 That's right. Hello. Oh, that's wonderful. So, uh, hey, welcome to the panel that developer relations We've got a great panel here that I'll let introduce themselves pretty soon. So I don't butcher their names or anything But we also have the reporter who's late, but you know, he's probably interviewing someone so before before we get off basically the format I want to follow is You know going over what it's like to relate to as it were and market to developers How they fit into your overall plan for whatever it is you want to do Usually it's make money or make sure you can go home on time or not be bored with your life However, does you spend your time and just to set the context a little bit and then Coincidentally buy some time for Alex to get here. I'll just heckle him until he's here on time and then afterwards as well I thought I would go over some sort of facts and analysis I know if you're in the US sort of like we're going through a current, you know cycle where facts and analysis are not really valued So this will be a nice refresher for you So these are a couple of sort of developer demographic slides That I took with I assume permission From one of my buddies at IDC Al Hill, who's one of the better analysts for developers out there There's there's a few other great developer industry analysts if you're interested in knowing about them But Al true to his IDC origin and his nature is pretty good about going over numbers And so if you look at this analysis, he has I was really excited to see this because I've I've always been hunting for like Total population of developers and those Evans people are always emailing stuff out, but I don't know they seem a little weird I never would seem to want to talk to them So when Al came out with this and published it was exciting and and if you look at this concentric circle analysis I'm sure there's some fancy name for that kind of you know Ovo analysis Theorem, but you can see that he comes up with this idea that worldwide I believe this is there's about 18 and a half million developers right and he has you know The total world population down there and then down to people who basically work in it That's what I see tea ops and management or skilled workers is and then there's hobbyist and and sort of citizen software Developers and the professionals and so more than so on and then you end up with basically a population of Let's call it 18 and a half million Which which I think is that's interesting right and if you're the kind of person who knows how to use pivot tables and stuff Like that means you can start doing all sorts of wacky models about like you know If we sold to 5% of the developer population out there some tool that's $50 a year and recurring revenue Then I can get funded and have a guava candy every day So that's kind of like a baseline to start thinking about like the population where we're discussing now the only before I used to be an analyst so I have to have some charts or I break down in a nervous fit But the only other one I wanted to go over and this is for us if you'll see is just a sense of where Developers are right what industries they work and what kind of jobs they have And to summarize it as it says up here about just under half of them work in the tech sector, right? So developers writing software to be sold as the core product And then if I remember if you look at this, it's basically banking it consumes the banking and finance Consumes the next huge pool and then government and and things like that as you would suspect and you can kind of Walk all the way up there and then you can also see I like the bottom chart. It's kind of interesting It shows you of the employees in those industry. What percentage are developers, right? So if you look at those if developers often feel isolated and alone, it's a little wonder You know, it's not just the Ironman t-shirts and flip-flops. They're wearing around that make them stand apart It's that they actually are by numbers quite a small percentage. So With that if I was gonna leave a slide up. Do you like this slide or the Ovo slide that one's pretty We'll look at that one. It's like in some art So with that we should kick the panel off here and and we'll go through some some questions that we've we've Prepared ahead of time and by that I mean we talked for about five minutes And and then we'll open it up for questions that we have and when we get to that There's a microphone over there. They're recording this so, you know, you can be part of history If you speak into the mic. Otherwise, I'll have to summarize your answer So to introduce myself very briefly. I'm Michael Cote I go by my last name frequently and like I was alluding to I've been an analyst a few times at a little firm Called red monk that specialized on developers and at four five one research and I worked at Dell on cloud strategy and mna and now I work at pivotal on basically doing Evangelism for people who do a lot of dry cleaning like I talk with with managers and enterprise architects and cio's and stuff about What we do at pivotal So speaking to a technical audience developers has always been interesting and important to me Especially since I was one at some point and that's really how I came about being interested in this topic Why don't you introduce yourself? Sure Does this work? Yes. Um, I'm Melissa Smolensky. I head up marketing at coral s been doing marketing for A long time in the infrastructure space started with like disaster recovery at hp 14 years ago um, and then Also helped launch open stack was at the first First open stack meetup kind of conference 70 when it was 75 people So it's cool to see how fat how big it's grown. Um, then went to a small startup called chartio. It's a business intelligence Company and then now at coral s if you're not familiar with coral s We're trying to package up the way google does infrastructure Um, something we like to call giffy and give it to people to start using Um, and the long-term goal for us is to secure the internet Hi, um, first off, uh, thanks for helping me pronounce that I've been calling it choreos for two years. So I guess Do you okay? Um, so i'm brandon haze Uh, I run a consultancy here in austin called the front side. We do primarily front end but come from a back end background I used to build Uh open stack stuff for at&t. Um, so it's nice to be back and see that it's come a ways And uh, yeah, so our whole I yesterday I spent my my day Fighting software. That's still a big chunk of what I do. So I'm here to represent the developer contingent and