Fireside with Voxgig

It's always a treat to have a returning guest on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, but especially so when that guest has done so much in the time since we last got to chat to them.

We're delighted to welcome back Brian Douglas - the Founder and CEO of Open Sauced, an open source intelligence platform that helps developers and maintainers unlock their open source potential with project insights. It's a service that Richard admits would have served him well at the times when he's had a few more open source projects on the go than he could handle!

A lot has happened with Brian and Open Sauced in the year since we spoke with him last. Notably, the shift in their focus towards working more with bigger enterprises. While the mid-tier projects can help you find your feet, there comes a point where bigger is better, and it's time to take a seat at the big table.

Along with this, they've been working on an exciting new project called 'StarSearch', an AI tool to help developers understand the logic in code, whether it be someone else's code, or (and this is just as likely) their own code from, let's say 6 months ago. If your ears are perking up at the sound of this, you're not the only one, and Brian goes further in depth on the episode, about how this works and what it could mean going forward.

A good way to look at this service is to understand that it helps to reduce the number of ‘wtf's’ per minute - which as everyone knows is the ultimate measure of code quality.

Reach out to Brian here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianldouglas/

Check out Open Sauced: https://opensauced.pizza/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

In this episode from last year, we spoke to Aravind Putrevu. Aravind is a developer advocate turned angel investor, but to leave it at just that would be a disservice. He has his fingers in many pies, including DevRel consulting, where he helps companies with their product marketing and strategy.

And of course, as any good DevRel or engineer should, he also has an itch to build something valuable, so he’s working on a SaaS tool that he’s still keeping in stealth mode. Aravind speaks to us about his transition from DevRel to angel investing and his propensity for startups and working with founders.

When it comes to the world of consulting, Aravind walks us through his role with a company, from strategy, to marketing, to introducing their brand to the public as a DevRel. He speaks about the culture of DevRel, how all too often a singular person gets hired to do the work of an entire DevRel team, both code and community, and how this overload leads to the inevitable cycle of burnout that he sees frequently.

We also chat to him about his work as a senior developer advocate at Elasticsearch, where he had the benefit of a large developer team working with a popular product that had insane traction. He says that Elasticsearch is a classic example of how DevRel can work when the founders are the first developer advocates.

Aravind is also a speaker who has given talks at many large conferences, and he tells us a little about how he coordinates a team where five people have all signed up to speak at the same conference. A happy problem to have!

Reach out to Aravind here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aravindputrevu/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It’s always fun to talk about the futuristic potential of virtual reality, but it’s even more fun to talk about it with Ciara Sheahan, because she actually knows some real information about this topic. Ciara is a radio presenter, journalist and tech entrepreneur, and she joined us on the podcast last year, to provide us with proof that you don’t have to be a former coder to be a founder who does cool stuff with tech.

Ciara is the founder of Orb Media, where they’re taking the cross pollination of gaming software and integrating it with ecommerce platforms to improve the customer experience. Essentially, they are game-ifying the online shopping experience, allowing platforms to better showcase their products, and giving customers that dopamine hit you would usually only get from levelling up.

Ciara tells us that there are many ways to “gamify” an experience. It doesn’t have to be all zombies and helicopters (although it can be!), there’s also plenty of subtle ways to apply it to the shopping experience. Now, while Orb Media is a Web 3 company at heart, Ciara maintains that her goal was always to keep this technology accessible, so there’s no headset required for this immersive experience, all you need is your phone.

She also lets us in on how she got her start, from journalism to radio to tech and the roadblocks she experienced along the way. Ciara is also a speaker, and she tells us about how she believes speakers are simply vessels carrying a message, and that focusing less on yourself and more on how the information you're delivering relates to your audience, might help you get out of your head when the nerves take over.

Reach out to Ciara here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciara-sheahan360/

Check out Orb Media: https://orbmedia.ie/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: http://www.devrelmeetup.com

Back in January, we had a familiar face on the Voxgig podcast!

