Scaling Trust: Start With People
Scaling Trust with DevRel, Pt. 1
Developer Relations begins with trust, and trust begins with people.
This is part 1 of a series.
In case you missed it, we’ve been talking about how Developer Relations is fundamentally about building and scaling trust. In this article, I want to talk about the ontological underpinnings of that endeavor, meeting people, and building relationships with them.
Yeah, that’s right: I want to talk about networking (ugh). Nothing else that we do will work without building a strong foundation of real, personal relationships with developers.
This shit is hard. Developers are often suspicious and introverted by their nature. (But not always! Hello Duretti if you’re even reading this!) They aren’t always easy to find (the ones you are looking for, anyway), and they don’t always want to make friends (and hell, maybe you don’t either). So, even though this is a fundamental activity of DevRel, it usually piggybacks on other activities. Attending meetups can be effective, but requires time and energy — and anyway such ephemeral meetings rarely involve an exchange of value.
Did I say “exchange of value”? Yeah I did. I said we were going to be frank. Relationships, at least in our field, begin with you giving a developer something of value, something helpful. Not “maybe helpful”, but “actually, obviously helpful”. This might be a timely piece of advice, actionable long-form content, or an item or experience that raises their status among their peers (like cool fucking socks).
Such opportunities for exchange are uncommon, and each is different and must be carefully read. The idea, then, is to put yourself in places that maximize the possibility for such an exchange (like at your company’s booth at a conference, or as the speaker at a meetup), and to arm yourself with as much useful knowledge as possible. And swag, definitely swag.
Now after all this preparation you’ve met someone, and buffed them with some timely advice and some sweet stickers — now what? Keep the conversation going after you part ways. Find as many opportunities to be valuable to them. Not because you are a Machiavellian jackass, but because you actually give a shit. This may be the hardest part of DevRel, the giving a shit. It’s draining. And absolutely necessary.
People have a great sense, I’m sure you’ve observed, for when someone is not being genuine, for bullshit. And unless you are a master manipulator, they will see right through you, and all that trust you’ve built up is gone in a blink.
This is just one reason why trust is so hard to scale.
Side note: This is also why DevRel cannot in any way be connected to sales, not ever. If someone discovers that your “helpful advice” is being driven by sales KPIs (and OMG they have their ways of discovering the truth), it doesn’t matter how pure your intentions. Basically everyone, but developers especially, hates the feeling that they are being sold something. This is among the worst kinds of manipulation that people are forced to endure. So keep DevRel out of sales. Seriously.
You’ve been reading Part 1 in an ever-increasingly mis-conceived trilogy of posts on scaling trust with Developer Relations.
Next time? Let’s move beyond the one-on-one, and think about parallelizing the task of communicating with people.
If you’re just joining us, however, you’ll want to head back to the intro and find your way from there 🤗
- Intro: DevRel is about scaling trust
- Part 1: Convincing people to trust you (You are here)
- Part 2: Parallelize yourself
- 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
Who am I? Hi! I’m D.E. Goodman-Wilson, 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.