fight fight for the The devs, I guess Hey, yeah, um, david flanders. Um, everybody calls me flanders obviously because of some television show um I am a developer So my job is at the open stack foundation. Um, so I help Newly hired only been in the job for about four months now to specifically help build up the application developer community Um, I always find it funny when I I get invited to these these talks But it is something I'm desperately passionate about which is I've been involved with apache and w3c and ietf and rep rap projects and all kinds of that hobbyist developer circle right there Um, and the thing that really really matters to me and the thing that really has made the difference And especially open stack is actually the fact that we do care about marketing and that you you need to represent All of these at the end of the day all the code in the world is held together by glue and string is all software developers know What matters is how that looks to the rest of the world. Um, and that's always a really difficult conversation So I'm actually very happy to to be on the panel But I I I'm always worried about whether or not I could officially call myself a card carrying marketing person That's that's a good characteristic of developers lots of uh imposter syndrome stuff, right? always lots of self doubt really fuels us Or former us is even well, so, uh, you know just to just to point it out like I and and then there's also alex Williams who's the the founder and and publisher and one of the people behind the new stack who maybe will show up But I wanted to basically stack this panel to be representative of Most of the forces that are in the developer relations and marketing world, right? So, you know, we've got some marketing We have we have a developer But also because brandon helps run the company that he's part of he markets two developers for certain things And then we have david and to some extent my or flanders I should say flanders and to some extent myself who are like in the evangelist role of whatever it is We do it's marketing but a different type of marketing sometimes And hopefully when we get to questions you can take advantage of the the different folks that we have out there So the first question I want to ask and we'll just go in order for me. I guess is um so I'll speak of things in commercial terms, but think about them in whatever goals you might have Right, like why I care about developers caring about me or reaching them And and so so, you know with with y'all and and with brandon and to some extent with with you guys at the foundation You know, there's basically like a sales process like a process where you're trying to influence someone and get them involved And win them over to you and close a deal or have something that you you you reach And I wonder in each instance when you think about Developers like first, what's the process that you have at your organization? And how do they fit into that process? Like is it a very segmented like we have a five-stage funnel process and we can predict this and whatever or Is it a lot more loosey-goosey than that? How do you think about the the life cycle? right So at coral s we started out as an open source company. So we started out with coral s linux, which is our Operating system that provides automatic updates With software patches and security vulnerabilities. So we just started out with all of you know open source components and I think The goal of the whole company is to secure the internet, which I talked about and we believe we're going to do that Through these different ways these different components we've built So honestly, I think our big goal is that and like the community and developers is a really big part of the open source community that is helping us do that and From the sales side. Yes, we have to make money long term. We have products like tectonic We have coral s premium angelinix, which is support on coral s linux. We have quay, which is our container registry So we have those products and There's different ways. I think there's a top-down approach where you have to have materials for The business side like marketing to the business side and then you have to have materials for the developer side That's really passionate about your products and excited about them. And so Um, you know, I think there's that top-down approach. I think there are some studies I think idc actually came out with a study that was talking about how you have to have both approaches where it's top down from that business side and bottom up and Yeah, so I think we're we're right now we're a startup. We're three years old So right now we're at that point of trying to figure out the business side a little bit more And just to drill down on that a little bit before we get to brandon Um So what how would you distinguish like a tops down approach from bottoms up? Does tops down mean like you go over Not over the heads of but you go over the heads of the developers and you're basically going to the vp's and whoever and and convincing them And then they kind of like Yeah developers that way or what does that play out? It's actually interesting because I think because we our roots are so much an open source We have a lot of developers that are really excited about coral s products But then when they go to try to sell it up Up the up their chain of command. They're like, hey, I need a white paper to tell them why why I want to use this I need You know, I need analyst research to like prove that this is like You know third party validated and that it's it's good for our company And so I think honestly It's almost to help the developers sell it internally up the chain of command where they can get They can get the money to be able to implement these technologies that they know are going to help them in the long run So so you know just to to sum that up it's sort of like if if you're in a situation where the developers are influencers themselves It seems like one of the core things you can do is provide them the material that they need and and I think I think I'm sure in in in our circles of marketing. That's usually derisively said as white papers, right? Which which is starting to become more metaphoric than literally a white paper But it's sort of like a standalone semi-formal thing That you could take to the big meeting Or or or as what did they used to say pre-populate ahead of time Like pre-wire people and sort of like inform them what's going on and let an internal person a developer sort of market for you Yes, up the chain So so