Fireside with Voxgig

At this time of the year, evergreen trees and plants are brought indoors as we cling to reminders of freshness and hope for freshness to return in the spring. Here's an evergreen podcast episode on developer relations.

Suze Shardlow is a freelancer with the strategic thinking your organisation needs if its going to develop and implement developer relations as a key business function. At the time of recording, Suze was Developer Community Manager with Redis, but has since moved to consultancy as a marketer, coder, published tech author, speaker and event emcee! In this conversation Suze offers really great insight in to the relationship between sales and DevRel and how you have to be really careful in your organisation not to position DevRel as just another part of the sales funnel because nothing turns off developers and damages a community of developers as trying to sell to them directly! We also discover how Suze got started in public speaking and the differences she sees between delivering a talk at an event and acting as emcee. Listen to this chat to get a very good understanding of how your organisation could think about DevRel and its DevRel strategy.

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

When we relaunched the Fireside with Voxgig podcast over a year ago, Caelen King was one of our first guests and even then, it was obvious there were tech layoffs happening. But Caelen gives great advice to non-tech founders and leaders about hiring - no matter what the market dynamics may be.

So we're publishing this again for new listeners to the podcast. Richard and Caelen talk specifically about how non-technical founders can find developers, build their MVP and then scale that MVP. Caelen is an angel and startup adviser, and a founder. His previous startup, WhatClinc.com, was an online marketplace for health services, and as he'll tell you himself in this podcast, that is probably one of the most difficult types of business models to make work.

We learn from Caelen how to manage the development of your technology when you are a non-technical founder. And there are two key lessons that come from this podcast, the first being, don't build anything and the second being that an early-stage startup should think about its positioning with respect to hiring software developers, in the same way that it should think about its positioning when it comes to product. As a startup, you are always selling. The most effective way to sell is to sell to a niche.

Reach out to Caelen here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caelenking/

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 provides 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

Diversity and inclusion have been firmly in the “could do better” section of The tech industry’s report card for quite a few years now. But this episode’s guest, Furkan Karayel is determined to change that. This is the second time we’ve had Furkan on the show, and we are delighted to welcome her back for an update and further insight into her endeavours.

Furkan is an ex-software engineer who pivoted to the diversity and inclusion industry. Her journey began fifteen years ago at an international company, where she took note of the gender disparity that was prevalent. She is now the founder of Diversein, where they provide companies with action based solutions to their diversity and inclusion problems.

She speaks to us about the business side of diversity and inclusion. If companies have a problem with their environment, it can lead to major retention problems, which tend to be pretty expensive. Cutting this down by helping companies create welcoming and fulfilling environments for all of their employees is one of the main ways Diversein’s solutions can help companies shave down their expenses.

To add to this impressive list, Furkan is also an author, having released her acclaimed book “Inclusive Intelligence”. If you like this episode, that’s where you can find more of Furkan’s words and advice.

Reach out to Furkan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karayelfurkan/

Check out Diversein: https://www.diversein.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

In this episode, we’re taking a break from our artistic stint of authors and podcast hosts, and moving back into solid DevRel territory with our guest 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

Two podcasters go head to head in this episode, as we invite Patrick Akil, host of Beyond Coding to speak with Richard about his personal journey and insights into the art of podcasting. Patrick works in the software development unit at Xebia, and he talks about how their value of knowledge sharing led to their desire to support a podcast. When he heard about it, Patrick jumped at the opportunity.

This episode will be invaluable to anyone thinking of starting that podcast they’ve been thinking about, whether they work within DevRel or not. Patrick runs us through some of his initial pitfalls, as well as giving plenty of reassurances as to how much he, and all podcast hosts, improve over time. It’s a learn-on-the-job kind of business, this podcasting thing, something Richard knows all too well.

One of the things Patrick highlights is the importance of quality. If you keep improving your quality (both in terms of literal sound quality, and the quality of your content) then you can also improve the quality of your guests. Quality of guests is something important to consider. It’s a point we frequently return to in DevRel discussions - quality over quantity. Twenty committed listeners are generally better than fifty listeners with a monthly turnover rate of a hundred per cent.

Patrick doesn’t come from any kind of performing background, and he explains how the ability to be confident and articulate in the face of nerves was an ability he honed over time. Things that would have seemed impossible to his younger self, are things he now completes with ease. This one is full of valuable tidbits, whether you’re a budding podcaster, or just want a look behind the sound booth curtain.

Reach out to Patrick here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-akil/

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

On this episode, we’re joined by developer advocate Christina Monti. Christina is the senior technical product manager for PayPal, and she brings us not just her expertise, but also an insight into why she chooses to centre empathy in her work with developers.