We’re speaking to our host Richard’s former colleague, Conor O’Neill. Conor is the Director of Product and Engineering at Axonista, an interactive video CMS, where he’s helping them transform video from a fun accessory to a key feature of their customer’s platforms.

Now, as Conor explains, though video may be their bread and butter, what he actually spends most of his time focusing on, is everything around video, metadata being a prime example of what he’s interested in.

Conor weighs in with us on the recent purge of DevRel jobs, and explains why all may not be as it seems in this regard. While companies dismissing DevRel jobs might help you work out exactly who you don’t want to work for, there’s also a host of people out there, Conor included, who have encountered a great deal of difficulty finding someone with the capabilities to take on a DevRel job he needed to fill.

He discusses that one of the main benefits of having a DevRel on your staff, is that you can have your own “potterer”. Someone who can experiment and play the mad scientist, figuring out creative new ways of doing things, something high level Devs with immense workloads would not necessarily be able to do. This allows for your company to be continuously open to the possibility of newer, better ways of conducting things.

We even take a brief trip down memory lane, with Conor and Richard giving some insight into the time they worked together, and the wonderful opportunities that have grown from that adventure.

Reach out to Conor here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conoroneill/

Check out Axonista: https://www.axonista.com/about/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Joe Batten joins us for a deep dive into the world of RevOps! The tasks involved in a Revenue Operations role have pretty much always existed in some form, so it can be defined as essentially a combo deal of sales enablement, marketing operations, data analysis and business intelligence. So there’s a lot to get into!

Day to day, what Joe does is this: aligning people, processes and data sets across go-to-market teams as efficiently as possible. Measurement is key here, which Joe would have been familiar with, coming to RevOps through a sales background. But these days almost everything can be measured, and it’s something that extends to almost every role within an organisation.

Joe takes us through what makes a salesperson great - chief among his top qualities is knowing how to listen. There might be a perception that sales is all about talking “at” the customer, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Active listening skills, genuine curiosity and a high emotional intelligence will all make someone a better salesperson than simply the ability to do a really good pitch. Joe also lets us know that you don’t always have to be a “yes-man”. There will always be missing features, and customers that aren’t satisfied. While the instinct can be to get defensive, sometimes the smartest choice is to be honest and upfront about what it is you’re willing to offer, and go from there.

Reach out to Joe here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-batten/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We’re delighted to welcome Tejas Kumar back to the Fireside podcast! Tejas is a particularly relevant guest for us, as he takes us behind the scenes of his own wonderful podcast - ConTejas Code. We had Tejas on the podcast last year, and we were excited to hear about all the new developments for him in the last year.

Tejas believes that when it comes to AI, it’s increasingly obvious that some developments are inevitable, and the sooner we lean into that fact, and start to work with the technology, rather than against it, we can unlock a lot of time and energy that is currently tied up in simple, yet time-consuming tasks.

He takes us into his process as a podcaster. The way Tejas describes it sounds like a breeze, he sits down, talks to a guest, then uploads everything. There’s more to be done, of course, but day to day the outlines, scheduling and transcripts are all taken care of by AI. This is a perfect example of what AI can do for us when we embrace it. Add to that - it’s podcasting! The stakes are relatively low when compared to other potential AI integrations in, let’s say, the medical field for example. If your AI misspells a word, no one gets sued - or at least we don’t think anyone’s tried that yet.

These adaptations Tejas has made have allowed him to focus on the very part of his job as a host that makes it interesting, and fun - hosting!

We get into the nature of podcasting, and how efficient it can be as a place to create content. If you have a thirty minute podcast, then you have three or four clips that you can take from that. If your podcast has video, those clips can now become shorts, or reels, and you’ve opened up a whole new element to it that fits within your existing structure.

Tejas has a deep admiration for his guests, and this is clear in the way he discusses them - there’s a reason that ConTejas Code episodes are two hours long each, he has a burning curiosity about people, and a desire to connect that is clear even when he’s on the other side of the table.

For any would-be podcasters out there, this episode - and Tejas in general - might be a good place to start when looking for inspiration both practically, and ideologically.