how about yourself brandon when you I mean I I I was thinking about one of the one of the things that at least you do market to developers for is hiring right and To some extent with the open source things that you have kind of marketing with them to kind of rally them to Your clause, but when you think about like Both the business goals and other goals that you have like what how do you developers get involved? Okay, good question. Um, so yeah a little more slightly more background on me before I I became a developer Six years ago. I worked in marketing for six years and So I I get the power of it I get like there's value in it and I understand there's a ton of resistance in the developer community to the word marketing Because it it feels insubstantial Compared to actually building stuff And so uh, there's really two two two facets to marketing in general And that is doing something really cool And letting people know you did something really cool And if you drop half the ball on either of those that so developers get mad because people are trying to like They think marketing is pushing something that they didn't build something cool. They're just trying to push it But if you do the opposite, I see I see developers bang their heads on this a lot And it's actually something I'm really passionate about teaching developers. It's a huge facet of what I do in my career Is teaching developers how to market themselves um Recruiting and selling what we do, you know, we have to sell Million-dollar contracts as well as recruit developers and recruiting is actually vastly more key to the health of our business Because there's plenty of work out there. There's not plenty of developers. So Going through the process of that we realize it's very much the same thing I like to think that open source changed everything around this. I kind of came in post open source I started developing in 2010 Everything for us is really community oriented But I mean, I I wondered if that affected the the larger dev ecosystem and I think it's pretty clear it has open sources You know, it's infiltrated big giant conferences like this one. So Our if to get into the specifics of our strategy, it's basically We're primarily bottom up We don't have a really strong top-down approach Uh, that's something maybe we should work on but we basically When you're marketing to developers the keyword to me is authenticity So, uh, if you are authentic and you offer something of authentic value and you're really putting yourselves in their position And you go, okay, what is this person on the other side of the screen looking for what are they trying to? Uh, what's going to improve their career? So, uh, and then how do you tell people about that? So for us, it's community events. We organize meetups. We Uh, sponsor meetups. We speak at conferences. Um, I mean, these are pretty standard things but they they genuinely create results because It's not enough to speak at a conference. You have to speak about at a conference about something that Actually improves the lives of the people that you're talking to So if you if you can if you can do that, uh, you will have an army of people fighting and advocating for you And then your job is to make them powerful enough within their organizations that they can go swing that The hammer around and say, yeah, I want Uh, for us, it's I want to go higher the front side. They seem to know what they're doing For uh, or I want to adopt this technology. Uh, I want to at least pilot a project with this technology Or I want to hire this consulting firm or whatever But it's making advocates out of the out of the individual developers by offering them something of such tremendous value Yeah, that's one thing I with with your uh, uh, I don't know Would you say co-founder co co-runner of the company charles? I've talked about with him over the past few years is He's very like, um Uh, genuine if if you will so he has these epiphanies and goes over them and they're kind of funny and it And one that that he's articulated that's interesting is if you go to conferences and have a really good talk about technologies You know about it builds your reputation and then that's marketing and and like When you put it that simply it sounds like something a dumb person would say but it really is like It really is a pretty like key thing is is and I imagine you tell me if you guys do this or don't do it But you probably plan out which conferences you go to and the topics you do and You even kind of have a sense of like this one will actually be good for driving in business Not just making me look awesome Yeah, there's there's a little bit of strategic component to it. Um, and uh, well not a little bit It's a lot saying um It because how are you positioning yourself? So we could go speak at a php conference and I love the php community But there's not a lot that we have to offer them in terms of services So you have to pick, you know adjacent markets and go, uh, you understand that basically and also understand This is a long process. This is not a short term Like I think people think that if I go speak at a conference, it will result in business of some kind People will sign a contract as a result of going to speaking at conference and you're not it's uh, like any branding strategy It's about multiple touches So you're you're planning a seat here and you're planning a seat here and you're planning a seat here And at some point one of them will spring up and my experience is that for a smaller business like ours That's about three to six months So you lead that by three to six months saying i'm going to pick uh conferences or Strategies that are in adjacent places that we want to move into About three to six months before we were going to ask people to actually exchange money for services or something Okay, how about yourself? How do how do developers fit into the the marketing that you do? Okay, so um, just quickly how many developers are in the room? Okay, excellent. So Yeah, I really want to talk to you very specifically about this and why it's important So why you should really love your marketing person? Why they're really important and the reason is is that they are your first line of defense Um in the thing you're building. I love what I do. I love what I get to do. I live it. I breathe it It is it is I wake up at 3 a.m. For calls. I'll stay up till midnight Um, I'm glad to fit in the coding wherever I can So you're really really time poor and that's that's that's the biggest problem So you need help everywhere you can get and what's