Individual Contributor’s Guide to DevRel Crisis Management

Jessica Garson: Thanks so much. How's it going? How's everyone doing? Awesome. So yeah, this is the individual contributor's guide to crisis management.

Next slide, please. So today, I'm going to be talking about how to handle uncertain times with competence. As DevRel, we often find ourselves in weird situations. We know our products better than anybody else, and that means that we know both the good, the bad, and the ugly. So this talk is about what to do in those uncertain and weird times.

And with the changing state of our industry, things can get weird. And so this talk is one, about how to handle those weird and uncertain times. Next slide, please. So I'm Jessica. I'm currently a senior developer advocate at Elastic.

Next slide, please. And sometime in 2022, I was working for Twitter, and I found myself literally googling this, DevRel Khan, DevRel Crisis individual contributor. I had no idea what to do in that situation. All I could find were talks about being a manager, but I was not a manager. I was an individual contributor.

So next slide, please. And this talk is about kind of those sticky and uncomfortable situations. And it might not be at the same scale as Twitter, but it might be just something weird and off that you're going through. Next slide. And so before I get too deep into this, I stole this from Shai from last year, from his talk about layoffs.

But I hope you never need this talk. I hope you find this talk engaging. I hope you enjoy me as a speaker. I hope that you are not needing of this talk right now. I hope that you never need this talk.

Next slide. So today, we're just gonna be talking about kind of a playbook that I developed for crisis communications while doing DevRel. So I'll talk about what a crisis is, how you to know if it's happening, the everyday crisis versus the more prolonged one, and how to support developers in changing circumstances. And then we'll talk about building resilience. Next slide.

So I found myself kind of going into a routine when I was at Twitter. I had been doing DevRel for a couple of years, and I was very, very comfortable. I loved my job. I knew my communities very well, and I found myself just really happy and kind of in the groove. Next slide, please.

And then one day, we were in the news every single day. I went to a basketball game to kind of escape some of it, and the guy in back of me would not stop talking about the company that I was working for. And I remember just being like, wow. This is really, like, all encompassing. I can't run away from this even if I want to.

Next slide, please. And so you might be wondering, like, what is a crisis? What is that? And so the way that I like to think about it is it's basically the vibes are off. Something's gonna happen.

You don't know what it is, but you know that, like, change is coming. You know that it is that, like, wild and unstable time. Next slide. And so you'd be wondering, like, so, like, I'm an individual contributor. What does that mean for me?

And, the cool thing about Deborah is we work with so many different people. I'm looking at this room right now, and I see people that I have basically, like, coworker level relationships with that I've never worked with. Our job is to be in the community and talk to many different people and get to know them, put ourselves in their shoes, build that empathy. But that means that you are everywhere, and you are talking to so many different people all the time. You're at conferences.

You're at hackathons. You're at meetups. You're online. You're everywhere. And so being disciplined about message is more important in these roles because you you are the face of the company to the developer communities that you represent.

Next slide. So you might be wondering, like, how do I know if I'm in one? Next slide. It is on Hacker News, top of it every day, every single day for a long time. Next slide.

So I was at my parents' house, and I went into, like, our company all hands meeting. And then my dad comes out and starts knocking on the door to talk to me about the meeting. And I was like, what? And he was like, it's being live tweeted by the Washington Post, which was wild. Next slide.

You go to listen to a podcast about breaking up with your parents, and you see a podcast about your company in crisis. Next slide. You get texts all the time. I actually know I got some of these texts from people in this room. I'm sorry.

Next slide. But also, like, this doesn't have to just be those, like, long Twitter type crises. It could just happen. And this happened to me. Actually, I had the slides for this talk made when this happened to me.

Next slide. So I was at All Things Open, which is an open source conference. And I work at Elastic. And we were open source, then we weren't, and now we are again. And I was supposed to be on a panel to talk about how we're finally open source again.

But that morning, real talk, someone made all of our repositories private. So I was about to go on a stage and be like, hi, we're open source again, but we weren't. And my coworker comes and finds me, and he's like, hey, Jess. What's I need to talk to you right now. And I was like, wait.

What? I'm, like, about to go into my, like, zone to prep for my panel, and he was like, no. No. No. We have to talk.

And I looked at my phone, and I had 22 missed Slacks, and I was like, okay. Cool. Yeah. We probably need to talk. What what what's going on?

And he was like, this thing happened. And I was like, okay. Cool. Next line. So the way that I like to kind of approach these situations is by kind of flipping the script a little bit.

