What is DevRel with Salma Alam-Naylor

They might be placed with engineering. They might be placed with product, or they might be placed with marketing.

It's a necessary evil. Also, so your past Work history, you are also a senior dev rel for Netlify. You are a developer advent advocate for Contentful,

DevRel That requires a very specific type And it's for an SEO play. And, oh, we need To promote this or promote that or, you know, talk about this new feature or we just need more content because Mob Rocket personally find live content hasn't been fun sometimes.

of the product Onboarding is like a whole another world, and I hate it so much because I just wanna get on with my job. But you can't really get on with your job until you have onboarded.

and I saw

actually, about How writing code is exactly like writing music. Yeah. Yeah. There's the rules. You you can break the rules if you know the rules. You can't break the rules if you don't know them. Perfect. Well, you've nailed it on I don't need to make that talk or video anymore.

Let's get into DevRel.

You'll see I generally, DevRel blinkered Podcasts like this one, is that need for, And it's it's and then solving the problems with the new technology that you're providing value

You know, people listening might not know what DevRel even is. They may have seen the term around. Do you wanna give a high level? What is DevRel? Day to day, what do you do? So the problem with DevRel is that it's

and it doesn't look the same in any 1, 2 companies.

First and foremost,

I've been meaning to write a blog post, do a talk, make a video, stuff I like to work for products to go to where I am that you are DevRel.

in a company.

help the improve the developer experience People who work in this industry will continue to do their own things on the side

it's there to serve the community in the world will ever have a real use for, which there are quite a few of them out there. And So that's what's great about Century, actually. A shameless plug, I guess. Like,

So it's, from way back when.

And also serve the needs of the company to help improve the product and help,

exist in But if you have 1,000,000 with others about web development.

and generally promote and market the product as well.

generally one of 3 departments

In the industry, not enough.

Yeah. It's a it's a online meetup or it's a, yeah, connection or something of what yeah. Webinar is always a big red flag.

it's just Helpful and handy when you you're you're building this type of thing. But, like, now that we've done a full launch with Sentry

as, like, a big part of our tool. Granted, I used it for level up tutorials, but that was like a 1 person effort. Now I'm doing this in a in a team. Right? We got you got Wes and I working on this thing. It gave me a completely different outlook on how to use this tool in a way that is. It's it's real, and and granted we're not DevRel. We're not here to sell Sentry. That's not like The Western I's purpose,

or any developer, you know it's coming from

How much of the the DevRel job is, like, dogfooding

to marketing. Right.

one,

are using the product or not using the product. You know? So, yes, we are building a real thing together. And, also, could spend my days

Yeah. It's it's so true. I often say, like, developers are allergic

you mentioned blog post is is a big one. Creating content is another one. What else is there? Speaking. So I spoke at a conference last week, but this this is interesting because it wasn't it wasn't about My work in and that might be through creating content educational content, and you must go back, and you must go home.

angle.

a company thrown out a webinar, you know that's not coming from

doing something real. Yep. Break some code. Yeah. Yep. What like, What other I'm curious what other

They don't wanna subscribe to company YouTube channels or follow companies on Twitter, It's mainly people I know sending me tweets.

using the the the The software that you're working for, essentially.

as a customer would. And sure enough,

Like, one word I promised myself many years ago I would never use is webinar.

the product,

So that we can dog food Sentry, like, more effectively. Mhmm. Because, yes, we do have, like, demo environments and the whole demo app kind of thing going on, But it's not real. It's a demo. It's, so there are people, right, who in my lived experience is just by building or less of the views you probably can't see this if you're not watching any type of video, but here is a keyboard cleaning brush. Right? It's retractable.

Right. And whenever whenever you see

here and there just to being away for days at a time There are some nontechnical roles in DevRel, which we can get to later. But at the core of DevRel is

but Yeah. I I wanna be able to speak more effectively about it. And to be able to speak more effectively about it, I have to know the product

DevRel

things that you do. It's like the the office meme. What it is that you say you do here? Yeah. You know? Like, If you were to rattle off, like, 5 things that you've maybe even done in the last week,

I kind of feel like I'm getting out of touch a bit. Even though I'm not out of touch and I'm still building stuff and I'm keeping abreast of all the things that are happening, domain, your own thing. Right? Because I mean, I got into DevRel and a lot of the time, the long game in this Doing what you are doing, is that

the people at the marketing textbooks. And they the people at the marketing, they know what works. And webinars work Super well, but don't call it a webinar.

It's a

It's funny.

And, you know, that's where

you know, Be these expert SEO content writers with no training.

I think most of the conferences now have moved to In person again, I really enjoyed when they were virtual, but it's not the same conference experience when it's online.

Thing about web components. You know? What's the newest CSS selector? I have, like, so little time to, like, keep up with all that stuff even now.

and choose the same kinds of People every time to speak at their events and not open So that that, again, kind of missing the point. Just They see it as, you know, you're traveling the world. You're having fun.

are not

led by So it's tough.

I I've always been open to the wider world. I was like, Hold on. You said that as well. But I did I did pick yes. I did pick that up just basically.

every now and then, but, like, I I about a year and a half into COVID, I was like, I'm done speaking at these. These are these are not enjoyable for the amount of work that takes the prerecorded ones. It was no different than making a YouTube video. So for me, So easy effort. You just pop it out, and you're done. Yeah. Well, for me, it's not easy. It's horrible. I hated every minute of it.

can be very, Yeah. It's great segue with the whole century thing.