really cool about marketing people? Is that oftentimes developers make the very big mistake to think that they're not Quote-unquote smart and the trouble is is they don't understand different intelligence types So developers are very high on the IQ scale often, right? But there are other intelligence types and the marketing agents are really high on the EQ scale emotional intelligence And being able to engage those people and have them help you Defend your castle and the thing you love is the most important reason why you should App genuinely find time to work with those marketing people and that's one of the coolest things about the the foundation working for me is Realizing that our marketing team and what we have are incredibly smart people They're always thinking about how do we how do we take the things we're building inside of this community? And actually position it in such a way that they understand and they really listen to it I'll sit down and they'll even we'll code together. They will share with me their marketing ideas and how You know, we do a little bit of coding and then how that relates to the wider world and it really does become essential for me because Having those quote-unquote white papers, right? You know, so we've just gone through this hpc on top of open stack How the hell do you explain high performance computing on open stack, right? And i'm very passionate about it and it's really really essential But it's really hard to explain it So being able to sit down and work with three or four marketing people who actually Figure out how we can collect the right people in the community how we can have a conversation And then how we can put that in the white paper so that you can take that white paper And when your boss comes to you and says, yeah, we're thinking about cutting your department or this part of your work You can say uh, uh, uh Take this to your board then come talk to me. And so I really can't stress enough that you know Very much go on to open stack. They're they're really really good. So any of these things slash hbc slash sdn um All of these different things that we're doing on open stack have that white paper in your back pocket because it is a Trump card it is something you can throw down and you can protect what you're doing So that's from the top down. I won't I do want to go into more in the bottom of conversation But i'm sure that you probably know I think I think that's a good segue because I think before before we open it up to questions a little bit um We should talk about some some tactics which you know can kind of seem like you're like I saw that clip recently from jaws where he's like chumming the water And so that's where that comes from right like come down here and chum this stuff um, but A lot of tactics can seem kind of like I don't know dirty and annoying and below you or whatever, but I think it's If you're in the developer marketing and relations things You got to figure out what to do right and and just so the question before I ramble on more about it is basically like what One how do you figure out which tactics apply and then two which ones in your in y'all situation are working well So for example, um, you know when I've talked with people over the years One of the questions is always like where do developers go to read things right and I find nowadays that's almost impossible to answer It's sort of like I guess they're in twitter and get and maybe individual communities here But it's not like For example in the early 2000s where it's like well, you should go to developer works if they do java stuff People publish there or java lobby like they were very particular things And then we also mentioned another i'm just giving examples of what I mean by tactics We mentioned other tactics like here's a white paper like this is a pdf as as as you went over and and you went over as well that explains this type of Dare I say its solution that a business might want to use with your technology, whether it's hpc or Securing patching server or whatever? um And it's put in a way that that this is a tool that you can use or or a tactic could be out of the conference talking With someone but I wonder Again like how do you figure out what the developers you want to reach? How do you diagnose which tactics will work and then which ones are working well in y'all's current case? um, I think that's a big question um for me everything about marketing is a conversation so um, I think about where people are having conversations about right now container technology is still still a pretty new Phenomenon at the docker cloud native container container space phenomenon So I think right now there's a lot of education to do and so when I think about that I think a lot about um, we do a lot tutorials. We do a lot of online google hangouts. We do Meetups where we teach, um, you know new technologies. We do workshops And so I think those type of things are actually where we get a lot of value right now in terms sort of educational Yeah, a lot of educational materials because I think there's just so much Um excitement around these technologies and I think there's still a lot of education to do on how you can use them That that's where we see a lot of A lot of people are attending a lot of people are reading those materials a lot of people are going on these hangouts and listening So I think I think right now education is the big thing for us and then you you raise another question I mean, I'm interested in your take on this because it And that is how How much should you track buzzword allegiance? Right like when in y'all's cases is not really an issue But it's sort of like now it's containers and docker and like that's that's the answer to all of our ills And and and in contrast like at my company at pivotal we run when you run stuff in pivotal It's all running containers and it's our own container technology But long ago product management was kind of like but no one should care about that And so we don't we kind of talk about it more but we don't really discuss it much and one of the things I always wonder is like Yeah, but people really want to talk about containers So should we just kind of gratuitously go out and talk about containers a lot? Like and so I wonder in in your thinking If you identify these things that are like these are the top 20 keyword searches and therefore we should publish on it Yeah, you know what we don't actually do that But I I mean I actually think that's probably pretty smart if you're if you're looking to get More clicks to your website or