-40fc-a52b-5bc01422f075)) - **Keep Communication Open and Light** - Maintain open and informal communication channels like Discord for ambassadors. - Make students comfortable asking questions and expressing concerns anytime to keep them engaged. Transcript: Speaker 1 Now? Yeah, I always try to be very communicative with my student ambassadors. It can be difficult at times because everyone has different schedules, West Coast and East Coast, so it's being mindful of their time. And also telling them that if they have questions, they don't need to send me an official email. They have my Discord DM. We do a lot of our organization on Discord. I like to keep things very light. And we have serious moments, but I think when you're too serious, students tend to get scared in a way where they're like, oh, I have this question, but I don't want to seem dumb. Like, I don't want to seem like I wasn't paying attention. I always tell them there isn't any question that they won't be able to ask. I always make sure that they know everything that's going on, making sure that if they miss a meeting, there are notes for them if they need to join a meeting, but they can't talk because Maybe they had a family emergency or they're commuting to school, that they can just listen in, trying to keep as many channels for communication as possible. Some students, they only have time to talk to me once a month, and some students, they want to talk to me every day. And that's okay, because everyone else is different. So meeting them at their level keeps them engaged. And it's just being as flexible as I can and understanding that sometimes the gamers, they're going to ask me questions at 12 a.m. And I might not always respond, but I tell them if you have a question, just ask it when you think of it. And even if I don't get to it immediately, I will get to it the next business day. And it makes them comfortable enough to keep that channel of communication open and let me know if they have problems or if they have ideas that they want to do and really just making them Feel heard. ([Time 0:30:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b45f43b0-7ede-4cdf-bb19-0e04184e18ac)) - **Enable Student Creativity and Perks** - Provide minimal structured curriculum and let student leaders creatively expand on it. - Offer perks like Q&A with engineers, resume workshops, and early product access to motivate and support students. Transcript: Speaker 4 And what are the some of the ways you've seen student leaders go above and beyond and how they taught their fellow students about Postman and its capabilities? Speaker 2 This is actually a question or company is asking yourself as a whole, like not just inside the student programs, because yeah, Postman's history has largely been like the users have Been telling our story. Like, how do you use Postman? And this year we're all trying to teach the world, okay, here's how you can use Postman. So it's kind of like bowling, you know, like you can go bowling, but if it's your first time and you don't have the bumpers on, it's not going to be fun. Like you're just hitting gutter balls the whole time. Whereas if you have those bumpers in the beginning, you can learn to like bowling and understand why it's fun or useful in a tools case. So yeah, our role is providing those bumpers, but trying to find that balance where it's not such a hand-holding exercise that you can't let them go and they can't leave the nest. There needs to be like some element of creativity there. So how we prepare student leaders, we have a prerequisite. You have to complete the student expert training, which does cover API basics. It covers how to do interact with APIs and Postman. Beyond that, I will be the first to admit like we have room for improvement in helping nudge them out of the nest, but I'm continuously shocked by what students come up with. Yes, content creation is a goal virus to like make more curriculum that's half-hand-holding, half-creative, but at the same time, I find if you just provide them the bare minimum that They need space to talk to their peers, something to do, at least to get started. And some sort of motivation, we talked about stipends, that's one of course, but there's so many like non-monetary perks you can give to students, you know, like ask me anything with Engineers in the company, ask me anything with the CEO is a huge perk. Resume workshops, just, we try to do quarterly meetups, we're going to be better about it this year, so that peers can meet their peers and do fun activities together, we pay for their Lunch for those, and early access to product features, if you're a software company, that's a pretty easy thing to not only benefit the students and make them feel special for being First in line, but the product team gets a direct line for feedback and it's relatively low stakes because these are not paying customers, right? So we try to find those wins and we find if you give them the bare minimum ingredients, students can take that and run with it, even if we do have some missing content on our end. We've seen students go, they came up with this idea of an API literacy tour, where they aren't just teaching peers on their campus, but they go to like 10 schools around their country And like make a whole like 2-2 train event out of what we never had envisioned before that students just came up with that and did that, other student leaders saw that and started copying It, we have a similar thing with API Fest where different student leaders in a close region would come together and do like a full API full day kind of summit, we didn't come up with this Ourselves, the students kind of did because they had the basic ingredients there, do we have room ([Time 0:33:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/61f5f52c-5608-48b7-a520-d40e6f3a593d)) - **Measuring Ambassador Program ROI** - Collect data on engagements like event participation and social media to measure program impact. - Leverage content created by students to enhance marketing efforts and peer impact. Transcript: Speaker 1 So for us, because we are a very small space, it's pretty easy to kind of just gather sentiment, whether it's seeing specific schools that engage with us because of our ambassador program, Purchase our equipment for their space, or seeing an increase in events being done on campus with our sponsorship included and kind of understanding that it's not really about the Individuals themselves, but an overall result. We do look at kind of everything holistically, there are things that we might try that aren't as successful and there are things that we try that are successful and understanding that You're going to get both. And as long as you're collecting as much data as you can, being able to show the relationship of, hey, we had an ambassador here, and that led to the school, including us in these two events Later on, or the ambassador participate in boosting at this event. And we got this many students engaged with our promo code, clicking at links, following our social accounts, joining our student discord, just gathering as much of that as possible. And then also a big component is the content creation and using what our student