Fireside with Voxgig

On this episode of the podcast Richard speaks to Wesley Faulkner. You may have heard Wesley described as the philosopher of DevRel, and true to his moniker, he brings the deep questions with him to this chat. The nuts and bolts of tech is all very interesting, but equally important to the success of DevRel is the ability to step back and take in the big picture. Wesley has us covered in this department.

We get straight into one of the biggest issues DevRel has faced in 2023: layoffs. We’ve talked about it a lot this year, which isn’t surprising considering the almost fifteen per cent cut in DevRel jobs. It’s not something we haven’t been through before, but it still has quite the effect on morale. Wesley discusses this practice of “trimming the fat” that is beloved by CFOs in times of high interest rates. And we can see why. On the surface, it’s simple - sure, you lose a few talented people, but you also lose those pesky salary payments that have been weighing down the budget.

But in these situations we must ask ourselves why DevRel is seen as such an easy target. As Richard tells Wesley, he’s often wondered why DevRel must spend so much time justifying its existence, but Marketing and Sales and Customer Service departments don’t have to.

According to Wesley, what DevRel needs is to make the PR machine work for us. When the people at the Harvard Business Review, and other publications decide to write about us, others will follow. We can see where he’s coming from. Tech people are like magpies, they like to collect shiny things. Whatever's cool, whatever’s trending. So if there are any celebrity publicists out there looking for a new client, I think DevRel might just need your help.

Reach out to Wesley here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley83/

Check out Wesley’s podcast: https://www.justworktogether.com/podcast-season-2/episode-1

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

This is another career guidance episode! Julia has a background in law, marketing and now is a successful developer relations guru. Julia generously shares her journey to DevRel in an accessible chat and with an achievable pathway. But be prepared to commit time and effort to community building.

According to Julia Furst Morgado, if you work in DevRel, you need to be able to code. And Julia defends her position on this. How can you understand the product? How can you explain it? How can you create demos? While you might not need to be a software engineer, you do need an understanding of code and a willingness to keep learning and developing.

This theme of continuous learning comes out time and again in this Fireside with Voxgig podcast episode with Julia. Her ambition and work ethic is an inspiration – but they are also motivational as her efforts have paid off in her career and continue to reap results in her amazing ability to build communities.

A wonderful conversation and chance to listen to an honest discussion of DevRel as a career.

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

This time we dip back in to the recent archives and repeat the conversation with Daniel Bryant, who has got Richard into a lot more conferences than he cares to admit. Daniel is a self described technical storyteller and is a news manager at InfoQ. At the time of the interview last year, Daniel was head of DevRel at Ambassador Labs. Daniel was pretty much there from the start and has had the experience of building an integrated developer relations function inside a company that works really well with all the other functions within the company.

But we start the discussion with the banal: swag, the place of swag in the modern developer conference. A question of great importance for your times. Where does one get T-Shirts if not as swag?!

Richard and Daniel then get a little philosophical, because the word community has come to mean a great may tings and almost nothing now. And what does it mean to have a developer community, and what does the word community mean in that context? Daniel talks about why he prefers the word ecosystem.

Finally, they talk about product-led growth and how creating the right operational structures, and in particular, working really well with your data science team, can be super effective at making the whole organization work together functionally.

Reach out to Daniel via LinkediN here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbryantuk/

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 of the podcast we’ve got Niall Cusack, Co-Founder and CTO of Outcaster, to chat with us about the problem of ‘posting-fatigue’; having to post essentially the same messaging to a slew of social channels, and individually tracking each of them to measure engagement. It’s a problem that plagues DevRel and tech companies, as well as just about any business that has a social media presence. So what can we do about it?

Well, this is where Outcaster comes in. It’s a platform that allows individuals and companies to create progressive web apps that will collate their content into a one-stop-shop. This allows you to curate all of your content directly, rather than having to tailor all different messaging for all different channels. This is music to our ears here at Voxgig, as like many startups, we face this problem too!

If your job involves anything to do with DevRel, you’ll know that part of the brief is not only creating content, but getting it out there to the right eyeballs. And sure, there are services that let you post to multiple channels at once, but you still have to track all of those channels. Outcaster removes the burden of this task.

Niall tells us a little about his history, from developer, to startup employee, to startup co-founder. He talks about the inevitability of audience loss when switching platforms (it’s not you, it’s just the system), but how this might not always be a bad thing. While audience loss seems like a setback, it also gives you an opportunity to focus more on the members that you’ve retained, and pour the support they’ve given you back into the community.

This was a fascinating discussion that will ring true for all the multi-channel posting people out there. If you want to know more, just remember to follow @Voxgig on Twitter… or Mastodon… or LinkedIn… oh dear.

Reach out to Niall here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallcusack/

Check out Outcaster here:‍ https://twitter.com/Outcaster_io

Check out Aaron Francis

https://www.youtube.com/@aarondfrancis

DevRelCon, check out Snyk's measurement talk: https://developerrelations.com/management/building-resiliency-into-your-devrel-program

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

So many good reasons to dip in to the archive and bring this podcast episode with Debbie Forster back to the top of the list. One reason is to promote again the work of Tech Talent Charter.

In this episode, Richard sits down with Debbie Forster, CEO of the Tech Talent Charter. Debbie is an American who has lived in England for over 30 years. Her fascinating career is full of twists and turns, from being a head teacher to her current high-profile role. She tells Richard about her eventful journey, and explains how all her experiences have influenced her public speaking and have helped her create her career.