whatever because a lot of people are searching those things But I mean I do think like for us obviously we're in this emerging container space So for us it is very valuable for us to be talking about that because those are our products But I mean I think it just depends on what your bottom line is because if you're I mean I imagine maybe you guys want to talk about that because it kind of plays But um, yeah, I mean I think we don't play the buzzword bingo But um, I mean there's things like right now that are hot topics like kubernetes and tectonic our tectonic enterprise product plays Uses kubernetes. So we do we are we were um contributors to kubernetes and So we do participate in a lot of kubernetes events and you know, there's different things like that that yes We definitely will um participate in and do tutorials on and do meetups on and go to events put on events We have choral est fest in a week if anyone wants to go I'm a marketing person at heart. Yeah, well, I I guess I guess in y'all's case before we go to band and you're you're You're lucky enough to be in the top three Keyword searches that I mean metaphorically speaking right so yeah, you experience the benefit of of being one of the more Buzzy things if you will which which must be nice Yeah, and you know what I actually think um, it's actually really amazing to do marketing at choral est because um, the the whole the whole engineering team at choral est is like building great products And they're really passionate about what they're doing. So they're out there speaking a lot and So a lot of it's the the team is doing a lot of the marketing and I always say I'm trying not to mess it up And and help them in any way possible. So um, like I think I I'm lucky that I work at choral est It's a great place. Definitely. How about how about yourself, Brandon? What do you find at the front side? Well for for you, I you know, what do you find at the front side are good tactics And also when you have your developer hat on what tactics do you like and dislike? um Yeah, it's it can be tough to separate that because I spend about you know I I've split my time half and half trying to market what we're doing and then and then suffer the consequences of marketing what we do and uh It changes your perspective on this stuff a little bit having to actually deliver like making a sale and going Like I have to actually deliver that now uh You and I have talked in the past we did a podcast together about the hype cycle where I learned like I Knew of it, but I didn't know much about it and then we talked about it and I started after that I started digging into it the hype cycle has become an interesting Uh an interesting tool that actually um, it's really elementary to somebody. That's a tech analyst The idea of the hype cycle. I don't know. Is everybody here familiar with my cycle over briefly Okay, so the hype cycle is a really simple concept that says with any new technology There is an initial spark of interest Uh, there's some trigger for a piece of technology If it catches on it becomes immediately very popular and everybody's talking about everybody wants to know what's going on with it And it hits a peak Called the peak of inflated expectations where everybody believes this thing is going to change everything It's going to solve all the problems that you ever had in your life It's going to it's going to fix everything you finally are going to dockerize your react container and then the next phase is like It it people start realizing. Whoa, this doesn't solve every problem There's actually it actually comes with its own baggage and it's there are additional trade-offs with it And it hits a thing called the trough of disillusionment where everybody's like wait a minute. That's my favorite. Yeah the trough is amazing, uh And then if the technology survives not crashing in that trough of disillusionment It gets to climb to the slope of enlightenment where people start Realizing wait there are ways to use this and these and I can make educated trade-offs with this And then eventually a technology reaches a place called the plateau of productivity where it's just quietly productive There aren't any hacker news articles about the plateau of productivity. Nobody says. Hmm. Yeah, I've been using amber for about 18 months Pretty productively. It's pretty nice. Like once something gets to that plateau. I'm glad. That's the voice you read all those comments It's the it's my kip dynamite developer voice, I guess So so that cycle Happens invariably to every technology and once you understand that you can decide where you fit there I have friends who say F this I'm going for the peak I'm gonna and as soon as the thing crashes in the trough of disillusionment I'm gonna bail and go to the next peak and that's their marketing strategy because they're selling shovels in a gold rush If you're a shovel manufacturer, you want gold rushes and so you keep going back to the next gold rush uh, and then but if you're I don't work like that And so I want our company and the rest of the marketing I do for my life to be buzzword resistant and not buzzword compliant So buzzword compliance is awesome if you're going to stay in that peaky area and you're willing to jump technologies to stay in it Uh, but for us you like, you know, you've been through this cycle a few times and you start realizing Oh, okay. I know where the peaks and valleys. I know where this is going. Uh, and I want to Uh, I want to target that plateau like I want to watch for the technologies that are going to adopt that plateau Uh, and I want to build a business that that resists the, uh, Over enthusiasm of the peak so that it can survive the crash in the atrophic disillusionment And so again that so that really comes down to like what you adopt what technologies So it would be like a year and a half going after react for people in our front-end community Um or elm right now things that are really peaky and understanding. Okay. That's something we need to be aware of Uh, but we're targeting things That uh are going to ride that out and try not to get seasick on this like hype cycle So that that that drives a lot of our strategy Um, uh one last thing I'll say There are three things I think you can do to get somebody to love you. You can feed them Uh, you can, uh Uh, you can teach them and you can listen to them and so, uh, we try to do all three So we try to teach people we try to feed them at meetups or whatever Not as much we're not a cafe or whatever, but uh, we'll buy a pizza. Um, and uh, we try to listen