Fireside with Voxgig

Thank you all so much for bearing with us while we finish recording a whole collection of new episodes. For now, please enjoy this repeat of Chris Ward's episode from last year.

Technical writing is an essential element of countless products and services. So why is appreciation of it on the decline? Our guest, Chris Ward (or Chris Chinchilla as you may know him), is a talented writer. Not just of technical content, but also of fiction and music! He’s here to kick our writing brains into gear with a simple piece of advice: just start. Richard agrees that he needs to hear this as much as our listeners and that it’s one of the biggest hurdles for people who want to write - sitting down and actually doing it.

A lot of people in DevRel either write, or think about getting into writing. So how do you move from the group of people who want to, to the group of people who do? And why would you want to do it in the first place? There are many reasons. Whether you joined a team for your code and now you’re expected to write an eloquent newsletter on the uses of that code, or you’d like to write a book on your specialist subject to promote your expertise in it. Technical writing is a skill with endless applications. Writing a book for example, can be a fun challenge, as well as an asset you refer back to for years to come. Notice how we didn’t put “to make eye-watering profits” on that list. Yeah. That’s the first lesson in writing books, and Chris tells us all about it. The respect (and money) given to technical writers isn’t what it once was. And yet the services they provide are more relevant than ever.

There’s also the small factor that when you finally publish your book, you’re going to be talking about the contents of it for months and possibly years to come. So you’d better make sure the subject matter is one that you won’t easily get sick of (Chris may be speaking from experience on this one). Chris is also a musician, and he speaks about the connections between music and coding, how pattern recognition makes these two a lot more similar than you might think. And Richard makes Chris’s day by bringing up OctaMED, a long-forgotten Amiga music programme that they both lost hours to back in the day. How far they’ve come!

Reach out to Chris here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrischinchilla/

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'll be back next week with brand new episodes, but for today, we hope you enjoy this episode from last year, where we spoke to Marino Wijay:

Here at the Voxgig podcast we’ve decided that we’re sick of talking about DevRel all the time. So we’ve decided to switch it up with something completely different for this episode - DevOps! Marino Wijay joins Richard to talk about operator relations, and his work for solo.io as a developer advocate. Solo helps companies unite their services into functional applications using Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies. So what’s Marino’s role? To make sure developers only have one thing to worry about: developing! All the explaining and talking to people, well that’s his job - it’s why he’s on the podcast.

As Richard has lamented before, Marino and Solo’s services would have been invaluable to him back in the days of combing through Kubernetes by hand. But what about their DevRel? Richard has known DevRel to be introduced to companies via CEOs or even investors, but it was Marino who was the major force in introducing DevRel to Solo. He now has two other team members working with him. He speaks about his journey of convincing colleagues to give this whole “developer relations” thing a try. He was the patient zero who “infected” Solo with DevRel and now it has successfully spread throughout the entire company.

He explains why he believes Kubernetes won out over Docker. Apparently a lack of observability (which stunts improvements) can be a real nail in the coffin. Docker used DevOps to garner early adoption, but wasn’t able to keep up with the demand of its customer base, allowing someone else to sweep in and offer what they couldn’t. Along that line, he and Richard explore the recent announcement from Terraform, regarding their decision to pare back their open source offerings. Is this another death knell, or a savvy decision that will give them a competitive edge? Tune in to hear Marino’s thoughts!

Solo https://www.solo.io/

Reach out to Marino here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwijay/

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, we're looking back on the time we chatted with Marc Laventure last year, 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

Today we're revisiting this career guidance episode from last year! 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

When it comes to Developer Relations, today’s guest believes the word “developer” comes first in that label for a reason. We’re speaking to Philipp Krenn, Head of DveRel and developer Advocacy at Elastic, and he’s here to chat to us about the work he and his 20 person DevRel team are currently doing.

Philipp discusses the adjustment to meetups after covid, and how factors such as distance can affect cultural differences in this realm. As Europeans we often forget that while we can be in another country in an hour, those in America face a far lengthier journey to the average in-person conference. This means what’s on offer is going to have to be good.

He chats to Richard about the place of DevRel under the company system. Experience has shown us that DevRel under marketing is never really a perfect fit. It’s like trying to combine two countries that have completely different currencies. Sure, they both use money, but that’s about where the similarities end.

Lastly, he takes us through his history, and how simply saying yes to interesting opportunities has taken him on a path that he could never have predicted, but wouldn't have any other way.