Reach out to Tejas here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejasq/

Check out Tejas' website: https://tej.as/

Listen to the ConTejas Code podcast: https://shows.acast.com/contejas-code

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: http://www.devrelmeetup.com

It's an exciting episode today, for everyone we’re sure, but particularly for Richard, as today’s guest is none other than Peter Bryant, the Founder of RimuHosting, and something of a personal hero of Richard’s.

Richard in fact, was a client of RimuHosting, and he still recalls that what first attracted him to the service was their friendly attitude to developers. Peter goes into RimuHosting’s origins and tells us all about his initial vision for the company and how they've managed to maintain that vision for all these years.

As a developer working for a startup in Washington, Peter felt the entrepreneur itch. He saw a gap to fill, and inspired by those around him, he made the jump and founded RimuHosting. Back in the early 2000’s, data space was scarce on the ground, and this was something Peter knew needed to change.

Despite the lack of Zoom at the time, Peter successfully launched RimuHosting in his home country of New Zealand, defying predominant business advice to “go local” before expanding. He knew that the market for what he was offering was further afield, and if he wanted them to get on board, he’d have to start making a lot of calls.

Today RimuHosting prides itself on its customer retention rates. As Peter puts it, it's a good sign when your customers forget you exist - it means you’re doing your job very very well. Despite this, they still manage to remain customer-facing, and with consolidation swallowing up independent hosting services left and right, RimuHosting is an example to all, of the quality and worthiness of independent companies.

Reach out to Peter here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterbryant/

Check out RimuHosting: https://rimuhosting.com/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're speaking with Jack Coldrick, the Senior Technical Partner Manager at Personio. Jack joins us to talk about what goes into managing an app marketplace and how his background as a solutions engineer may have set him up for success.

So why does Personio have an app marketplace? Well it's simple - Jack tells us that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, they'd rather divide and conquer. Personio supplies all the tools needed to support HR processes within businesses. The space for HR support technologies has expanded massively in recent years, meaning many people are at work in the same fields.

Personio has created a place where people can connect and collaborate on technologies that complement each other. They operate at the late stage of these products, where most of the work has been done, and a lot of the time, what's needed is a final push for an acceptance into the App Store.

Jack talks to us about the importance of documentation. As he puts it, you can have the best integration in the world, but if the developers can't make sense of it, things tend to go downhill. Usability, and user experience is key at Personio, and Jack tells us how this has helped significantly in avoiding the dreaded 'churn' that can be a real problem for SaaS companies.

We were delighted to have Jack on, and can't wait for you to hear our chat with him!

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Michiel Mulders is a wonderful example of a creative developer, driven to share knowledge and committed to quality documentation. He delivers a module on documentation and technical writing at DevRel University, free online course dedicated to Web3 DevRel.

In this episode, Richard and Michiel have a thorough exploration of documentation philosophies, approaches, tools and analytics for content engagement. Listen up here, understand the real benefits of paying attention to your documentation creation and its use.

Lots of food for thought here, but also practical steps and proven tools described to help get you started on your overdue Documentation Improvement Project!

Reach out to Michiel here : https://www.linkedin.com/in/michielmulders/

and find out about DevRel Uni here: https://www.devreluni.com/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Please enjoy this chat from last year with Carter Rabasa!

Carter Rabasa is Head of Developer Relations at Courier and joins Richard in this Fireside with Voxgig chat. This starts as a history of developer relations, but exposes a question, a gap; who were the devrel leaders in the API/cloud era? The activity of developer relations as it is recognised today could be argued to have begun from 2010 onwards and perhaps GitHub is the genesis of this stage.

They also clearly emphasise the need for empathy and how to harness that superpower communicating in both directions – to developers about a product and from users back to product and technical teams.

Let’s get personal. How do you understand your role and performance as a developer relations professional? Maybe it actually starts with your company and not with you! And it should involve some awareness about what your company is building and trying to achieve.

Reach out to Carter via LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carterrabasa/

https://www.courier.com/

CascadiaJS Fest can be explored at this website https://2022.cascadiajs.com/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:

https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com