So, uh, if you're doing if you're doing those things, then you have my opinion is you probably have a pretty strong community Uh, then it's just a question of picking which community you want to do those things for Yeah, there's there's there's something to sort of pick out from a lot of what we've been talking about that I think in the uh I don't know the non-nerd sales world They call being a trusted advisor This is another great corporate term that you'll come across a lot and and, uh I haven't really ever thought of applying that to the developer marketing world But much of what we've been talking about whether it's giving knowledge out or or the the the three ways to get someone to love you is basically like And and then also to some extent the plateau of productivity stability is like That person like has their stuff figured out and they can kind of advise me about what I should be doing And therefore I trust them and therefore like what do you want me to buy? I mean to to turn it into a joke, but that does seem like a A valid goal to have with the developer community is to is to Is to be an advisor to them essentially How about yourself? So um when it comes to tactics or how you analyze what to do, so okay, I covered the the top bit about why Top down you want the marketing person to be able to give you that that that White paper which protects you and defends what you want to do Um the the way that they get to that white paper is by participating with them in the bottom up So we even have an acronym um and I completely agree with melissa on this. It's it's about the conversation, right? In fact, we our acronym is a a always be educating And that's really the core of what we do so developers This is what you want in a good marketing person and melissa is actually a really great example of this As are as are the people who do work in the foundation like my boss lauren sell and all the rest of it They do this really really cool thing at events So yes, you're always running events that are trying to educate people because we all know as developers that if you left this industry Uh And and left it for three to four years you'd come back and all the tools would be different That's how quickly we're moving the whole time So what you want to do when you find that marketing person who's the right marketing person? The things that they'll do is they will go around and they will help facilitate the conversation And yes, some of it will be buzzword bingo and bullshit and all the rest of it But the the fundamental thing is is we're not entirely in engineering science We are a social science as well The whatever emerges as the new lamp stack for the cloud Will be done through social science as much as it will be done through engineering And the reason is is because you've got to get a bunch of people to agree this thing You've actually got you you have to have the conversation and go through the pain of having the debate Because it's through that that finally will have signal from noise And once we've got signal from noise then we can start to push on the next thing And so having someone like melissa who goes around with you and says hey, I heard this conversation Why don't we go and pull and have this this chat and they are literally again It comes back to emotional intelligence, right? It's it's about the fact that they they're listening all the time They're not trying to find the solution. They're doing that social science bit to try to say Okay, what's happening here? What's happening there? What's happening in all these different places and then Doing lasso's um, I forget the american word for this um around the communities to to bring people together Thank you lasso sorry and it even in Texas. I've made a I've made a major cultural faux pas We'll we'll talk about cultural intelligence later But yeah, so really again just to summarize as a developer spend time to find the marketing person go to events have Have the conversations meet up every night over beers. That's the other thing. They have good budgets for beer Um, so go go and chat with them and say I heard this and I heard that and they'll be like, oh I heard that so there are another pair of ears There's somebody who's going to allow you to figure out what that conversation is Which won't which will also figure out what next event you want to do what skills training You want to do next to be able to keep up with everything But it'll then also help inform them when they need to create that white paper that defensive tactic You need to be able to protect your kingdom and all the rest of it Yeah, that's that's a that's an excellent point that meets meets up with the relations part of developer relations and marketing And and to use another metaphoric word it's it's it's sort of like Trying to be a concierge between the outside world and your internal hotel staff this metaphor is going terribly wrong But you know and I do I do notice You know having been an analyst and things like that I've worked with lots of Analyst relations and press relations people who serve a similar role of They're basically trying to hook hook people up like not in the late night sense of it But they're saying like you're interested in this I have someone who's interested in that and you who should meet and talk with each other It's that intellectual thing you you need somebody to recognize that they're on the same wavelength We do get in a lot of arguments in the developer community and arguments are good at one stage Believe it or not. It's the consensus bit Which is hard to find that signal from noise and right most of the time that's coming through Our marketing staff and all the rest of it who are actually making that EQ link that emotional intelligence link between people and and I and I think I mean just to Use a tactic that I try to use along those lines and that I've noticed other people do is is it's almost There's almost two. Well, there's three stages of it one You're not doing any sort of hooking up concierging or whatever And then two you're only doing it to whatever you have allegiance to like within your company and you know Trying to fit them in that that closing a deal funnel But then three it's more of like you're just trying to hook people up with what you know Right and a huge part of what you know is of course like helps determine how you get paid every month Like is your company? But it's often good especially in trying to get to that trusted advisor status to even if it's hooking someone up with Something that you get no Monetary or whatever benefit