Even though you would know nothing about them? what's the word, And you constantly need To be dogfooding, you constantly need to be building stuff. You need to continue being a developer.

and they didn't advertise it correctly. But, also, then priorities change. You know,

and that's just the nature of going outside, I guess.

I had to go and find it myself because of what I was being required to do

So It's just a big mess sometimes. Here here's a good question that's just for you. What are your thoughts on in general speaking at conferences? Maybe not necessarily in the context of DevRel, but just in general. You know?

and giving even more with many different platforms.

Only.

Not be that, like, inclusive of all types of people. I've seen that a lot.

Like I was last week. I actually had to miss my son's 6th birthday because I had to go and travel down to this conference. And And, you know, Awareness, You've built your own website. You're writing your own content, and you own your content. You've got a CMS. You've you've got all these tags. You've you've planned out your life because it's the only thing that you need. And I remember by

But it's a good conference to speak at, but, from being afraid of losing your job mystery, I like to think that no marketing works on me whatsoever, but there is a particular type of marketing that does work on me, and that is Marketing time are you giving them? And We need to go into this market with this type of customer. So, DevRel, you have to now talk to that market, please, podcasts like Syntax FM comes in, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Say you should listen to Syntax. We talk about that stuff. It's of DevRel, You should focus on all of them to try and increase your reach. I tried that. It's only gonna burn you out. Like, Try 1 at a time. So this year, it's been, like, all in on Twitch for me. I have worked the hardest on my Twitch stream as I could given my life circumstances, and your product will probably have an even more niche community and user base. So it's not about the big numbers. It's about the long game and the the relationships Right? And and stuff, You you've you've finished the talk. Mhmm. You you turn the camera off, and you're like, what do I do now? I need the, like Yeah. The post a beer by yourself? I I need the post talk, like, adrenaline, like Yeah. Release. It's it's Yeah. I'm so over the the online conferences. Like, they're they're fun for we are asking around and making, at all. I've kinda stopped using Twitter because it was giving me no value, and it was giving me nothing back. Like, no the I'm not paying for Twitter, Blue, So no one's gonna see my posts. Right? No one's gonna see my tweets. So what's the point? And I met people, and I got my 1st job through I raided someone on Twitch, and she knew someone and link them together and

My answer would have been very different, the company they work for, I had a great experience last week. I've made some new best friends, but that's nothing to do with tech. It's like I might have met these people anywhere. Right? I think conferences but not enough people have RSS feeds. I have an RSS feed, by the way, quick plug.

and how I was being required to operate. As I said before, DevRel in every company is gonna look very different.

Would be possible on this topic favorite website in in my whole Life, world, I can't even speak because I'm so excited about it. But, but I guess that's how I keep up to date. I like it. Beautiful.

because Scary images would be there. It's be like you're falling into this black hole. I love this site so much that I created,

In some places,

important.

it's pure start ups.

I guess is a good thing because they are, being proactive about, like, Giving feedback and trying to get their problem solved, but, also, it could show that maybe you're not providing the best developer experience.

You find But the bottom line, I think conferences, And so who will sell them stuff and market them stuff Much like this keyboard cleaning brush that I am treasuring forever.

and and the relationships involves DevRel teams are quite small

So Totally. Tricky thing. And I'm I'm curious. Like, someone listening to this right now might might be saying, hey. Like, I wanna get into Something like that. You know? Like, I think that would I love doing web development, but I also like the whole talking to people about it and writing blog posts and creating content and All of being able to communicate to back to the team of what features I would like.

and people found the level up tutorials YouTube by searching for Web development, HTML, JavaScript, and the stuff that actually developers are actually looking for because you're only looking for Sentry if you're trying to solve a problem, and you're probably Already using

is often the 1st department things. Yeah. So my most successful blog posts have been about creating an MPM package, And that's generally a, get that real world experience again. Because the longer I'm out of real engineering, from a general web development place.

To be honest and it depends where you have your communities.

with arbitrary metrics with things that you I know how it's built now because I'm a developer,

people being in multiple places so for example, you know, Sentry, open source. Lots of stuff happens on GitHub.

And I even have in my Discord a, I often, Yeah. Another what? So, you you can get very, And those posts, like any post I have written for a company, Actually, on your own domain, and you've you've made things happen.

there There's gotta be some way to to measure this type of stuff. So is there anything you you keep tabs on in terms of, like, am I doing a good job? So it's gonna vary

Bringing in, your strengths DevRel and serving a community, anywhere. Yep. That's true. That's true.

But companies don't see the value from individuals.

with data to kind of show that this person went here I'm here. I'm here. I'm read this blog post and did this, so they're engaged.

But

like, individual community metrics into the measurement. You know, my Twitch followers or my Twitch views or My YouTube views alongside, but then

I wanna state that we're not explicitly DevRel here.

The the way

and widening the community. Because a lot of the time, being sold it by the fact that I

How do you even get into

to bring together all of your different communication channels So developers don't really wanna be marketed to by companies.

I discovered that people were programming on Twitch, and I thought, well, I'll try that because there are not many women doing it, and everyone's doing back end development. So let's do some front end, and I'm not a man.

alongside that is that

to the people that matter to to you as a developer.

Across the industry, depending on, obviously, what department you're in. Right? So in marketing, like, what's changed, why has it changed, is it bad, is it good, and is an unsolved Deborah moved on to Twitch in 2020, it's tough. And then, you know, I've also experimented with

be shared on Reddit and Hacker News that still get a lot of, But, like, active community members, which are defined, I think, by Discord as sending, like, Three messages in a week and coming back and and this I I look a lot at that.