Debbie gives us her insights into why it’s important to always bring yourself into your performance, and how to deal with and learn from negative speaking experiences. She goes through an interesting history of diversity (or lack of it) in tech and explains why transparency around this issue is so important.

All of this ties in with the Tech Talent Charter, a UK-based initiative that drives organizations to commit a set of undertakings that aim to deliver greater diversity in the tech workforce (Voxgig has taken the pledge, as have many other tech companies).

And Debbie's background as a teacher and her determination to help others is another reason to bring this episode back to the top of the list. It's timely. Education is a thread that connects the two speakers at the next DevRel meetup, details below.

Reach out to Debbie here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/forsterdebbie/

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've got Sebastian Witalec from Weaviate to chat to us about his work at the company and his role as head of DevRel. Weaviate is rather popular in the AI space. It's an open source vector database that allows you to store data and vector embeddings from machine learning models. It's similar to putting information on an XY plane. Similar data points will have similar coordinates. This makes it easier to organise and use your data.

We won't get too technical in this description, but safe to say Richard ensures that all the nerdy questions are answered during the episode. So Weaviate is a database; does this mean it's similar to the document stores of fifteen years ago? Well funnily enough, Sebastian's previous role to this one was DevRel at MongoDB.

A year and a half ago, he met the CEO of Weaviate and had that lightbulb moment. He knew that this was a brand new way of doing data storage. So he jumped to Weaviate, and sure enough, a year and a half later, vector databases are all anyone is talking about, and Sebastian gets to be at the forefront of it.

One of the most important things to Weaviate, and Sebastian personally, is joy. They want to not only create with it, but for people to experience it when they use Weaviate to build. They want their developers to take joy in their work and they believe that their wider community should be just as important as their customers. This is a really special perspective to have, and we're so glad Sebastian decided to join us for this discussion.

Reach out to Sebastian here: https://dk.linkedin.com/in/sebawita

Check out Weaviate’s services here:‍ https://weaviate.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

Today we’re joined by Ethan Lewis and Simon Cheng, CTO and DevRel of Vaunt.dev for a discussion on how their work enables individuals and companies to nurture their open source communities. Vaunt is a SaaS tool that was built on a key ethos: saying thank you. It’s no secret that thanking people for their work creates a rewarding environment where they feel encouraged to continue making that work. Or is it?

The treatment of developers can often communicate the opposite message. Instead of thanks, hard work is often rewarded with requests for measurement and insights into revenue growth in proportion to contributions. In other words - if you want a seat at the table, you have to earn your dinner. Simon and Ethan knew that if they could use Vaunt to foster a different attitude towards developers, then they would be able to make a real difference in the open source world.

Ethan and Simon reveal that a huge part of their desire to build this service, and eventually product, was their own encounters with the problems faced by open source developers. One of those problems is that open source community building, as valuable as it is, is time consuming. And it often involves a great deal of trial and error; throwing things at the wall until they stick. Vaunt’s goal is to streamline these processes into a more efficient set of steps.

They also speak on what they believe is missing from GitHub, and how having developers on your side is an asset that won’t be going out of style anytime soon.

Reach out to Ethan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elewis787/

And Simon here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoncheng-kc/

Check out Vaunt.dev’s services here:‍ https://vaunt.dev/

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

Don’t you just love a familiar face? We certainly do here on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, as we’ve got another guest coming back for a catch-up interview! Sandy Dunlop is a mythology expert and brand identity consultant. He helps brands to define their identity with the help of ancient myths and legends.

In his last appearance on the podcast, he told us about the power of storytelling. This time, he brings us some fascinating insights on how ancient Irish communities mirror the modern advent of Developer Relations. It might seem like a jump, but this discussion is full of amazing a-ha moments of recognising connections between these two worlds!

It all starts with the oral tradition. We can already see the connection here with meetups and conferences. The ancient Irish communities relied on storytelling to bond and gather socially, but also to pass on important messages to their community and their descendants. How do you make sure a message gets passed around? You write it in the format of an exciting story. As Sandy points out, the people in a community, even today, with the most respect, are not always the people in power. Often they are the people who speak directly with the community, who listen to them and actively provide resources. In fact the modern developer advocate may not be so different from the ancient bard with their harp, singing ballads of battles and romances.

This is somewhat of a break from our usual discussions here at the Voxgig podcast, but in a way it's one of the most insightful and apt discussions we’ve had yet. This is a special one, be sure not to miss it:

Reach out to Sandy here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-dunlop-7637101/

Check out Sandy’s services here: https://www.alexanderdunlop.ie/

Or here: https://bardmythologies.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

Manifesting things in physical space – this one is for the makers!

Matthias and Richard discuss the genesis of Flux.ai, which was created to help democratise hardware design following the example of software development. The Flux.ai website is impressive and is a testament to the progress Flux have made since the very early days when they had to communicate to their first project users and manage expectations!

There’s also a very good discussion on the overnight success which was a decade in the making. Building their community, giving their community updates and sharing their progress, using Slack channels; this is a lesson in pragmatism. Go where your users are. But there’s also a frustration about the costs involved with Slack and the view (which is changing) that Discord is blocked by corporates.

The conversation takes in the usefulness of LLMs for searching and querying the super detailed specifications documentations for hardware designers. And they have an amazing view of component availability globally, a real-time index.

This is a wonderful episode to get us thinking about the progress in hardware design, 3D printing and motivating us to think about embracing our inner maker!

Reach out to Matthias here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-wagner-5220b047/

And Flux.ai can be explored here: https://www.flux.ai/p

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