The Evolution of DevRel With Jeremy Meiss  ## Metadata - Author: [[Screaming in the Cloud]] - Full Title: The Evolution of DevRel With Jeremy Meiss - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/981ce456-ddb4-4da2-ac1a-606d2ede4549 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - Building Relationships with Developers • DevRel is a mix of different things, depending on the company's goals. • DevRel is important for marketing, sales, and product development. • Each member of the company needs to be doing all three to be effective. Transcript: Speaker 2 Not to take from the standard DevOps answer, but I think it depends. Speaker 1 That's the standard lawyer answer to anything up to and including is it legal for me to murder someone. And it's also the senior consultant answer to anything too, because it turns out the world is baked in nuance and doesn't lend itself to being resolved in 280 characters or less. That's what threads are for. Right. Speaker 2 That is ultimately the answer I think with DevRel. For me, it is depending on what your company is trying to do. You ultimately want to start with building relationships with your developers, because they're the ones using your product. And if you can get them excited about what they're doing with your product or get excited about your product with what they're doing, then you have something to stand on. But you also have to have a product fit. You have to actually know what the hell your product is doing. And is it going to integrate with whatever your developers want? And so, DevRel kind of stands in that gap that says, okay, here's what the community wants and advocates for the community. And then you have that's going to advocate for the company back to the community. And hopefully at the end of the day, they all shake hands. But also, I've been round enough to recognize that there's comes that point where you either A have to say, hey, our product for that thing is probably not the best thing for what you're Trying to do. Here, you should maybe start at this other point. And also understanding to take that even to the next step to finish up the answer, like my biggest piece now is all the fights that we have constantly around DevRel in the space of what Is it and what is it not. DevRel is marketing, DevRel is sales, DevRel is product. And each of those, if you're not doing those things as a member of the company, you're not doing your job. Everybody in the company is the product. Everybody in the company is sales. Everybody in the company is marketing. Speaker 1 Not everyone in the company realizes this, but I agree wholeheartedly. Yes. ([Time 0:08:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0843da4c-83fc-4cc9-a020-f060ff8d7f2c)) - Building Relationships with Developers Building relationships with developers is crucial for companies, and this is where developer relations (DevRel) teams play a significant role. DevRel is a combination of marketing and sales, as it involves spreading product news, showing people how to use the product, and making things easier for them. However, DevRel teams often find themselves vulnerable to being removed from the company during challenging times due to a lack of understanding of their role within the business. Defining the role of DevRel is essential, and it should not be dismissed as just marketing. In fact, marketing is the only department in most companies where the value it provides is difficult to define and attribute. To ensure the longevity of DevRel teams, it is important to recognize the value they bring and their contribution to the company's success. Transcript: Speaker 2 And so that's where it's like, yes, DevRel is marketing. Yes, it is sales. And because if you're not out there spreading whatever the news is about your product and you're not actually showing people how to use it and answering and making things easier for Speaker 1 People, you're not going to have a job. Speaker 2 And too often these companies that are too often, I think, a lot of DevRel teams find themselves in places where they're the first that get dropped when the company goes through things Because sometimes it is just the fact that the company has not figured out what they really want. But also sometimes as the team hasn't really figured out how to position themselves inside the business. Speaker 1 One of the biggest, I'll call it challenges that I see in the DevRel space comes down to defining what it is first and foremost. I think that it is collectively a mistake for an awful lot of practitioners of developer relations to wind up saying first and foremost that we're not marketing. Well, what is it that you believe that marketing is? In fact, I'll take it a step beyond that. I think that marketing is inherently the only place in most companies where we know that doing these things leads to good results, but it's very difficult to attribute or define that Value. So how do we make sure that we're not first off on the Chomping Block? That has been marketing's entire existence. ([Time 0:10:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f67c70c4-3b6f-4796-93e9-d3d22df0abc5)) - Note: devrel - Tags: devrel