On that measuring thing, is there anything that you you can or do measure to show that you are are doing a good job? Because At the end of the

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand that, and it is a very, very long game and is very hard to quantify as well. How do you measure that type of thing? You know? Measurement in DevRel is

because the value is so hard to communicate to nondevelopers I experimented a lot on TikTok with, like, posting bits of Twitch clips And some organic stuff didn't really work. I deleted my account after the tech bros found me and came after me for some reason.

experience of communicating

So it's kind of swings and roundabouts.

views, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. So it depends where things are shared as well. And it's like of the Wikipedia pages that Describe the user journey and some of the things I found on the Wayback Machine.

A lot of, like, stakeholders in a business will be like,

to say something or share something or say hello.

or workshop attendees

why are we paying for this person to go to a conference

a co working channel, right, where people go and Hang out. They're remote workers.

you know, that's an indication of people sharing it and finding it useful. And, their CFPs up to, like, the wider They that you're just Background noise for them, that's different. So a lot of people equate

Because those are the inroads

by appealing to different sensibilities and different problems and different solutions, Far easier.

moments about or problems that you solved,

then, you know, you're gonna constantly be on edge. And I've spent most of my dev route career being on edge, to be honest, and it's, bringing, you know, people together, and things like that.

The content that you write about the product is really only going to existing customers or developers who are already using the product.

in that. Often, companies Century saw the value in it, but often, companies don't see the value in that. And Another thing I wanted to touch on I look at blog post views for my own blog post because, Quite a lot of tabs on how other people are being marketed to and and what marketing works on us.

who are just scrolling past your tweets. They follow you on Twitter. Right? But they're just scrolling past, so they don't care.

Yeah. You know what? I thought it was one thing that was interesting. Again,

But if you can't show that

which was formerly my LevelUp Tutorials YouTube channel, now the Syntax YouTube channel with the Sentry YouTube channel statistics.

an engaged community who want to see the product get better And who are using it and who are reporting bugs. Like, no bugs reported means, like, no engagement, really, because people can't be bothered. And you know you don't have a perfect product. You know that there are things wrong with it. Right? And then a a lot of departments will look at blog post views.

to, tell you about problems that they have, you know, we've I've tried over the over the course of the years to measure stuff. But once like, like, Century or I wasn't selling Netlify to my community, but they were automatically great conference. And I was speaking actually about everything I've been doing on my Twitch stream for the last three and a half years, which was what got me into developer relations.

And numbers and sign ups,

And

Do do stuff about the product.

teaching developers with their full time job, They put their camera on And it's not necessarily about writing blog posts You're gonna be SEO consultant now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I probably could be.

I and you need to have empathy for those developers to understand the problems they might be facing, to preempt

high numbers on these platforms

To DevRel, is is it generally someone who's doing it on their own and gets picked up by a company?

I think activity on GitHub, if you are open source and you operate in that

So, like, maybe our some of the things that we're doing are a little bit different. But, you know, when we were first brought on to Sentry and we were, you know, pitching to internal Sentry folks about why syntax was

Yeah. Is so

Then you said you're not DevRel. And I think Syntax FM And Yeah. Often, we get these quotas because, that are forming, but you can't measure relationships.

Communication and speaking to people and having that empathy.

blog post you write. That's an expensive podcast. That's an expensive bit Fun you're having on a on Syntax FM. You know? And, well, it It's tough as well. If DevRel is the 1st to get laid off, can we just date for the record we are not DevRel? The latest product that has been released, and and they'll put it into a developer context. Right? I've ever seen.

Ecosystem is a good indicator of, DevRel is labeled as the bridge So, again, because I don't want to travel.

Sentry. Right? Scott, I want to refute I went actually, different everywhere, For some reason departments are made up of developers.

And the Sentry ones were People found the Sentry YouTube channel by searching

And graphs going up there used to be, a product that I've never used before called I think it was called Orbit. I think it still exists, And it existed in in the world, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I did a 4 year degree writing music. Yeah. I also went to school for music. So Oh. Yeah. Fellow music major. Nice. Yeah. I I actually, I, they off often, people in DevRel are brought in and treated as content creators

I think Jason Langsdorf said this.

in my vicinity.

Talk about something that is not our product. They should be on that stage talking about our product. You know?

is, Once you put a number on something, You're measuring that number. Yeah. And you'd and is it the right number? No one knows, but you'll measure that number, and you'll make it go up. But does that really make a difference? Yeah.

I still don't know how to measure engagement. I think it's Quite a feeling.

for Sentry,

If I People say that they have to wear many, many hats You know, you could get into DevRel through basically being,

day, people want to see stats on on specific things, you know, and, Broadly web development podcast is because a,

climate Yeah. Doesn't really work. Yeah. Fast results. Right? Yeah. For for

One of the things we did was compare the search terms of,

It's very successful And a confusing issue because companies are confused about what DevRel is and what they need, but also companies keep changing their minds about who they are.

innovative ways to use the product And so often, when people are, like, not offering value, it's because they've been hired into the wrong position or the wrong job or The company doesn't know what they actually wanted, and that goes down back again Ideally, DevRel needs to be its own thing, but I haven't really seen a company do that yet. And I think because, generally, Economic is I can't do it as well.

angle. If you're out there in the community and you're building community and you're creating connections

Yeah. The type of place you work. Yeah. You know what? I just talked to I talked to a friend of mine who works at Apple

Like, they'll and and if you can make people feel good through that, there's that automatic kind of association with a company that you work for Mhmm. That will make other people feel good. It it's funny because I remember It would tell you you were in a restricted place, is there to

their thing. Kind of like the sports player who, like, you know, you got sports team a hat on. You get traded. Toss that head off. It's in the garbage. New team head on. Let's go. You know? You're you're you're having that context switch, though. That that definitely happened to me, I think, when I worked at Contentful. And I was only there for a year,

that you're working for.

