Flavors of DevRel: Tummeling, Docs, SDKs, Meetings, and Conferences  ## Metadata - Author: [[Build and Learn]] - Full Title: Flavors of DevRel: Tummeling, Docs, SDKs, Meetings, and Conferences - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6da4ca01-46c2-4583-b961-e5c1d7d65f8e ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Community Tumbling for Balance** - Practice "tumbling" by encouraging quieter voices and balancing louder influencers in discussions. - This keeps communities alive, diverse, and prevents dominance by a few loud voices. Transcript: CJ Avilla It's like almost like the how to win friends and influence people type stuff, right? Because you can't do all of the things yourself, but you got to plant the seeds. There's a word in community managing called tumbling and tumbling or like having a tumbling is like a person who goes around and like tries to get the people who are, you're keeping the Conversation going. So you want like the quiet people to speak up. You want some of the people who are too noisy to be like, okay, we hear you, but like you don't get to dominate everything all the time. It's a little bit about trying to keep the community alive and going. And without it, communities tend to fall apart. Or you get the one really loud thing that everyone's assuming that we're going to do the thing that the loud person's doing. And then there's a lot of people who have really good ideas, whether in the community or in the company. And those things may not rise to the top just because they're not the loudest thing. And then when those people don't feel heard, then they leave. And that might be, again, the community or leaving the company so it is it's a weird balance but it's also i'm going to roll my sleeves and go start the channel myself but then it's not sustainable Because someone you need backup you need a good flow of content and stuff like that and as we know doing this podcast sometimes it's good to take some breaks sometimes you're like yeah We're just not feeling it today uh yeah in a lot of these one-on is just trying to seek out who are those people ([Time 0:06:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/28d107e6-2ddf-4b48-827f-e42632972418)) - **Understanding Dev Audience Variations** - Developer audiences vary widely: some are line-of-business or legacy platform devs, not always decision-makers. - Understanding these demographics is key to tailoring DevRel efforts effectively. Transcript: Colin Loretz One of the really surprising things joining this company, having only really done dev advocacy at Stripe, was that the flavor of it here is so different. The dev is not the decision maker when it comes to buying our software. The dev is often like a third-party systems integrator or they are like isv partners or they are line of business devs or they're like business analysts who are using no code tools but They're not like hardcore tech ce cto that is at bay Area startup that's launching some AI thing. Like it is very much the opposite of that. It is like dev at a logistics company who's been there 17 years writing.NET. And yeah, so number one, the needs of the audience and the needs of the developers are just so different because they're not clamoring for the latest and greatest bleeding edge technology. There's definitely some that are in that scope, but many others are at these giant enterprise companies doing long, long running projects, long running implementations. And I'm also just very much in like the listening and understanding and trying to get to know the community phase too but yeah it's way different for sure is ([Time 0:08:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62558ba4-b47d-4040-b078-6de574e3062b)) - **Docs Upgrade Gone Wrong** - Colin Loretz shared frustrations upgrading ReadMe docs with OpenAPI v3. - The upgrade broke many features, requiring support intervention to revert. Transcript: Colin Loretz Yeah i wanted to ask you about sdks we have an open api spec and it is cobbled together from two different internal api builders that Go. And then we like use some command line thing to upgrade it from like OpenAPI v2 to OpenAPI v3. And there's two things that I really want to happen. One is to have first party SDKs and two is to have really solid docs. We are on readme and I tried upgrading to the readme refactored like the new like version of it because I want to use git for authoring. And it just, it fell apart. A bunch of things fell over and broke. And I had to go on support ([Time 0:13:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/94a86d16-dd74-4411-9d60-71e3eec16be9)) - **Clean OpenAPI Specs First** - Start with a clean OpenAPI spec to improve SDK generation and docs quality. - Use spec validators like Zooplo to ensure good descriptions and examples for reliable tools. Transcript: CJ Avilla Yeah, that's a whole episode. Yeah, I think that starting with the spec is great i think i would not be surprised if does readme have a sdk gen offering yet not yet i would not be surprised if they do eventually so if you Can figure out what went wrong with the new system it's probably