Conclusion
Wherein I dispel my apparent cynicism. A little bit.
You and me, we do DevRel. Let’s take a moment and be blunt.
DevRel is, for me, about building trust, at scale. Except you can’t really build trust at scale. That’s kinda the nature of trust — it doesn’t scale. So we have all these cool tools in our toolbelt to get around this fact.
But once we start talking about “tools to scale trust”, well I dunno about you, but I start feeling awfully cynical. Maybe you noticed.
I begin to feel that developer relations is all about marketing to people who really don’t want to be marketed to. (Although, really, who does want to be marketed to? Maybe developers are just more explicit about their desires.) And then I begin to feel dirty. I begin to feel like my job is really all about manipulating people.
Is DevRel really this Machiavellian?
Obviously, it can be if you let it. But the Machiavellian developer evangelist will soon or later be found out, and their entire trust network undermined. Trust is fragile like that.
Although charisma can be faked, DevRel also requires genuine enthusiasm for your platform or product. I emphasize “genuine”, because it’s really hard to have fake enthusiasm. If your product or platform is no good, it doesn’t matter how much you flail your arms and smile and talk, no one will take you seriously. But if your product or platform really is very good, it’s actually difficult not to be actually enthusiastic about it.
The infectiousness of enthusiasm is our ally, not just in growing trust in us and our products, but for own psychological well-being. When we can see our enthusiasm start to spread, this is when I begin to feel re-assured that I’m not some detestable manipulator, that I’m not just engaged in psy-ops marketing designed to undermine the will of others, but that I am actually engaged in an activity that offers something of value to others.
Look for those moments of spreading enthusiasm. Create them wherever you can. If only for yourself. And if you can’t create them, if that enthusiasm is missing, take that as a signal that you’re at the wrong place, and use that knowledge to get yourself somewhere better.
As for me: I hope you can see and share in my enthusiasm for DevRel. And if you give me a chance, I hope I can get you as fired up about security as I am 😆
Thanks for reading along.
If you’re just joining us, however, you’ll want to head back to the intro and find your way from there 🤗
- Introduction: DevRel is about scaling trust
- Part 1: Convincing people to trust you
- Part 2: Lots of people, all at once
- Part 3: Selling pizza for favors
- Part 4: Surrogates, because this shit is too hard
- Part 5: Ambassadors and community
- Conclusion: Wherein I dispel my apparent cynicism (you are here)
Who am I? Hi! I’m @DEGoodmanWilson, and I’m the head of developer relations at Sqreen. We give your web application the ability to defend itself against attacks. You should try it out.