But

Yeah. And and it helps that the product that you're you're working for is, like, actually good. Right? I mean, If you were having to do DevRel for something you didn't believe in, man, how hard would that be to

DevRel or or anything,

Part of the reason on this podcast why it's not a such a specific

that's the whole, like, authenticity

I would get so burnt out if we were a single topic. Oh, yeah. Podcast where we had to talk about the exact same thing, and I think that's why you do see a lot of turnover in DevRel. You see people jumping from company to company to company, and it's It's probably because you could talk about GraphQL till you're blue in the face.

kind of come up with that innovation because you've got 10 blog posts to write this month for some reason.

for anybody to listen to you or or pay attention. Yeah. What what you were just mentioning there about,

away from I think so.

It's the whole, like, selling from an individual thing. I'm not selling, I look at it for me personally so that's a big time investment. I mean, it all is.

to carry to care so much about something. Like, it's kinda why I love doing this podcast is what do we get to talk about? Whatever I'm stoked on. That's about it. You know?

was there, Reactive marketing. Yeah. It's tough. So it's there are some people who, you know, maybe they wanna go into DevRel, And it's not for them, and they realized quite early on, and then they might not be bringing the right kind of value. But I think most of the time, it's an organizational issue.

You can only care so much, especially when you're like you're Usually, that's, like, your your first point of contact. Right? Like, it's not it's not just support, but it's, you're a hired hand

How amazing GraphQL is and the benefits of GraphQL

used by as many people as possible,

You gotta have a a a legitimizer

after 8 months of it. Like, Oh, that's good. Awesome. Well, last thing we have here is shameless plugs. What would you like to plug to the audience? Come And, be entertained by me writing stupid code at twitch.tv/white

That has happened. That is happening. That happens.

if I have any advice for anyone getting into

When I, such as videos, blog posts, archaeologist.

I write code for your entertainment live on Twitch, And, it's about all the fun stuff. Like and that's the authenticity about it. So as part of developer relations, some organizations People can connect with you about that's not the product.

have multiple uses and can be result of Fun fact, actually, the dev rel team at Sentry, we are currently building an actual product that we want people to use

who's brilliant

That that seems like a sticking point, honestly, because I wanna say that because it's come out twice now. So The the 10 blog posts a month thing, is that something

topic podcast,

it's a But now there's a 1000000 other platforms, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok,

I I believe that's what Scott calls a legitimizer.

But, again,

Is that true, Scott? A legitimizer.

when you're not even given any time to Members are telling you. Right? And you are serving them, and people are saying, hey, Samba. You really helped me solve my problem. Thank you. Right? You know you can get very overloaded with just mindlessly consuming feeds of content. And, You know, I've done it. I used to bookmark so many things on Twitter. Mhmm. Need to need to look up that. Need to use that new CSS selector. Oh, that's a new kind of gradient.

to a certain point, there's

even Yeah. Bring it up as being a a thing that you believed in in some sort of way. Yeah. Legitimizer is one of my favorite words. It comes from a a good friend of mine.

and it kinda makes your, like, circle of Your your sphere of visibility quite small when you're working. You think everyone must know about Netlify, what type of audience you want to grow. And I don't think

And he was like, I had no idea who that is. I was just like, oh,

if you're sick of touting

who was building a specific type of site when I started at Netlify, than the posts I write of my own volition. Mhmm. It's it's hard because I've said this six 6 years ago before I became a parent, that will make me more valuable, fascinating, Traditionally, on the outside. Right? So dev rel is a very outward facing role. It's, regularly on Thursdays Fridays.

working for a product that's actually good.

And does all kinds of stuff. He's very knowledgeable. He's not a web dev per se, but he's web adjacent.

that you see as being, 1, like a real problem in DevRel, but, 2, like a real thing? Are Are you be are are DevRel folks getting, like, quotas on just straight up, alright, churn out this kind of content? Yes.

Yeah. I

okay. Let me tell you. They're they're they're big in our our niche. Yeah.

all the different dev so I've had, been building my my community since 2020 when I started streaming. And every time I change company or,

And I mentioned Vercel, With me as always is Wes Bos. Wes, how's it going? Hey. Pretty good. Excited to talk to Salma today.

that because

What's interesting

like, a world, that you went to the school For music. Is that correct? Yeah. I did a music degree. Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester is actually one of the top conservatoires but I got Gets even more blurry, and I don't want a company to own, like, the White Panther brand. Sure. Yeah.

But it's a little bit different when you're you're working for a company, and you're paid be enthusiastic about

Piece of art, and and it could have been, you know, stuff you've never seen before in your entire life. It's gone now. It it defunct as of 2017, but it was One of my most visited sites back in the day. This reminds me a lot of that. So I'll post the link to the way back for hell.com as well as the hell.com Wikipedia.

per spec what you're talking about reminds me very similarly of this website. It was a Kind of like a Instagram feed before there was an Instagram feed, but it was just curated art from, like, 1 or 2 people. So it was just like a a daily one post that was just a

It's definitely not finished right, but I wanted to recreate the magic And and show my Twitch community, which Brighton, in the UK,

You know, like, just Mhmm. Not be so serious, but also be clever and mysterious with success for companies, but I don't think that's always the way, world, it's a necessary evil, I believe.