also tied to like if you try to use your spec in some of the tools out there, it'll fail for a few reasons if you're, like, Not quite following the spec, or the tool's interpretation of the spec. So there's a really cool generator where you can do your own SDKs, and they are, like, as bare bones as you can possibly get, right? In our ecosystem most of our stuff is like all of our sdks are mostly built by the community and we want to eventually release one but we don't yet and it's do we do it do we do a thin one do we Do because we don't want to do the full batteries included like all these like builders and like super powered features we want to build offer right now the way that we see the spec is like If it's in the spec then we should also document it and you should also support it and that's like more of that's just the law of the api right now but i've fed it into some of the generating Tools and i've created a cli it's not great because like our spec is missing descriptions and like field descriptions as well as just like endpoint descriptions. We played with some tools like Redockly and some of these other ones where you can inject stuff and upgrade. Like you said, like we generate our spec from the API and then I have markdown files for all the descriptions and it merges those all together. And then now I have a super spec. There's a tool I'll find and share that is like a spec validator from Zooplo. That's really good because then it'll point out like a Google lighthouse of this is how good or bad your spec is. And so you can identify those things. The closer you get to being like all green on stuff will help with those generated things. There's also a hundred now. It feels like a hundred. There's there's Speakeasy, there's Stainless, there's all these other tools out there. ([Time 0:14:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/03a6a8b1-3bdf-4ea1-8fa9-8b63be527c97)) - **Power of Small Dev Experience Details** - Small, thoughtful developer experience details like API key formats or dishwashing cup design create surprise and delight. - These details require deliberate effort but greatly improve user satisfaction. Transcript: CJ Avilla If your API keys have dashes and other symbols in them, double clicking on it will only grab part of it. So it's like such a weird little example but i know that's probably why it is generated like that is that a secret sauce i don't know for that was there like way before i got there so maybe I mean i see some of these things and it's like weird this is like a sign of getting older or something but like same their co-working space we have ikea coffee cups and we have other coffee Cups the ikea ones are superior for the most mundane swedish reason that you would never imagine the bottom i know this is hard to describe on radio but the cup there's like a ring on the Bottom when it's in the dishwasher that ring on every cup is full of water when you take the dishes out yep all the i ones are like an X, and there's no water on any of them because all the water Drains out. And someone thought about that, and they're like, we have to do this. ([Time 0:19:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/28807780-4611-4569-a661-825d005469d7)) - **Mandatory APIs Need Quality** - When developers must use a platform's API, quality matters even more since there's often no alternative. - This unique dynamic influences DevRel strategies. Transcript: CJ Avilla There isn't like three ways to pick from. So yeah, that adds to the different flavors of DevRel for sure. Colin Loretz Yeah. One of the other things I was curious about too. So Logan, my son has been playing around with cursor and he spun up a game in Pi game. And I like showed him a couple of little things about here's how you use GitHub or whatever. And he's like pushing commits to GitHub under my name, using cursor like a boss and just, Oh, it didn't work. It broke. Fix this error. Make it full screen, make it multiplayer, make it do this, it do that put these sprites using chat chapti to generate different screen backgrounds and stuff and he's at a point where I think he wants to publish it and i was like oh for sure you should try to publish it on discord because i i know that like the there's an insanely huge community of ([Time 0:21:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1bbdc480-8ec5-492d-a98a-e10b908a5295)) - **AI Coding Adventures with Son** - Colin Loretz's son, Logan, uses AI tools like Cursor to code games and push commits. - Logan reached rate limits on personal AI plans, highlighting emerging issues with AI tool usage. Transcript: Colin Loretz Yeah. One of the other things I was curious about too. So Logan, my son has been playing around with cursor and he spun up a game in Pi game. And I like showed him a couple of little things about here's how you use GitHub or whatever. And he's like pushing commits to GitHub under my name, using cursor like a boss and just, Oh, it didn't work. It broke. Fix this error. Make it full screen, make it multiplayer, make it do this, it do that put these sprites using chat chapti to generate different