How rock climbing made me a better Developer Advocate
A few years ago, I was at an unconference session at the Community Leadership Summit run by Tamao, Nakahara. called “Gamification sucks for me, does it suck for you?” The answer was, yes, it totally sucks for me!
Throughout the years as I’ve worked in Developer Relations people have asked me “How do you motivate your advocates? How do you make people want to do more for your brand?”
Gamification is seen as a strategy for inspiring and motivating your community to become advocates. You’re told gamification can give you product feedback, contributions, blog posts, testimonials, and more but gamification sucks for everyone except in games like Candy Crush! Why? It’s impersonal, and completely focused on rewards as fulfillment.
Now when people ask me if I use gamification for my community, I say, “No, I don’t, but have you tried rock climbing?”

Now you might be thinking what does Rock Climbing have to do with Developer Advocacy?
I started off rock climbing a few months ago, and I noticed there’s a few elements of rock climbing that are uniquely motivating that have also taught me how to be a better developer advocate.
- Rock climbers have a clear path for success
- Climbers are often armed with the right tools for success
- Climbing communities are now being built around inclusion
This first post will focus on building a path for user success. In this post, I discuss how you can motivate your community by offering them a clear path towards achievement.
Give them a path
Every route you take when you do indoor climbing has a grade. In bouldering, where you are climbing without a harness, grades can go from V0-V14, with the easiest ones starting at V0. As someone who is new to climbing, you can see a clear progression of your skills. You know exactly where you can go.
Offer this type of clear path of advancement to your community. Show them how they will advance, whether it’s just becoming a better developer or getting a promotion, or starting an open source project. It might be helpful to set up a customer journey map to see the places your community can go!
So what do you need to do to empower your community?
- Build your community’s journey: Try to figure out the steps they can take to advance through your community. Where are places that you can activate them?
- Figure out how to motivate them: Think about what makes them tick, how are they going to get value out of being part of your community?
- Show them what “getting to the top” looks like: If they don’t know what success is, they won’t be able to become successful. Be clear with your direction on how they can be amazing advocates, and help them get there.
Now that you have people ready to contribute, how to you get them to actually complete those activities? In my next post, I’ll share how you can activate your community by giving them the tools to be successful.