Maybe I'll do that when I retire. Wish angel I wish there was a whole archive of every Angel Fire site that ever existed the best way to do that, like you said,

love love that website and, like, fantastic

And a bunch of people tagged me on it, and I I I shared a bunch of my favorites as well, but, like, or when there is, like, a big blog post about how how much Next. Js sucks, He he doesn't say, like, no, you're wrong. But he says, alright, there's some misunderstanding

it was made by an artist, let's go back to that. I want 10 blog posts a month, please.

I found out that I'm DevRel, and I'm really excited about that. So thank you so much. Yay.

Right? It doesn't exist anymore.

the name started off as a joke, and I'm stuck with it now.

I'll I'll Post a link to the Wikipedia

UK time, I start. But I do the odd stream here and there in different times, but come hang out. You can watch the VODs back.

I love stuff like this.

and not just selling products what's difficult about DevRel is, as I was talking about earlier about time to build stuff And

using Astro and jQuery because, you know, nostalgia for the web.

And, like, prompts would come up This says you're you're this is a private web. You're now being redirected to the public information site, which was just Google.

Preservation

The best thing and I encourage you I implore you to get lost in the law and explore the way back machine because you will have a lot of fun. Do you remember the website it could be sign ups It's about you know, although I have had a couple of blog posts, when DevRel moved online because DevRel used to be pre 2020, DevRel was just going to conferences Traveling and being away and and doing all these events, do what you want.

It's just a lot of fun. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been awesome. It's been illuminating.

or, yeah, any of those geocities.

pantherwhitep4nth quite beautiful.

found.com?

like, my most, like, famous or come I mean, they must exist, but I haven't come across many people who have just gone straight from engineering to dev route with no because people are choosing You know, what are people talking about? What's the latest But don't no shade to SEO consultants because it must be it's a very difficult job. But, you know, I have so much knowledge that I never even thought 3 r. If you use a screen reader, of the development teams that are using your product Mhmm. Yeah. Which is very difficult.

But come come hang out on Twitch. I stream, Serving even more people and, And

hell.com.

Right? It's just like it's the Internet of, Like the original Internet, and it's we wouldn't be here without stuff like this. And I want the web to be more like this now.

Or drop a review if you like this show.

article for this from my,

Fascinating. I don't wanna lose it. Right? I don't wanna lose it. I wanna keep it alive so, like, the next generation doesn't forget about it. There's a a really good web Site and Twitter account, web design museum. I I I followed that. They they do they do exactly that, and they had posted a bunch of, like, early grunge.

of of what the web used to look like. Old, aren't we? We're like, oh, back in my day, the Internet Back. Yeah.

Might not be very US time zone efficient.

Head on over to syntax.fm

And don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player Was that over 1 night? I don't. You were No. Okay.

Just spend my days in the way back machine, And, people start using that product Automatically.

Please

some of the problems they might be facing with a product, Hey. Join the team. Join the team.

being spun up in inside a product, company, especially Everyone has to know me. I need to get 100,000 But they will subscribe and follow individuals, I don't think it will ever be sold because a lot of the time, it's a feeling. Right? And it's the long game. And, I actually look a lot at, Discord engagement,

And, that people in dev route just go and do conferences And, you know, I've spoken at virtual conferences.

that often

as you as you do, build your network. Right? And I used to not believe Quite a lot of the population who would like to do it, And I used a combination

Authenticity.

And

And, and,

serve the community, quality over Quantity is what I focus on. And, You You know, Century has a very big discord. It's very active all the time. But then it's different. When you have a company discord, a lot of the time, people will come to that discord in developer relations, they'll go and speak about you can use it on so many different, you know, projects and programming languages and SDKs. And it's actually, Original web stuff. I my next job, I want to be, like, an Internet education, as a parent now, rather than being a very niche little product that maybe only a few developers

One of the core parts of DevRel And the long game will pay off. Yeah.

and anything else that the community needs. And and those community needs are gonna be different per product and per company. So it's up to the DevRel department to assess those needs and evolve and iterate upon them as, they see fit.

that it doesn't really warrant A whole new organization everywhere and side hustles. And I mean, there are numbers in Discord, for example, because I had to.

between the community

And Over and over again in every job that I've had and, yes, as as someone who is employed by a company to do developer to do developer relations, you you have to Do a certain part of your job. You need to talk about the product. You need to write content about that. But I'm a big believer in that You should produce content that is, like, 5050.

often, and that's how I discovered it was a thing.

between everyone,

lots of things to know, but I kinda feel like I'm at that stage where I feel like I've been here for years already now. So that's cool. Yeah. They do a good job of making you feel like you're you're part of the the squad right away. I had not worked for anybody for, like, 10 years. So when I got into all the onboarding, it was like,

Hoo. I'm starving.

oh, I gotta do all this stuff.

Wash those hands, pull up a chair, and secure that feed bag, because it's time to listen to Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos attempt to use human language to converse with and pick the brains of other developers. I thought there was gonna be food,

Use the coupon code tasty treat, all lower case, 1 word, and you get 2 months For free. Alright. With that long intro out of the way, Salma, welcome to the show. How's it going? Hi. Very well. Thank you.

This

Welcome Welcome to Syntax.

And we're going to be just diving into what the heck DevRel is as a career, what makes for effective DevRel, what type of things are Or, like, you know, give you the DevRel ick in that regard. So we're gonna be going through all sorts of really interesting topics in regards

Oh, man.