So instead of being like, oh my god, this is happening. This sucks. I could be the leader that I wanna see. And that empowers me to kind of make decisions, to own the outcome, and to really gonna be part of it. And so I'm no longer just kind of a victim of what's happening.

I am the leader in that situation. And so I went straight into that mode. Next slide. So the first thing that I did is I actually, like, found some I found a little bit of space. I found a couch at all things open, and I literally just made a crisis communications plan.

So I went through kind of what is happening, what all the different possible outcomes can can be both good and bad, what actions I can take, how will I address what's happening. I decided not to address it, actually, and to just kinda let the panel play out, but I was prepared with sample questions. I actually was even rehearsing parts of them with in just the conversation that people were like, oh my god. This thing's happening. It's on Hacker News.

And I'd be like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would rehearse how they would react to, like, what I was saying. And then from there, I actually kind of thought about, alright.

How can my actions, both good or bad, impact the outcomes? And then I created some talking points. And then I ran it up my leadership chain, talked to communications, made sure that I was in line with their strategy, and I was able to do that. And then I actually went into the bathroom and rehearsed myself talking, like, with a mirror just so that I can make sure that, like, I was as authentic as possible. Because as Angie said, that's our superpower, authenticity.

Next slide. And then what really helped me is taking myself out of the equation for a second. So being like, okay, this thing is happening. Cool. But it's just happening, and I can just kind of just be the best leader that I can be.

Next slide. And so really in that panel, was able to kind of just try my best. And you know what? It actually went pretty well. It was one of my favorite panels that I've been on.

I told somebody what happened, like, right after, and they were like, oh my god. You did not, like, sweat at all, and it was because I had a plan. And so being armed with that plan really helped make everything kind of run smoothly, and nobody knew, except for now you all know. Next slide. And then after, I spent some time kind of evaluating, like, what went well, what didn't go well, what what I learned.

And I actually learned a lot about, like, I got more nervous than I should have been. And now I know that I don't have to be. And I had some time to kind of I actually did a retro with my manager about what happened, and then we were able to actually bring some of the things that we learned along the way to the main blameless postmortem on that, incident. So next slide. And so you might be wondering, what about, like, getting back to, like, working on Twitter?

What about, like, the more sustained, like, oh my god. This is everywhere. I can't run away from it. Everyone's talking to me about this all the time. What about those?

Next slide. So, again, be the leader that you wanna see. And this is gonna be more important because you might be running meetings that you had no business running before. You might be doing a lot of things that you never thought you'd do because all of your coworkers, they're also going through this too. And so this is really important.

Next slide. And so again, the way that I like to think about this is to first off be like, okay. So how do I wanna be seen in this moment? What are those things? And so for me, I want to be seen as authentic.

So my greatest value was authenticity. Then after that, I wanted to be seen as smart and knowledgeable and strategic. So that was intelligence and strategic were the values that I cared about in that moment. And once I knew what my values were, I was able to kind of frame the rest of it off of that. Next slide.

And so the first thing, one of the things I wish I did is cancel all your plans. So if you have things that you are planning on doing, if you're in that more sustained environment of just like, this is happening every day, it's not just one day, it's not just one panel, this is every day, start to take a long hard look at your schedule and be like, okay, cool. Like, what doesn't have to happen? What's going to kind of make what's gonna be the most strategic thing that I can do? Next slide.

So, also, trust me on this one. If you have any at all, any scheduled blog post, any scheduled social media post, anything like that, if you learn one thing from this talk based on my own mistakes, just cancel it. If you are in a weird time and things are unstable, cancel all your social media posts. Just trust me on this one. You don't know how things are gonna play.

You don't know what the lead story is gonna be that day, who the main character of the Internet is gonna be. Cancel. Cancel all your scheduled media posts. Next. So after you kind of have kinda gotten rid of everything you need to get rid of, you're gonna need a plan.

And I actually did not know at the time that this was called a crisis communications plan, but it was. And I actually started talking to my manager about this before he wrote his plan. And I was like, hey, here's what I'm thinking about. Here's all the stuff I don't want to do anymore. Here's what I do want to do.

Here's how I'm going pull my time. And he was like, can I come to New York, which is where I live? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, cool. We'll write the plan together.

So this is actually our whiteboard. And we mapped it all to the funnel. And we spent some time kind of thinking through kind of how we were going to approach strategy, particularly for people in the creative coding community, for the next few months. Next slide. And really, the best way to do this is to kind of look through your existing strategy.