ambassadors create for our marketing material, because again, a peer speaking to another peer is going To be much more impactful than a professional speaking to a student because once you're out of college with things moving so fast, the environment moves fast. You lose a lot of that ground level experience and connection because you have a job, you have different life goals and things that you care about. And so that's kind of how we do it. It's a lot of chasing students at times as well, because they have busy schedules, lives, and so trying to make their reporting as smooth as possible as well really helps because students, They have no framework to go off of when they're just building events out or they're just starting the club out. They don't really know what's important for a company because they've never worked a high level job like that. So being able to ask those questions of like, I need photos of this type here, examples, I need the stats of how many attendees you had, links to all these social posts that you said you Were going to do for me, take screenshots, you know, telling them, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be pretty, I just need the information and we can go from there. You can always get better at something, but you have to start it. And so I find that getting the students to start is usually the hardest part because they're so afraid of failure and there's such a perfectionist attitude for a lot of students that They can kind of be their biggest criticizers as well. So being that external voice and saying, you can do it, here's everything that you need to do it. And, you know, like Ryan said earlier, just asking the right questions, being able to show them how to ([Time 0:38:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e7560d95-8a3c-46c5-8513-5cad15ed16e1)) - **Long-Term Value of Student Ambassadors** - Student ambassador programs offer long-term benefits beyond immediate revenue impact. - They serve as a pipeline for future users and fans of products and brands. Transcript: Speaker 2 Are going to be not directly related to your revenue, right? At least in the short term, like long term, they might become like postman fans and like want to use it at work. And then one thing leads to another and suddenly that team is using postman. So it's extremely long tail game for some software companies. That's like where we're positioned. So for us, it's finding how do we speak the language of the business team and the data team and how can we meet them halfway and prove that, hey, we are getting students to the level where They understand how to use our product for the value prop that it has while also protecting that we aren't going to be charging students anything. We're giving them money. Students usually don't have credit cards anyway to pay for any service. So like, you have to be thinking long tail and that's going to look different in every scenario as I'm sure all of us are going to have very different answers here. Speaker 3 The KPI and the metrics for the coaches program really is around scale, which I think I kind of opened up with here. We have a stat around when we need to send a full-time team number to an event versus being able to send a coach there. And like, that's a really big metric for us because we know that the coaches program is supposed to help us make sure that we have staff to cover those hackathons. Everyone on our full-time team still goes to hackathons because we all love them, but it is still a very useful metric for seeing how effective that program is at helping to scale and Support all ([Time 0:43:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4af4b344-3e94-48ba-9ce3-99ecaea6d219)) - **Coaches Program Career Impact** - The Coaches Program is a stepping stone to dev rel careers and beyond. - Participants explore diverse career paths and gain practical experience in marketing and events. Transcript: Speaker 3 So I think for the coaches program, there's kind of two pathways that jumped on immediately for me here. I think one is certainly getting more involved with our full-time team. We've had a lot of coaches, a lot of full-time team members currently who started in the coaches program in some capacity. And it's often something I'm really excited about. We've gotten to foster this relationship for years and have them join our full-time team and know they can do really high quality work. And it's certainly exciting. The other thing that comes to mind here is that dev rel internships really aren't anything. There certainly are some out there. Don't get me wrong, but dev rel is a small enough tight knit enough community, I think in many ways, that finding a job in dev rel, particularly at that level, is not really something that Exists out there super commonly. And so the coaches program I've always felt like is this very interesting opportunity to get your seat wet with dev rel. I've talked to so many coaches and so many people in our community who love programming, aren't sure they want to be a computer scientist full-time. They're not sure they want to sit and write code every day. I think the coaches program really gives them this opportunity to explore some of these other tangentially related things where they can do a little bit of marketing, they can do events, They can get experience talking with sponsors, they can get practice to be a sales engineer at some point in the future. It really gives them this kind of wide open space to test out and find out a bunch of stuff about themselves. I think particularly when they're in college, it's a really invaluable experience. We've had coaches who in all sorts of roles in all sorts of different companies, we have somebody who writes speeches for a tech company, we have people who have gone on to be founders, We've had people who go into dev rel, we've had people who decide that they actually do want to program full-time. The people who've switched out become lawyers, it really runs the full gambit and I think the coaches program definitely plays a role in giving people space to figure that out. What comes to mind for me? Speaker 2 I'm really happy that Ryan mentioned the hiring pipeline and that being a stepping ([Time 0:46:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ea3aefd-3819-4bb2-a3e1-64ee0c149748)) - **Just Start Your Ambassador Program** - Starting a student ambassador program is usually low investment and highly rewarding. - Ambassador communities can connect and complement each other, creating synergistic benefits. Transcript: Speaker 2 I just want to say if you're thinking about starting an ambassador program, I would just do it because usually it's pretty low investment to start with and the energy that you get from Students can really inspire you. The types of students that sign up for these ambassador roles are already go-getters. Actually, I think we've got MLH ambassadors as post-band student leaders as well and these communities can actually build off of each other. We respond to some MLH events, so it really helps connect companies in another way while also benefiting students. ([Time 0:52:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a3b374c5-9515-4a9c-bb1c-4871d0140c1b))