screen backgrounds and stuff and he's at a point where I think he wants to publish it and i was like oh for sure you should try to publish it on discord because i i know that like the there's an insanely huge community of users and because it's Two player we try to get it up and running there and then i did like a tiny amount of research and it seems like getting pi game into the browser is quite a bit of work just because you have To like use i forget like web webgl or something or compile like wasm yeah yeah exactly yeah and so i was like i don't know if you want to do that maybe we should just rewrite the thing in javascript CJ Avilla And h in html yeah but and there's web-based game frameworks like phaser and and some others too so phaser might be a thing to look at especially because phaser has an actual starter project Too for discord nice okay so yeah you ran into this the classic thing of i have a game that runs on a computer right so that our activities are really meant for web-based stuff but that's A good example of we haven't written a lot of guides yet because we haven't had the time right or do we work with phaser and phaser writes the guide and then we write the unity guide or something Like that so those are things that we're still figuring out. But yeah, you were mentioning the AI stuff. I think, one, at what age does Logan get his own SSH keys? Colin Loretz Oh, that's like, for his birthdays, I want an API key. CJ Avilla You're like, I don't want to be committing his dad. I don't want a car. I just want my own GitHub login. I need to be doing my own commits. Because he's got to start that commit graph early. Colin Loretz He has his own GitHub. He has his own git commits. But when he's using Cursor, he's using it on my machine. I have a paid Cursor version. And he used Cursor on his own machine and immediately ran out of tokens. So he hit the rate limit. He said, Dad, let me use yours. I already ran out of tokens or whatever. ([Time 0:21:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cc546314-70c0-4c76-a788-6d8fc454807a)) - **Manage AI Tool Overlap** - Consolidate AI tool subscriptions to manage costs and overlap. - Use enterprise AI versions at work to protect sensitive data effectively. Transcript: CJ Avilla I think what's going to be interesting is what happens when everyone decides that they're paying for too many AIs. And there's like this consolidation because at work, we have Copilot that's paid for in GitHub. I guess I have access to the free Copilot. I don't really use it. So yeah, I pay for Descript. I pay for ChatGPT. I pay for Cursor. And I think that's it right now. At work, we're testing both Claude and ChatGPT to pit them against each other. So like they will be paying for one of those at some point. And then I think we're all getting Cursor at work too. So that's going to be like extra, right? This podcast won't go out until all those things are settled, hopefully. But yeah. But all paying weight. I don't think everyone is doing this. I think this is engineers that are doing this. We all want to like see what the difference is. Which one do you reach for first? Colin Loretz I definitely have been training myself more and more when I'm in cursor to try to stay in context, stay inside a cursor. If I'm not, like if I'm doing stuff for work, I use ChatGPT. The enterprise version is pretty good. ([Time 0:26:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c5ba8c8-4695-43b5-80c9-ccc6444c4ce9)) - **Optimize AI Usage Practices** - Organize AI prompts by project with tailored system prompts to keep results relevant. - Local AI models can be run easily but may lack the usability of browser-based tools. Transcript: Colin Loretz And the enterprise one does like fancy stuff where it like won't leak your work, whatever details. So I use that one a ton. CJ Avilla I think that's why all the enterprises are looking into it. Cause it's like, we know you all are doing this on your own. Please stop and stop leaking stuff, which is smart. So yeah, like our work, it's enterprise too. Colin Loretz Totally. I feel like the, the chat GPT API or like the open AI APIs are, I don't know. I don't want to say like the easiest to work with because they're all like roughly the same. Maybe it's just like the one I've, I learned first. And so I'm like most comfortable with it, but I did download DeepSeq and run like running it locally with Olama and that, and every time I open up Olama, I think part of the deal is that I Need to run like a, some sort of local web UI or something, because when I run it in the terminal it just doesn't feel as readable maybe or like as consumable as it is in the browser and even Though the content has been pretty darn good I just feel like the what I get in the browser is just easier to parse for me like mentally or something. Have you run any of those local models yet? I haven't no Okay. It's two commands. It's basically like brew install and then do a thing. I don't even know if it's brew install. It's olama. You install the olama app and then in the terminal you write olama run and the name of the model and it just pops