And you're like, okay, cool. So, like, what do I still wanna keep, and what can I just get rid of? And really kind of, like, being really realistic about, like, okay, cool. I do not have to have my video series released, but I do wanna speak at my favorite conference. That's my favorite thing about the year.

Let's do that. We're still gonna sponsor that conference, but maybe we won't do our holiday community meetups. Next slide. And then from here, you really wanna focus on, like, okay. What must happen?

And prioritization is gonna be your best friend here. Next slide. So I do a lot of, like, charts for my own, like, kind of, like, task planning. And so really kind of thinking through kind of urgent versus important. So what's not urgent and not important, you might not wanna do right now.

Next slide. And then also, like, what is the message you're gonna wanna share? And this is gonna be very different from the message that you typically share. Next slide. And then kind of thinking about your audience.

Like, who is your audience? What do they care about? What are they thinking about? And how can you connect with them in this weird, difficult time? And kind of thinking through that really helps you be more strategic and effective.

Next slide. And then also, who is impacted? So PJ was one of my favorite bot makers in the community. And PJ was at GitLab at the time and was doing some really cool bot making work. And we really wanted to kind of, like, show to the bot making community who were making cool Twitter bots that it was okay to still build bots on Twitter even though Elon was saying things like, I can't wait to get rid of all the bots.

And so, you know, that was just kind of like one community that was especially impacted. So PJ and I appeared on many livestreams together. We were supposed to give a talk IRL together. It ended up not happening. Sorry, PJ.

But, you know, that was just one community that was specially impacted by the circumstances. Next slide. And then also, what do you like about your job? I personally love making Twitter bots. So on the days when I was just like, I can't, I just made Twitter bots all day.

I really like OAuth two and standards and things like that. And I wrote one of my favorite tutorials on authentication. It was just something that I loved doing, and it gave me kind of that returning to calm and comfort that I needed. Next line. And then also, just because things are weird, it doesn't mean that you don't have to be creative.

So one of the things that's, like, really, really cool about our jobs is that we can write code, we can be creative, And, you know, you might not have much time in your job. I knew at the end that, like, my days were numbered. So I wrote every blog post that I wanted to write just so that it was, like, out in the world and that, like, the developers who came after me had that to look at. Next slide. And so risk analysis is something that you're going to really want to if you are in this situation, you're going to want to spend a lot of time thinking about what's risky or not.

And you're going get a lot of advice. I know that I was talking to somebody who I think of as one of the greatest leaders in this space. And what she said to me, she was like, hey, no matter what you do, do not speak publicly about this. And I just did not listen to her. I did risk analysis.

I talked to my management chain. I worked with our communications team. I worked with the allies in my company. And we openly had, like, an open town hall forum for Bach creators to talk to us about what they were thinking. And we were able to kind of pass some things to communications and, like, really refine our strategy because of it.

Everybody who knew what they were talking about told me not to do that, told me it was a terrible idea. It was one of my favorite things I've done in my time at Twitter. Next slide. And then I spent a lot of time just kind of thinking about everything I had and, like, the impact versus the effort of it, how much time it was gonna take me because I was busy. And the next slide.

But I added another kind of column to that, and I everything had a risk score. So every activity that I did, I thought about what the risks were. So for, like, writing a blog post amount, a month, that actually had a medium amount of risk because, you know, anytime you do security stuff, there's some risk involved. Hosting an open town hall, very high risk, but it was worth the reward. And answering questions on the forums, low risk, you know, run a business type stuff.

Next. So, I would make these documents before every, like, public event I did. And it was just I would list out. I'd let my anxiety kinda take the wheel for a second. And just I would list out everything that could possibly go wrong.

Next slide. But then I would also try to think about, like, okay, so what's the best possible outcome? What is the best thing that can happen? Next slide. And I would balance kind of the reactive with the proactive.

Next slide. You can't always be in reactive mode. If you are, you're gonna burn out. That's just the way that that this goes. So and your friends and your family, they're gonna be the first to kinda ring the alarm.

My friend, Lizzie, who was at Salesforce at the time, she told me I was burnt out one month into it. And I was like, no, no, no. I'm good. I'm not burnt out yet. And she was like, no.

Trust me. You are. And she was right. Next line. And so when you're working, you may work hard, but this might not be as linear as it looks every day.