from it keeps that discussion ongoing in that relationship built and I mean I think that's something I notice Uh, I would say lower level and more chintzy marketers don't really do well They're always trying to steer you towards, you know that legion a moment instead of just keeping the conversation going essentially So to that end, uh, if there's any questions, we have a microphone here I didn't want to do the thing where like I make you line up and stand while we talk so, uh, feel free to come up and Ask questions Yeah Hi, one of the things that you mentioned was the authenticity And while we are marketing to the developer community. Do you think The profile of the person is He should be a software developer trying to get into marketing rather than a non tech Marketing persons. I'm a non tech marketing person Sometimes I do feel that I I have a barrier That I can again, uh, I have a barrier that yeah, I can read about hundred different things But somehow that authenticity will not come because I have never coded per se Just your views Learned a code Like you don't have to be good at it All you need to do is sit that like my marketing people will sit down with us And like just yesterday we were I was they were just like, yeah, I explained getting Garrett to me And we love we love to talk about that stuff And best of all the cool thing is is they then work you through how people will understand that because one of the troubles is developers is You're always a thousand steps ahead of where everybody else is and once you're on this escalator You're always moving up and being dragged back down to step one the zone of proximal development The next step that somebody's willing to take that's that's an incredibly powerful thing So just sit down with your your devs and be like, hey, just show me this one thing And you don't have to take a lot of time and it's just is a nice conversation to have between the people as well And you don't have to understand it. You don't have to code and all the rest of it It's just so you kind of understand how my brain is wired because it's wired in a weird way No, I didn't understand when you say Your developers, I mean, I am the one who's marketing to the developers. So The question is where is my developer again? Here's the here's the challenge that I have, you know, like my wife. She is and she's a developer She has been a developer for last 20 years. Okay The moment she starts speaking with the other developer, I can see the smooth conversation that goes on And yes, I mean, it's a good thing to say that you'll learn. Yeah, I will learn certain things in six months But is that is that good enough to be authentic? And I don't think so So can I yeah, I have a thought on this and it's pretty pretty much runs counter to your thoughts on this I I do think that uh because uh authenticity isn't where That comes in Uh authenticity is that's actually empathy. So the three things I look for in a marketer are authenticity empathy and courage Like if you can be authentic like you are You're presenting something of authentic value So it's actually more about your confidence in your in your value offering for for what you're doing for someone Uh, the the empathy comes in from being able to code and be and exchange tokens You're basically so when you're a developer you get to exchange tokens and that can sub in for authenticity But I know a lot of inauthentic people that can speak developers and exchange these tokens and say, okay, we're good, right? And uh, they're you know hardcore sociopaths and I've gone to work for them and it's been not great. So, uh, The authenticity wasn't there. So I I would say I I don't know if you should learn to code or not to be able to have these conversations But I think authenticity is a separate Function from being able to empathize with developers Um, so I'll I'll just say can I say one last thing on this and I don't need any say anything else for the rest of the thing Uh, the number one thing I learned as a marketer that permeates my marketing style now that I when I forget it It's because I lack courage and it is going out talking to people and listening to them Which is pretty much your job and pretty much your job But it's hard for somebody who's actually developing software You're actually in a great position to do this because you don't develop software your job isn't to ship things the way that it can be The best marketing content I've ever got I used to fancy myself a really good marketing copywriter And I would be shamed by how good the content was when I went out and listened to people And wrote down the things that they said to me about my own product So if you are shipping things to people it provides value to them And they come back they will come back with the language that you use to market to other developers And you don't need anything else in my opinion Well, if you don't mind I'll let the next person ask a question since we have five minutes I don't mean to cut you off but go go ahead. Okay. Yeah, so a little off topic But brand was talking about the hype cycle. So I'd like to know from all of you Where are we open stack on the hype cycle? And I I'd like you all to spit it out at the same time So that you don't influence each other's opinion How about you it was bullshit How about you you also answer first and say took took away your answering from last round Oh, yeah, um I mean, I think open stack Is like still like I mean, I think actually is having a resurgence actually I don't know. I don't know where that is on the hype cycle But and if the hype cycle is bullshit, then maybe there's another part. Well, I don't mean that it's bullshit It does map a reality. I do agree with you on that point But the trouble is is we're in microservices here, right? You'd need to map against each one of the projects, you know, it's it's, you know Let's talk about sdn on the hype cycle. Let's talk about Containers on the hype cycle things like that. So it's it's really hard to you know You're you're talking about a community open stacks very hard to talk about as a single product Yeah, I mean, I mean, I would say it's basically like emerging from the trough of disillusionment, right? Like I was doing a podcast with someone earlier and uh It's like I was on meet the press all of a sudden they were like you said you hated open stack Or do you recant that now and it's like holy crap I thought I was just here for the free coffee But but uh, but I think I think there there was as I was telling them There was this dark time where there was definitely