Christina joins our list of guests from a slightly unconventional background. Christina came to DevRel through a career in finance, and she’s quickly become one to watch. Speaking on the topic of DevRel careers, she has three words: just do it. You don’t need permission to start working as a DevRel - and that work may look very different from person to person.

Part of Christina’s job is empowering developers to take steps into creating educational content through potentially unfamiliar mediums, and as you can imagine, this role requires a lot of patience and empathy. Luckily, empathy happens to be one of Christina’s top priorities, and she dives into exactly why this value has served her so well.

Lastly, she goes into the importance of believing in the projects that you work on, and how this is equally as true for developers as it is for DevRels. She feels that when most of the developers working on a product freely admit that they wouldn’t use the product themselves, you’ve got a big problem - and a lot of work to do.

Reach out to Christina here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-monti-4a491685/

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 bring you a repeat of Alvin Bryan's conversation with Richard for a few reasons. Alvin is Developer Advocate with Contentful, and they came on board several months ago as sponsors of the Dublin DevRel Meetup we organise. (Join us next Wednesday, link below!). Their support of the meetup makes a lot of sense as you listen to Alvin discuss meetups and the challenges around creating them. And in the run up to next Wednesday's online meetup, where we'll have a discussion on DevRel careers and job hunting, Alvin's description of the 3 Cs of DevRel and his analysis of the role is well worth listening to again.

Especially if you're a developer, but you feel you need a change of role, but not industry. In this episode we talk to Alvin Bryan, Developer Advocate at Contentful and a coach at Codebar, a really interesting initiative to help people learning to code and starting out in various languages. Alvin generously and openly walks us through how he moved from being a frontend developer to his current role. We talk about when organisations just don't get the value of developer community building and supporting meetups, something he and Contentful very much have in their plans!

Listen to hear about the 3 Cs of DevRel, and a little frustration at our own industry for our perhaps lack of attention to details when it comes to SDKs.

Reach out to Alvin here https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvin-bryan/

Learn more about Contentful here https://www.contentful.com/

And learn more about Codebar here https://www.codebar.io/

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

Marc Laventure is the CEO and Co-Founder of Scalar and he joins us for a chat about API documentation, startups and accessibility. He also happens to be the latest guest whose technical background originates in hardware before morphing into product development.

Scalar is a service that allows you to document, discover and test APIs, which once again begs the question - is Fireside really just a podcast, or is it a way for Richard to discover services that will make his life as a developer easier? We may never know the answer. But when it comes to Scalar, Marc tells us of his very simple mission behind the company: making APIs as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible.

It started the way all good startups do, the founders realise that they all have the same frustration, (in this case it was badly documented APIs) and they set out to do something about it. After all, as Richard points out, good documentation can mean the difference between a developer wanting to adopt the service or not.

We should mention, that as impressive as all of this sounds, Scalar only launched a short month ago, though in that time they’ve amassed over a thousand stars on GitHub, as well as a great deal of positive early feedback. What’s clear from this chat is that we need to get Marc back on in a year to update us on this crazy journey he’s on.

Reach out to Marc here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-laventure-75618a63/

Check out Scalar: https://docs.scalar.com/swagger-editor

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 joined for this episode by the wonderful Kelly M. She’s the founder and Executive Director of Sweet Trades, a non-profit focused on helping individuals land living wage jobs, a Senior Software Engineer at a fortune 100 company, and a Data Scientist at a U.S. National Lab. So you can see why we were excited to book her in for a chat.

Kelly switched into DevRel from technical writing, but before all of that she got a degree in left-handed puppetry. Well, not really. She jokes that it would have been just as useful as her actual degree, which was in HR. Kelly is a huge advocate for following your own path, and believes that a colourful background can only come to serve you well in DevRel.

She speaks about how DevRel, while holistic in a sense, also needs to be practical. There comes a time when DevRel’s need to put on their business hats, especially in the current climate. Metrics aren’t everyone’s favourite thing, but Kelly believes that knowing the value you add to a company will not only increase your confidence, but genuinely help you with job security.

She also tells us about her current project, her non-profit, Sweet Trades. Kelly became attracted to tech initially for the reason a lot of people do: adequate compensation. But she went on to learn that tech doesn’t have to be the bastion of a financially secure career. Many roles in various trades can be higher earning positions than a lot of tech roles, and Kelly is on a mission to bring light to these roles and make their presence known. Not just to graduates, but to young adults in urban areas that often have even less access to information about these jobs.

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