What is a Developer Advocate?

Josh shares with us from his accumulated wisdom as a well-known speaker whose live coding is legend. Also, a protip for podcasts that don't publish weekly: don't mention it in the broadcast if it's Christmastime. You might ship the episode later! :)

Mary talks about her new book, The Business Value of Developer Relations: How and Why Technical Communities are Key to Your Success. Check it out! https://www.amazon.com/Business-Value-Developer-Relations-Communities-ebook/dp/B07FKFQ1NK

Tim and Baruch speak with community legend Meghan Gill of MongoDB fame. Meghan was instrumental in building the world-class community program at Mongo from their earliest days. We talk about how DevRel can be a positive force on product usability, how to build developer community, and whose [excellent] idea all those coffee mugs were. Meghan is a true DevRel leader, and it was an honor to have her on the show.

A fascinating interview with Tracy Lee on the JavaScript community, DevRel in general, and her move from marketing into tech. As one who has lived on both sides of the fence, Tracy has a particularly useful view of the relationship between the two disciplines.

Geertjan is writing a book consisting of interviews with some of the world's leading developer advocates. We talk with him about how the project was conceived, his intention for the book and its future, and the experience of conducting the interviews so far. In particular, he draws our three rather Aristotelian themes: becoming a developer advocate, being a developer advocate, and the ethical issues associated with developer advocacy. Baruch digs hard into ethics, and a good time is had by all.

Baruch, Viktor, and Tim discuss developer advocacy and evangelism. The address these questions: What is a developer advocate? What is an evangelist? Is the difference significant? Is the debate between the terms productive? What are the core activities of the role? How do you become a developer advocate? What skills are required? If it's a career goal, how do you aim for it? What do you do after you're a developer advocate? Is this a one-way street? Can I go back to being a dev? Can you do this when you're old?