up in a terminal that will give you a prompt to start typing. ([Time 0:27:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33e82324-da5e-4050-81ff-85203bf8ce14)) - **Prompting as Modern Coding** - Coding with AI prompts mirrors professional programming workflows today. - This marks a shift where prompting is a core developer skill rather than manual coding alone. Transcript: Colin Loretz It just makes us do things either faster better stronger right yep it's been interesting watching logan build basically this whole thing by himself and saying oh i didn't actually Code it i don't know how to blah blah i'm like you you prompted your way through 500 lines of Python and like several classes, like files, like tons of files. It's a full Git repo. It's like a bunch of stuff. I'm like, that's exactly what professional programmers are doing. Like you, the way you just did it is the way that 90% of like professional devs are doing it now. So yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. One of the things I'm curious about too is whether or not SDKs are even going to be a thing anymore, right? ([Time 0:29:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6c178f7d-08eb-4333-855f-dcd32fb8d5e0)) - **AI Can't Replace SDKs Yet** - Even if AI can generate code, SDKs remain valuable for retries, pagination, and error handling. - Experiment with AI prompt engineering to generate usable SDK components. Transcript: Colin Loretz Are people going to do this bespoke handcrafted implementation or are they just going to ask an LLM to spit it out for them? I still think the SDK makes it look better and has lots of benefits in terms retries and auto pagination and like error handling and things like that. CJ Avilla I wonder if we should do this as a little project together. We should try to prompt an SDK because if you prompt the retries, okay, handle retries, because if you're normally writing a prompt, we run into this. I'll often say, build me a quick discord bot and it wants to default to Discord.js. So it wants to use an SDK because it's the most documented SDK. Our docs are like pure HTTP docs. And so I'll tell it intentionally, use Ruby, use JavaScript, whatever. Do not use Discord.js. Do it. If it's so vented, just do straight WebSockets. Don't use anything fancy. And it'll eventually get there. But then I have to tell it what make sure you send the heartbeat make sure you retry make sure you catch errors it would almost be interesting to say what does a prompt look like and you could Give it any api spec and maybe that is what some of these companies are doing i don't know but some of this is not ll needed. It's more just literal function generation and stuff. ([Time 0:30:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62217721-73e6-4505-a955-e6f70115e143)) - **Volunteer to Multiply Conference Value** - Volunteering at conferences, even in minor roles, enhances connections and experience. - Being on stage or helping behind the scenes multiplies conference value beyond just attending. Transcript: CJ Avilla I'm going to be speaking at Write the Docs in May. No way. Congratulations. Thank you. That's awesome. I don't think the schedule has been announced yet, but I'm doing a talk on having your docs be open source. So taking PRs and just being in the open. Not every company gets to choose whether or not they're in the open, but we'll talk about what we learned, things that we wish we could do better, things we want to do better, but a lot of The benefits of bringing the community with you in your docs. And you're not asking for free help. You're building it together. So yeah, excited to do Congratulations. Colin Loretz Some more docs things. So you at the last one, didn't you volunteer? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. CJ Avilla I forgot. I think it was mostly technical. I love how they were talking about this. If you go to conferences, it's always best to be involved somehow and you can be in the audience. You can get to see the talks, But if you're volunteering or speaking, you're going to just have a better experience because the conference is putting you on a stage literally. And it multiplies whatever if your company is sending you cool, if you're sending yourself, you really want to make it worth your while. It doesn't make sense if these videos are going to be online for you to go and then not talk to anybody i think yeah i think having volunteered probably helped because i was able to meet The organizers and i also when i volunteered i was helping all the speakers get ready and getting it mic'd up so i got to meet all the speakers which was also a win so yeah i think highly recommend If you're trying to get into it look for a conference you can spot like uh if you can't sponsor one volunteer for one don't necessarily recommend starting one from scratch if you've not Been but uh i've been there too nice are you also volunteering again at this one or no i'll be focused on just making sure the talk is really good that after gdc yes ([Time 0:41:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/764c93d2-712e-469d-bd00-829988f1fc4f))