Reach out to Philipp here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippkrenn/

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 talking about bridging the gap between back end development and front end experience. Our guest is Tushar Mathur, and he's the Founder and CEO of Tailcall, an open-source platform for building GraphQL APIs on existing endpoints.

As you might imagine, we take the opportunity to ask Tushar about the ever expanding API sprawl currently going on. He believes that we should perhaps abandon the holistic approach to the problem, for a solution more grounded in engineering.

We also dive into the challenges of scaling as a company, and how success can sometimes make demands if you're not sure you can meet. A good problem to have, but a very real one nonetheless.

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 to Jake Ward, Co-Founder and CEO of Data Protocol. Data Protocol is a developer engagement and support platform that hosts and produces high quality video content to help companies effectively communicate to developers.

We all know that interactive and video content has the power to teach and engage people in a way that written documentation struggles with, and this reality is what has formed the basis for Jake and his team to go about making video content accessible for everyone. Beyond that, it reduces the need for individuals to go digging through Youtube videos from 2009 to find the resources they need to use a service.

Jake also chats with us about the bigger DevRel picture. Can the recent divestment in DevRel be attributed perhaps to its overlap with marketing as a whole? And if measurement is the key to securing our future, are we approaching it with the right strategy?

On empathy, Jake stresses that it’s hard to see empathy standards held up while DevRel sits under the marketing umbrella, again raising the question of whether that umbrella is quite the right place for it.

Reach out to Jake here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmward/

Check out Data Protocol here: https://dataprotocol.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

AI and LLMs specifically have revolutionised the world of marketing. But will the revolution be restricted to the workplace, or should we start preparing our techpocalypse survival bunkers now? Today’s wonderful guest, Maryrose Lyons, doesn't think we’re quite there yet.

Maryrose is the Founder of AI Institute, and she joins us for a chat about her journey, the rise of marketing and how AI can free up time for us to spend being a bit more human.

AI Institute is Maryrose’s brainchild, and their goal is to make AI accessible to specific business people looking to incorporate it into their work practices. What we love about this model is the cohort-based element to it. Marketing people get a chance to learn from marketers, lawyers from lawyers, etc.

Before her current venture, Maryrose spent many years as a successful marketer, and she chats to us about how marketing has changed over the years, and how an increasingly imbalanced playing field means that unfortunately, formulas have become important than creativity for the little guy.

Reach out to Maryrose here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryroselyons-aispeaker/

Check out AI Institute here: https://www.instituteofaistudies.com/about-ai-institute

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 all have that one piece of information that is absolutely key to us doing our jobs. Yet for many of us, accessing this piece of information involves manually searching a keyword in either your email or a slack channel to find the one message from 2 years ago where it was mentioned. Today’s guest is here to let us know that there actually might be a slightly better way of internally relaying information.

David Tuite is the Founder of Roadie, a Backstage based hosting and services platform that helps developers in large organisations answer basic questions about the software being used within the teams around them.

David’s inspiration with Roadie is clear, as he himself had the experience of working within a large company, and struggling to explain what the teams around him were doing.

According to David, many companies - even those with hundreds of employees, are still using ever-inflating spreadsheets to pass information internally. This imperfect system inevitably leads to hours of time slack-scrolling, attempting to figure what the hell any of it means.

But as it turns out, David discovered that if you make it really easy for your software engineers to write code, they’ll write a lot more code! Additionally, he takes us through the history of Backstage, and its journey from internal service to open source.

Reach out to David here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtuite/

Check out Roadie here: https://roadie.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 chatting with the head of Open Source at Sentry, Chad Whitacre. Everyone knows that once a startup begins to make the move from garage band to stadium tour, they’re going to need some investors. But how do we bridge the gap between them?

Chad’s background as a developer has undoubtedly contributed to his talent for communicating with developers in his current role. But beyond that, he and the whole Sentry team have slightly bigger ambitions in mind for the future.

They have begun work on something they call the Open Source Pledge, and Chad breaks down for us exactly what this entails, and how it will incentivise organisations to prioritise contributing to the open source community in the same way they prioritise profits.

He also takes us through the history of Sentry, and how their roots in the open source community have cemented their commitment to ensuring its continued survival. If you’re passionate about open source, and seeing maintainers get their dues, then you’ll want to hear this.

Reach out to Chad here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadwhitacre/

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