open stack was in the trough of disillusionment And there were lots of people who were like drive by pooping all over it and there were issues and things like that But nowadays like other than some people who just have gotten burned over the years by it and so have a grudge like Everyone seems kind of cool with it in the same way that once you're in the plateau of productivity It's like and I don't want to compare open stack to usb and stuff like that But like no one like gets excited or depressed about usb stuff It's just like you just plug it in and you go on with your life, right? And that's that's kind of what you want to get to in the plateau of productivity And so when there's not a lot of like excitement or hate around it Like that's usually the area where where you're emerging out of the trough That's my take at least you got anything you want to add brandon? No, all right Next question So hopefully we can make this quick, but I actually work for AT&T. Um, I am building you don't say Yeah I'm one of the leads helping build our new community team. We are 100 focused on developing upstream We're trying to get a bigger footprint in the community. We use open stack a lot We have a huge cloud zone and everything like that We're using it for and we want to be able to start giving back So the issue that we're running into is that a lot of developers nowadays have this like Terrible idea of what big corporations are and they don't really want to work for big corporations because it's like A no-no like oh, it's just the big guy. He's gonna stomp all over us or whatever So I was just wondering do you guys have any advice on What I can do to make a big corporation look Uh, I don't know better to the developer world I mean, I'm a developer and I'm fine with it But I know there's a lot of developers out there that are like no never Just because we're a big company. Yeah I mean, I think the more cool tech that you could talk about like be out there speaking at shows Be out there right like I don't know if you guys have a blog like an engineering blog or something like that But writing things that you think That the other like the community would actually be really interested in learning about things that hacker newsworthy type posts and That's what I would that's my recommendations It's just trying to get out there as much as possible and speaking about the cool technology You guys are using and starting to talk to people in different communities And maybe maybe it's not just like being in the open stack community But branching out to other communities as well and and sharing your knowledge with them as well Look up something. It's by the Burkana Institute And they have they have some a life cycle of emergence thing, which is really cool And so there's four keywords in this especially with regards to community that I run through my head every single day Name connect nourish and illuminate. So job number one name people You know give a shout out to what they're doing Just do that every single day connect people walk up and again marketing people are really good at this that typical thing Where you've got two developers you can go up and be like hey such and such meet such and such They're doing this cool thing. Hey meet such and such they're doing this that connects them that builds the fundamental relationships Nourish them you'll have people in your community who are a long time there Show go back to them and love them and say we really love what you're doing and how you're supporting and how you're working with us And finally the really biggest thing of all which again goes towards this this whole bit about having larger conversation is um illumination and illumination happens after you have You know 100 conversations and you find the signal from noise and then you publish the white paper or the blog post or run the next training So check check out Burkana Institute. They've they've got a great thing and community is the right word on all this you're doing exactly the right thing get involved upstream because Everybody I know the big companies working on open stack They're loved because individuals names get attached to them right all of a sudden You've got a really cool developer working for HP and when it's it's funny Like what literally we've had like three or four developers moving companies and all of a sudden It's like your allegiance for that company kind of moves with that person So keep keep doing pushing the community angle and yeah build that team. How about yourself Raymond? We'll just go a little bit over. Um, no, I fully agree with all of that stuff From my experience working at AT&T the question is whether you're trying to change the organization in some way Which you can't do at AT&T Or are you trying to uh change a little bit of perception around the organization so that you can build a really fun team? And it sounds like that's what you're trying to do. I fully agree with that advice and it's um It really is about building the kind of like connecting with the kind of people that inspire you and uh investing in them and Like that's exactly what you said and what you said. I'm down and before I close it I mean what what I would say to add to all that is Uh, if only to keep yourself sane Uh, figure out the people you don't care about right like segment out like like back at red monk We had this notion of of developers and what they pay for and there were the people who will pay you money The people who might pay you money the people will never pay you money, right? And similarly when it comes to will like me or whatever your goal is like As long as you're as long as you're very aware of the people who like will just never like you You know, you'll be happier when you wake up at three in the morning and need to use the restroom, right? Be able to go back to sleep But it's really important to always know like those people they don't like me and that's fine And and especially at a place like yourself But so hey those were great questions that we had and and thanks so much for for the panel This is really fun to uh have this discussion as we close out. So where where could people uh reach you? I'm if you will go to twitter you can find me at kote cote yourself Yes on twitter i'm at mel smo m e l s m o And like all developers, I exist exclusively on twitter. I'm tev viking te h viking Yeah, irc and twitter d f f l a n d e r s or yet. Yeah, you can easily google flanders and open stack and you'll find me Well, great. Well, thanks everyone for being here and attending and thanks to the panel