 Hi everyone, my name is Mary Thengval and as Jason said I'm taking you to the land of avocados or in other words We're talking about developer relations. So if you're familiar with the terms Community management developer advocacy, they all kind of fall under the same umbrella as developer relations So I'm gonna talk a little bit about what it is and why you should care about it First of all, it's built on the foundation of open source community management And I know all of you here are passionate about open source and I'm sure we have some community managers Yes, there we go. All right. All right So it's it's built on that foundation and it contains a lot of different roles some of them are up on the screen So developer advocate community manager developer evangelist and there's a lot of nuance in each of these, right? So I'm gonna explain a little bit about what each means so you have a better understanding Developer advocate first of all is the technical component of the team So they're typically the person who has a developer background a CS degree code school degree something along those lines They do a lot of live coding a lot of demos a lot of technical deep dives with documentation Helping their community members understand the technology You've got technical community managers who may or may not have a developer background, but they're definitely tech savvy They're really good at assessing out what the problems are that people need to have solved How to communicate that back internally to their company and their coworkers that they better understand the problems There's also what I like to call technical ambassador or some people call a developer evangelist Who helps people understand how that product fits within the greater landscape of the overall tech industry? And all of these roles and a couple of others that some other teams include Help push forward one goal of enabling our technical audience to be the best that they can possibly be at their job And this is an hugely important role because it connects the community with the company and it helps people Better influence the decisions that we're making internally and with the right manager who has a business value of developer relations And understands that value that we can contribute We're able to really provide that value back to our community members This is where the mantra of developer relations that I use all the time comes into play So to the community I represent the company to the company I represent the community and I have the best interest of both in mind at all times And it's a difficult balance to keep because you're constantly going back between the community and the company and making sure that you understand both sides But when we do understand both values We can provide relevant content to our community members and we can also provide valuable feedback Internally to the company to help the community better do their jobs The important thing about this is that we understand that when the community succeeds the company succeeds But when the company sets the community up for failure, especially when it's an open-source product that needs that contribution from the community There's no coming back from that mistake So we're kind of the liaisons the jugglers the teachers the journalists We're the connecting bits between these two and we understand the Landscape of both the community that we're following as well as the company that we're working with So we can make these introductions community member to community member or community member to Co-worker to provide value on both sides of the spectrum and these connections are something that I call DevRel qualified leads You familiar with the term marketing qualified leads There's a few marketers that are nodding Okay, so it's this idea of understanding that I might not be able to influence this particular Community member to become a customer or guarantee that the hiring manager is really going to appreciate the particular hire that I pass along Or even that the really excellent Community member who's awesome at the forums is going to be able to translate that into a blog post But I've made those connections and I know that the value that those connections can provide Because it can provide value again both to the community and to the company So developer avocado if you've heard of it There's a bit of an analogy here to help you understand this and this all started when I was back at spark post about three Years ago helping out with their DevRel team We had one of our project managers that had a hard time pronouncing developer advocate and it would often come out developer avocado And we as a team decided we love the title and we ran with it And we came up with an analogy around it because you see avocados are the good kind of fat and used in the right ways at the Right times and the right combination of items we can provide a benefit to both the community and the company We also take on the flavor of things around us So there's a lot of shifting goals maybe shifting departments But we're fluid in those goals depending on the needs of the company We also go well with a lot of different cuisines, right? And like the best types of chefs who are constantly experimenting with ingredients and trying to come up with the right combinations We're pulling different levers to make sure that we have the right combination of items for our communities Avocados also take a long time to ripen and DevRel is a long game It's not a short quick fix but with the right investment and nurturing we can make a lot of good Lastly avocados are good for your heart and just like a healthy product and a healthy community is good for the heart of the company So again, my name is Mary thing of all if you want to hear more about this I have a full-length talk tomorrow at 4 30. You should all come it's gonna be fun I also talk about this stuff for a living and the founder of per se consulting My goal is to provide resources for developer relations and community professionals Some of those resources are on the screen behind me and I'd be happy to chat more with all of you if you're interested Thanks. Have a great night