DevRelCon Deep Dives line-up announced

After seven years of DevRelCon we’ve decided to take a different approach for our first event of 2022. DevRelCon Deep Dives is an online conference covering those topics that crop up later in a person’s DevRel career.

Across May 24th and 25th we have a program of round tables, workshops, and talks from experienced developer relations professionals. You can join the event free, watching wherever you have an internet connection, and also take part iif you join the Discord.

Day 1: round tables and workshops

The traditional conference talk is great as a way of communicating an idea that someone has had the opportunity to think about in depth. But so many DevRel questions are moving targets. That’s why we’re dedicating the first day of DevRelCon Deep Dives to round tables.

So many great conversations happen between people who work in DevRel but often they stay private. The DevRelCon Deep Dives round table sessions will recreate those informed, lively conversations and give everyone a chance to take part via Discord.

Round tables confirmed so far are:

• Developer marketing in practice: Salesforce’s Christie Fidura, Redis’s Suze Shardlow, and WorkOS’s Mahmoud Abdelwahab will discuss the practicalities of developer marketing.
• Managing DevRel teams: DevRel book author Mary Thengvall, Phil “AAAARRRP” Leggetter, and Deepgram’s Michael Jolley will chat about what it takes to manage a DevRel team and how that differs depending on the organisation.
• Is self-service developer onboarding over? Do fraud and security risks make self-service developer onboarding too problematic? Twilio’s Kelley Robinson and Skyflow’s Sean Falconer will discuss.
• Can developer experience and product-led growth co-exist? Daniel Madalisto Phiri will lead this look into how DevRel, developer experience, and PLG can work together.
• Effective champion programs: Orbit’s Erin Mikail Staples will host this round table discussion looking at how to make developer champion programs meaningful for participants and the company.
• Aligning DevRel with your business stakeholders: Practical discussion of how to make sure your DevRel program meets your company’s needs.

So far we have one workshop confirmed:

• Using the Orbit model to demonstrate community value: Bryan Robinson will teach how the Orbit model provides a framework for understanding and reporting the value of your developer community.

All of these sessions are free to attend if you register for the event.

Day 2: talks

For the second day of DevRelCon Deep Dives we’ve selected speakers who’ll address some of the topics that are top of mind for many DevRel leaders right now.

• Visualising DevRel scope and goals: Cherish Santoshi will look at how to use DevRel’s overlaps with other teams to create effective plans and reporting.
• Hedy — creating a gradual programming language: Felienne Hermans is an associate professor at Leiden University. In this talk she’ll share some of her research in developer education and how we can apply that to developer relations.
• Building your community — a person centred approach: During the early stages of the pandemic, Bekah Hawrot Weigel created a friendly developer community called Virtual Coffee. She’ll share the practical lessons of how she built a community of thousands that retained its initial focus.
• What neurodiversity means for DevRel: Wesley Faulkner will walk you through the unique perspectives offered by neurodiversity and how it can help us approach developer education from a new angle.
• How to collaborate with Sales without selling your soul: Sales and DevRel can often feel like worlds apart. Tilde will share their experience of collaborating with Twilio’s Sales team to create hackathons for customers while remaining true to what developers needs.
• Can pedagogy research help DevRel professionals train and support others in programming? As a research scientist at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Jane Waite’s role is to find evidence for how best to teach developers. She’ll share her findings in this talk and advise on how to apply them to DevRel.
• Harm reduction for DevRel teams: Developer relations is a public role, which can mean opening yourself to some unpleasant behaviour. Here Knut Melvaer shares practical advice on how to reduce the potential for harm.
• What investors want from your DevRel program: VC Ashley Smith will chat about and take questions on what venture capitalists and other investors want from developer relations, in particular as the macro environment becomes choppier.
• What the CEO wants from your DevRel program: Codesee founder and CEO Shanea Leven will share what a start-up CEO is looking for from developer relations and how you can make sure your program aligns.

Thank you to our sponsors

DevRelCon Deep Dives is free to attend. Just sign up and we’d love to see you there! We’re able to make this event free of charge thanks to the support of our sponsors:

• Presenting Partner: Orbit
• Platinum: Peritus.ai and WorkOS
• Gold: GitHub and Google

We look forward to seeing you in the Discord and the livestream at DevRelCon Deep Dives. Find the schedule on the event website.