Lots of people to meet, to new developers And,

Yeah. Yeah. How's the transition been? It's do you know what? Sentry, at times, feels like a very big company and not a start up, which is very different to the last 2 places I was at doing DevRel.

relations.

before we introduce Selma, one really neat thing about Selma is that she also works for Sentry,

with Salma Alam Naylor,

to developer

so buckle up and grab that old handle because this ride is going to get wild.

Yeah. And,

And it could be really cool if, you know, you have some Bugs in your code to load up Sentry and log that stuff so you can solve it for later. So head on over to century.i0.

which is the perfect place to track and,

I sure hope you're hungry.

is the Syntax supper club.

log all of your errors and exceptions.

On this Friday's supper club, we're gonna be talking all things DevRel

So they they both help you, but then they also probably turn around and say, we need Better docs on this. We need I need to do a video on this. And,

because and and But I've never found the right RSS feed reader.

about how this thing works.

Right? So say if someone comes along I have a really good example of this. Someone comes along DevRel is about experimentation.

you might hear, to just hang out in in my space,

with DevRel in the past. And, generally, it's

It's got 2 ends. 1 end for this for kind of hairy bits on one end for dust. And I was sold this right now, so you can't put all of your eggs in 1 platform

I'm trying to understand, like, Which of these products would would make sense? Or I'm trying to understand how would I architect this? Or I'm not understanding what I should use in this specific use Often that that role will say, alright, here. Here's an example of of how you do it.

So, like, in the nineties, Yeah. But what, like, training are you offering this person who is new to the the the job? I'm just joking. But, again, the burnout comes Support. Right? Because a lot of the time, these dev rel departments

sometimes you see,

we advise the marketing departments I haven't seen, calls and seeing who's got jobs available for these people who've just lost their job, through that, It's not a real development experience, really, because I wanna work on a team of a 100 people and come up with all these interesting problems that we have to solve about releases and Mhmm. Version control and, you know, that kind of stuff, which you just you lose in DevRel because That's not your you're not building software. You're helping people build software. Well, if sent if Century will let you, we always have things to work on for the syntax site. Let me tell you. We dogfooded Sentry a whole lot on this, new syntax site because, and,

to developers look it up on Wikipedia. Include a link with the show notes or whatever. But, like, it's And so I'm a big believer, actually, that I've been considering going back to engineering, I've never it's never become part of my life, but I want it to be part of my life.

the community, but then you also got to turn around and say, alright, engineering,

How best to promote And, there's not enough of that because a lot of the time,

very much overworking which and Deveril is very notorious, Email open rate. I mean, that's not really a DevRel one, but it it could be, right, in in a different place.

Lee from Versal is really good at this is When there is outrage about something in Next. Js

because of this, for burnout last week to FF Conf In, Johan, I wanna refute what you said

maybe we can make this a little bit easier. Doc's team, maybe we can do a little bit more here. So, yeah, you're right. There is you're kind of a bridge between a lot of the

my interactions

And just make fun videos online and just get to have fun all day. But there's Yeah. There's a lot more to it, like you described.

out there.

a particular feature, what language to use, You're not operating at a grand scale, and you're also not working in a team that's representative One of the things that is difficult about DevRel,

And, so it can get a bit much. I have waffled. And I know you like waffling and and talking and going on tangents, and that's good. But, I mean, that's pretty much it. I probably missed loads. It makes sense because, like, I think about Yeah. And it takes up far too much of your time, so you can't focus on your your job, the one that you're being paid for.

Let me explain how I would approach this type of thing. So he he you're both facing towards

a lot of people who work in dev rel, they do their own things on the side, and I got into dev rel by doing my own things on the side. And often, gets overlooked and get gets lost 8, 9 weeks 9 weeks this week is going well. Wow. I'm enjoying it very much.

When I have an issue with something or I'm confused about how a specific item works is,

what type of

with this whole authenticity thing that I was speaking about, to the authenticity can be very difficult for some people to attend and speak at, which could be excluding Right? So, a proxy for tech support on Twitter. Yeah. Right? You know? It's it's about because, again, it comes back to the individual I I watch a lot of YouTube, but I don't watch any tech on YouTube alongside And so, you know, my advice is just find what you wanna experiment with. If you choose For now, it doesn't have to be the platform you are on forever. You can diversify, and you can switch and change. If something doesn't work, try something else. If your TikToks are failing, try YouTube shorts. Don't do both. Who cares? fun and games,

marketing.

the rest of the company. Exactly. And there is a misconception Like marketing that works on me, collecting data, Content to use to target developers in certain situations or making videos. Right? It's, Netlify in a way, in that Netlify was targeted at specific type of, like, looking at the relationships people had In those days, how the Internet worked differently, To get laid off in a company in 2020.

Lot of the community and,

we are the ones who will usually be marketed to. And we have to then also keep and go and do a different DevRel job,

building stuff.

I've tried to get into the whole, like, RSS feed game, you'll get asked to write a blog post about this or a blog post about that, and you need to write 10 blog posts this month So DevRel is DevRel without all of the other stuff that gets sprinkled all around it. I think, you know, the

It's called hell.com.

Like, what if I could do this with CSS? And I'll Google it, then I'll realize, oh, it's a new selector or something. You know? So the way I learn when you're building, you're often building demo apps. You're not pushing things to production. You don't have Paying customers.

because because it's the same old people doing the same old stuff. So

to give a talk for less than a 100 people, And it was, like, the most soul crushing thing in the whole world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Again, and It Then Luckily, we can And repurpose it for us in tax Exactly.

the beers you have with people

I don't like to submit many CFPs, What, like, research time are you giving them? What Practice time are you giving them? What experimentation

Not everyone can. Right? Yeah. So I I spent 2 weeks on this 40 minute talk that I did last week, and I now Oh, need to submit it to so many other places to make the 2 weeks I spent on it worth it. Yeah. Yeah.

