Welcome to the DevLounge: Partner Summit ’23 Takeaways
If you weren’t able to join our Partner Summit in Austin last week, I wanted to provide a summary and my own personal takeaways, because this event was really something else!
If you were able to attend the summit and you enjoyed the DevLounge or anything dev-related, be sure to mention it in your post-summit survey! The more of you that advocate for more developer-centric content and more developer involvement in these events, the more we’ll get.
Here are four significant takeaways from the Partner Summit:
We had a DevLounge! 🛋️
This might not seem like a big deal, but this is the first year DevRel (and developers in general) had a dedicated space for presentations, demos, and connecting with each other during one of BigCommerce’s Partner Summits. I think this is fairly symbolic of our ever-increasing org-wide focus on developer experience and acknowledgment that developers are an incredibly integral part of the BigCommerce machine.
The stoke level for the BigAI Hackathon is HIGH! 🔋
I didn’t attend many main stage presentations because I was working on our lightning talks and other demos, but I couldn’t even keep count of how many folks came up to me to talk about the hackathon and express how excited they were. BigCommerce is continuing to pursue and exemplify innovation in the e-commerce space while simultaneously wanting our users, developers like you, to be building the future alongside us. Be sure to register for the hackathon before August 7th!
Our first EVER developer happy hour: Beers & BigCommerce Devs🍻
Huge shout out to all the developers, both internal BigCommerce engineers and the external developers that make up our developer community, for coming out and joining us the day after the summit for this fun event! It was so cool to meet more of you in real life, and witnessing the synergy in the room and watching community members connect with our engineers, PMs, and each other was so inspiring.
The BigCommerce community is unmatched 🤍
I got to meet so many coworkers, developers, and merchants over the last few days and everyone was so excited about what they’re building, contributing to the platform, or doing behind the scenes. Folks were asking questions, making connections, working to enable one another, and showing such pure vulnerability that it reminded me we are so much more than a (kick-ass) e-commerce platform.
What are some of the things we are doing?
We are, at the end of the day, a community of folks who truly believes that a rising tide raises all ships. The theme this year was “The Power of Partnerships” and I think the BigCommerce community is a world-class example of leaning into each other’s strengths makes everyone stronger.
If you missed the session where Heather, Stephen, and I kicked off the day but you’re interested in what the Developer Relations update we gave was, the TLDR; is below:
Our Developer Relations roadmap is centered completely around creating the best developer experience on the BigCommerce platform we possibly can. We hear your feedback and this is how we’re putting it into action.
Focusing on quality, consistently maintained Open Source content
Our DevRel team is working closely with engineering and product teams to stay on top of Open Source pull requests, GitHub issues, and maintaining Open Source products. If there’s one in particular you have in mind, please reach out and we’ll get it on our roadmap! If you want to check out what our Open Source offerings currently look like, head over here to check them out.
Hosting Solution Series webinars
We’ve kicked off our Solution Series, an ongoing webinar series where we’ll be interviewing community members who have built cool tools or solutions for the platform, as well as bringing on BigCommerce internal engineers to talk about new products we’re rolling out! Check out our first Solution Series with Fueled.io’s founder, Sean Larkin. If you’d like a chance to demo something cool you’ve built or come on to have a fun discussion about a topic relevant to our community, reach out to me anytime!
Attending, hosting, and supporting more events
Events like the Partner Summit, Developer Happy Hour, and the upcoming BIgAI Hackathon! We’re always thinking of fun engaging ways to work with our developer community while also creating real, tangible value. If you don’t know about the hackathon, click here to learn more, and if you’re interested in hosting your own BigCommerce event, reach out to us about how we can support community-led initiatives!
Upping our presence in forums like Stack Overflow, and Slack
If you start seeing Heather, Stephen me or any other BigCommerce folks in Slack, Stack Overflow, the BigCommerce forum and elsewhere in the near future, it’s intentional! We want to be sure our community is getting its questions answered and getting the support you need. You’re always welcome to shoot me a DM if your questions aren’t being answered!
Overhauling the Developer Center based on your feedback
Mark and Shawn, our Developer Experience Engineering team, are going to be talking about that as the voice of the developer, our feedback (and yours!) is constantly being added to the roadmap to make that the most useful and well-designed resource it can possibly be. If you’ve used the Developer Center recently, you likely noticed the major improvements. This is intentional and has been a HUGE project for our teams this year. If you haven’t used it, we highly recommend you check it out and let us know what you think!
This above isn’t a comprehensive list, and the list ebbs and flows as our developer community’s needs do. If you have an idea, a suggestion, feedback on what you’ve read, or anything in between, our doors are always open! Please feel free to reach out to any of us anytime, or catch all of our attention by emailing devrel@bigcommerce.com.
This event was an incredible reminder of what we can all accomplish when we work together, and I’m psyched to keep helping build the best e-commerce platform with you, our developer community, by our sides! Cheers to Partner Summit ’23.
Now, time to get back to work! #LFG 🚀