I would, like, actually schedule out, like, blocks for just being reactive every day because, like, a lot is gonna be coming at you. And also, you're gonna wanna balance that with what's like writing the blog posts and hosting the town halls and all the run of business stuff that we do as developer relations experts. And then from here, going beyond just having responses to commonly asked questions available, you're going to want to make sure that you are managing your relationships in the community. So there was a community leader, and she wanted to have lunch at the Twitter office with me. And I had to cancel with her, like, 15 times because the days she wanted to come in were just a bad day for outsiders to be coming into the office.

Just, you know, there were layoffs happening, there was wild stuff happening, and so I had to move that a lot, and I had to manage that relationship. There was also somebody that I was working on a really cool project with that I had to pass on to I was starting to read the tea leaves a little bit, and the person I thought was gonna stay who's now running the team, I had to connect her with that person so that even if I left, there was that sort of way. And also, because we're out in the community, we know so many people, and so this is both a blessing, because you have a great community to kind of talk to you, but it also means that you have to do relationship management with a lot of people. So making sure you're kind of aware of everyone that you're working with, even outside of the company, and that if something goes wrong, you're ready to talk to them. Next slide.

And so after you write your crisis communications plan, you're going to want to make sure that your plan has the following what you're keeping from your previous strategy, core values, who's impacted by the changing circumstances, what tactics you're going to employ, proactive and reactive strategies, risk analysis, and planning for all possible outcomes. Next slide. And then you're going to want to make sure that your plan gets reviewed by lots of different people, both peers, people in your management chain, but also people who just might be impacted. I also shared aspects of my plan with just community members I worked with, just so that they were aware of, like, what was happening. Next slide.

And then also, I thought a lot about how this ends. And so one of the things that, you know, I'm always kinda I'm an optimist. And I think a lot of us in this room who are programmers, we are also optimists because, you know, you have to kind of believe in something to, like, go through all the nitty frustrations of programming. And so I found this quote that I, like, kind of, like, sums up my worldview. But next slide.

And so it was really hard for me to admit that things were changing. I was able to, like, do kind of some of the crisis communications, but I wasn't really ready to think about, like, oh my god, I might not be with this company in six months. And it took me a lot longer to get there than I probably should have. And so really, if you are in these situations, especially with, like, the changing way that our industry is going, I think it's important to kind of think about your future with your company. Next slide.

And so you might want to make sure if you're in these tricky situations to know what your boundaries are. I had some very clear red lines that if, like you know, I worked under Elon for about two weeks, and during that time, I was very aware of, like, if any of my boundaries were crossed, I was gonna leave. And I was getting close on one of them, and I was planning on submitting my resignation, and then an email went around that was like, we've reached a fork in the road. You either have to say that you're extremely hardcore to stay at Twitter or go. And I was like, I am not extremely hardcore.

Definitely not. I did used to front a hardcore band, but not that. And then I also, like, I am really glad that I did some financial planning around, like, kind of two months in. I was like, this might not go well. And I started saving a little bit more did some kind of financial planning.

And then also, I took a took a look at dates and, like, medical procedures and things like that. And, like, I scheduled a routine medical procedure to happen while I was still employed and still had health insurance just in case something went wrong. And I was glad I did that. Next slide. There are some great, great resources out there.

If you are thinking you might get laid off or something weird might happen, Collective Action and Tech actually made this for Twitter employees, which was really, really awesome. And then there was also Preparing to Break Up With Your Employer by Heidi Widerhat by Heidi Waterhouse and Shai's amazing talk from last year as well. Next talk, Brian. And then from there, just kind of like, after you kind of go through something like this, you're going to be resilient, and this is going to change you. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Next slide. Really make sure that you're kind of working with your community and you are talking to people, getting advice from as many people as possible. And even after you leave, you know, one of the great things about this community is, like, how strong it is and how wonderful it is. And, you know, after that, you can actually start working with your community to help you kind of find new opportunities or, like, just kind of catch up, and that's really helpful. And this community is not going anywhere.

Next slide. It is here, and so focusing on self care is really important. Next slide. And after it's all over, next slide, just make sure that you take some time for yourself. You reflect on what went well and what didn't.

Next slide. And you really kind of acknowledge the changes that have happened and help support others who are in similar situations. Next slide. I hope you never need this talk. I hope you found it inspiring.

But if you do, be the leader that you want to see. Next slide. And feel free to reach out to me. I can be found at jessica garson most places on the Internet. And jessicagarson@gmail is my, email.

And those are my social handles. Thanks.