There you go. I could. Yeah. Thanks for the idea, actually. On the flip side, yeah, the

The whole community thing. Alright. Last question we have here is, what do you you use to stay up to date with what's going on in the web development world? This answer has changed over this year. It used to be Twitter,

I'll have problems to solve while I'm building stuff, so I will, like, Google that stuff when I need to do it. So for example,

It's it's a website that doesn't exist anymore, DevRel

something stupid usually, and just hang out silently and keep each other company. I see that and product departments and engineering departments and marketing departments.

forever. Like, sometimes I work, like, a week on a talk, and then you give it to,

so good luck to me, I guess. You could probably get, you know, 30 YouTube shorts out of it.

Did tweet

Alright. Last section we have here is a sick pick and a shameless plug. Do you have

it's not Twitter anymore.

yeah. So, of content. Like, I think all these platforms, they engaged community members who hang out with you on Twitch And Discord, read your blogs, watch your videos, comment on your YouTube videos. Right? That's, like, but, like, back then, it was so mysterious. Random things would happen at random times.

either of those for us? Yeah. My sick pick

but you can, get it on the Wayback Machine. And there is a whole, like, Wikipedia page of all the law inside the network? You know, get in there and But,

If you're lucky, a couple 100 people. Yes. And then, like I flew all the way to Romania

I I'll tell you how I do keep up to date. So I keep up to date

enchanting, people

As it comes up because, you know, but they are product to Jason or, like you say, Wes, General web development the developer.

are invaluable. You can't get that

Curated. Spicy stuff that they think I should, you know, be aware of. Yeah. That's good.

Don't do what you think you have to, I've been at century now for

that they're already doing it well. You know? You already got you already got that that for a full archive of all of our shows.

Salma or Jason Langsdorff or Wes Bosch because it works for them,

and it doesn't. It doesn't help that some jobs I recreated it kind of, And, time to research And just to know what's going on in the general web development world.

and I can help them again. And they will share something, and they will come back to me. So you don't need to

See, a lot of peoples a lot of people think, right, I'm in DevRel now. I have to be everywhere.

followers, and,

For company, let's say I I'm working at, DevRel for

If I am helping at least 1 person I do not like being away from my family.

Try and get some data if you can measure it. Yeah. If it's not working out for you or if it isn't doesn't feel good for you, then do something else and change it. Get some more data And and rinse and repeat. And, don't feel bound.

failing fast, I guess. You know, that's the phrase. Like, try something.

advertise in the job description that the person must have more than 5,000 followers on Twitter.

is really good also every quarter, you're completely pivoting more than your own domain.

new company x, y, and z. It's maybe my first I'm in a DevRel gig or 2nd time or something,

and the authenticity. Yeah. I I think you nailed a lot of stuff That like, I think Wes and I had both done throughout our entire careers where the experimentation is a big piece. You know? We we've you try something. It doesn't work. You Try something else. But, also, like like you said, you know,

The way the team's expectations are laid out. So for example, Right.

against,

when they're doing dev DevRel

It's a niche thing what we do, the the blurry line between personal endeavors and job Some conferences The organization that DevRel sits in not understanding and you know, if you have 10

and I'm not bringing any value. What am I doing? You know? Sometimes it's not the individual's fault who has been brought onto that team, but the way the team has Then But it's a very niche talk That doesn't really fit in too many CFPs, authentically You need to be able to speak to developers in developers' language languages which you can then play the long game and bring them in. But the problem is it is a long game, Who needed a new front end developer, DevRel? And that's how I got my job, but I was already, like, doing it. I was writing blog posts. Was streaming on Twitch. I was building a community because it was my hobby. So I turned my hobby into my job, which is not always recommended.

Time to build stuff and dog food the product Do that. But part of your job should be to create content that you just wanna create

finding what everybody else is doing and then copying that. Like, how many YouTube channels are trying to do exactly what Fireship is doing right now because because it worked for him. You know? That that's the type of thing you see over and over again. What what's something that people get wrong,

and there will be someone out there who appreciates what you make. And I always say with whatever I do,

And trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Because, you know, we have these instincts as developers, don't we, about the type of things that we wanna consume and we wanna make, I know you don't know what you don't know, but, like, say if I'm doing something complicated with CSS.

very specifically, there are developers who are just like you. And by chasing trends and trying to be

bug covered. So, like, you're you're best off being yourself, and chances are if you are who you are, there's other people who are gonna be and feel a lot like you and and perhaps latch on to whatever you're doing there. But you do see a lot of people just kind of

Shringle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And where

in in this, but And then also that goes further into and other people in the company. And, oh, that's that's that's an expensive, Nightmare job. Then I'd create a TikTok, And then I create a YouTube

without knowing people.

where should that be? Definitely have your own And, I guess I've gone head on into the problem straightaway. But what you might see in DevRel is

You're just, you know, go into the socials and the meet ups. Magazines.

And see where it takes you, but, that will stand you in good stead for applying for DevRel jobs and and

And was the most mysterious, People who choose developer

Twitter,

which is nice. Right? It's a kind of a nice, like, feeling to feel so safe in

nothing says legitimate For some reason. Yes. And so you lose touch of actually what the product is about.

What's the platforms that you should be focusing on right now? Because, like, when I when I grew up, it was blogging.

