Amara Graham has spoken at several DevRelCons (Success metrics as narratives, One size doesn’t fit all, Building your internal army) but what is her approach to developer relations?
Let’s find out with the return of our quick fire interview series Meet the Developer Advocate.
Tell me about your role at Camunda
Amara: I’m the Head of Developer Experience at Camunda, focused on developer enablement in documentation, contributor experience, and onboarding.
What brought you to this point in your career?
Amara: I started my career in Developer Relations as a Community Manager for a small open source project at Intel with the idea that I would use that position as a bridge from enterprise web application development into developer advocacy. I wanted to broaden my reach from just working internally to a larger, external developer community and the enterprise architect I worked with suggested I would be a good fit for dev rel. I’ve since wanted to grow my strategic and people management skills by finding a Director of Developer Relations role and more recently the Head of Developer Experience role.
How does dev rel work at Camunda?
Amara: Camunda runs a three pillar approach representing community, developer advocacy, and developer experience. We have developer advocates representing particular products or technologies and folks working in the community space, including a community manager and a technical community builder. I’m also actively building out my Developer Experience team!
What’s your dev rel philosophy?
Amara: Transparency! I love learning in public and I’m constantly evaluating my content to make sure I’m helping the developers I’m intending to reach. If something is confusing to me, I blog about it and hope that it saves the next person some time and grief.
What do you see as the big challenges for dev rel right now?
Amara: Developers have seen this elevated status in the decision making process in recent years, causing dev rel to grow and evolve rapidly. One of the biggest challenges for dev rel right now is communicating metrics across business units and the company. Using metrics that work for one company, technology, or team may not fit with your situation. I think we still need to realize that dev rel is new and we are still learning how best to articulate a successful dev rel program.
What are you hopeful about?
Amara: I’m an optimistic person, so I’m hopeful about a lot of things. I’m hopeful that dev rel continues to be an attractive and growing career point or path for folks in tech. Doesn’t matter how you get here, or how long you stay, just that you contribute to the awesomeness that is dev rel!
If you’d like to nominate someone to feature in this Meet the Developer Advocate, get in touch!