Discord. You know, there's 1,000,000 places to go.

Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean, I've been in a 12 limousines just this year as Yeah. Already. But there's, you know, there's so much more to it. But if you already have if if you have a desire to communicate with people celebrate the fact that you you go and you do some live streaming. And you might not necessarily be live streaming about the product there's lots of fake data in there, and we need to be able to, like, understand how real developers who are building real products by a friend, also in DevRel, who really loved it. And they said, look how you can use it. It's great. I love it. It's changed my life, and I straightaway bought 1. Right? And it's the one to 1,

This, like, kinda small group of people. So build your network. Right? Start doing the thing that you wanna do. Try it out. I mean, I know not everyone has the time,

and help them with anything that they're doing and you have an expertise in something, that's a bonus, exclusive

2,

we asked Jason Langstroff this as well. I was like, what's

yeah, I think you have to be doing Something you need that you need the the want to do it. You know? I think a lot of people, they wanna get into DevRel because they see it as glamorous.

DevRel is so small as well. Everyone knows everyone. Right? And everyone's got each other's backs. Like, if some if some big company decides to lay off the whole dev world department, we are In my last 2 jobs, I learned so much about SEO

with life and families and whatnot. And if not, if you don't have the time outside of work, like, see if your current job We'll let you do some of that stuff. You know? Can I help some customers, or can I write a blog post, or can I go and speak at a conference on behalf of the company by producing this, then it has been a job well done and time well spent Because that person will remember me, is the purest

If someone wants to do this type of thing and can only focus on

I wouldn't have got The 3 DevRel jobs that I got because I started alright. So I didn't know DevRel existed, That can get quite a bit much who just wanted to promote his art, actually. But, like, It's brilliant, pure, like, marketing, but no one really knows about it. But it is like, in that kind of ecosystem.

And I haven't had as much practice, but for me, it's like, I'm trying. I actually released a new YouTube video today, but I'm not happy with it. I prefer to just do it all on Twitch. So that depends. Right? But things like live content, they're a big investment in your time. Because if you wanna stand out and you want to, you know, on what you need to do in dev rel because the company has pivoted. The company has new audience now.

Far less stressful.

and understand because, also, One of the first websites

Understand And that was when I started streaming on Twitch in, like, full lockdowns.

I experimented with TikTok

It's too much. And especially if you're doing this as, like, kind of like a side thing, it's impossible.

And get better at that. But if you do too much at any one time now I used to about things that you love, that you care about, that you had

Then the rest, it depends. Right? The age old, it depends. I've experimented new audiences Mhmm. You know, like, go back, I've never, like,

you you know this best. I'm sure. You have to repurpose your content in a way that is fit for that platform. Totally.

We don't need to mention that Twitter has gone down the drain I mean, it's because it's in your head. Like, the Subject to what I was saying, but then you were loud, wasn't it? Reality. That's what we were hearing. Yeah. But there is, and I think that's what Century saw in you. Right? I know I'm probably not gonna get selected anyway because of the types of people I generally see on most conference lineups. So it's a tricky one. It's a great experience when you can get to do it, but there are lots of barriers, lots of downsides. And, also, writing a talk Takes forever. Some time. Yeah. Oh, developers.

repurpose. Like, say I did a Twitch stream. Right? Used to create a YouTube video out of it, so I'd condense a 3 hour stream down to 10 minutes.

last year.

short, and then I'd put a separate video on Twitter. And then I'd put something else somewhere else. And

Recording to a camera

and I didn't care about YouTube or TikTok or Twitter or anything, and that went really well. Next year, I might go all in on YouTube You can learn some stuff, and, I'll use that. And it's just like bookmark fatigue that you never ever, like, look back on. And so I like to use things when there is a timely use for it As I am building something, have loads of content.

Get people clicking on your thumbnail. It's gotta look good. Yeah. And you gotta have some fun going on. And,

that are not really about the product, Help or affect like the masses.

what DevRel is and and not not understanding what they're there to do. The quota is a thing. And the problem with blog posts and quotas it's quite complicated because it kind of was about my work. So what a lot of the time, people who go and speak At conferences when they are, believe in and things that you're passionate about and things that you think are fun and great.

are the ones And to be able to translate that back to product and marketing and engineering as well, I came across when I had the Internet And a lot of conference speaking when you're traveling to in person conferences

gets a tenth form

view our stuff, Buy our product. We don't get outbid on, like, the links, the the ads links. And so that's the thing. But the best blog posts come from an authentic place,

now the best blog posts to the you know, my 11th month. And I was like, well, there's only so much you can really do with a CMS. I'm like, do you even really need a CMS at all? And so the burnout for that is real. You always have to come up with, New Awesome. Thanks again. Thank you so much.

So we need to be showing up on page 1 of Google so people can It's about 12 PM Marketers only. Content machines only. And they've come in to be a developer and to build stuff, but now they're expected to, Toggle. Right? These are my most successful ones and my live coding setup, in OBS on Twitch. Mhmm. Like I said, it's about the whole community thing. If you're you're making stuff that but, yet Scary website All the time. Yeah. Because it's so difficult to show value. You know you are providing value because community first was given Microsoft MVP, I met some people at Microsoft. I was like, oh, yeah. I work for Netlify. And they're like, What's Nutlify?

They will then automatically connect with the product as a side effect.

Light and dark mode in CSS, It depends who you are. Like, if you're a woman, things are more difficult than, if you are a man on these types of platforms. It has to be said. YouTube versus Twitch. Right? Very different platforms.