Developer Relations Activity Patterns

Developer relations (DevRel) go beyond just blog posts, conference talks, and clever tweets. It is a discipline grounded in intention, empathy, and consistent actions. This book outlines foundational strategies employed by successful DevRel teams in just 39 focused patterns.

Using a tactical approach to effectively engage in developer relations, eachpattern is based on real-world experience and designed for scalability. By using a pattern form to describe the various activities of developer relations in detail, the book clearly lays out the intention, shows how to create empathy with your audience, and provides a clear guide on how to execute it. Within this book, you'll discover how to extend your reach, enhance meaningful interactions, and align your initiatives with both developer communities and company strategy without compromising your values or experiencing burnout.

Whether you're a solo advocate, managing a small startup team, or leading DevRel on a larger scale, Developer Relations Activity Patterns is your practical playbook for refining strategy and amplifying your impact.   

You will:

• Gain a greater understanding of what developer relations means and the range of activities under its remit
• Learn the tools, approaches, and new tactics for developer community engagement
• Understand how and when to apply each tactic, based on your aims and objectives

This Book Is For:  

Developer Relations teams, including group leaders, direct reports, senior executives in the developer community, and company product managers looking to understand and establish a DevRel function in their organization.

Ted Neward is a tech consultant, writer, and regular keynote speaker with over twenty years of experience. He has been a part of the DevRel universe since before it had a name, including the creation and development of DevRel teams for several companies. He is an authority in Java and .NET technologies, programming languages of all forms, back-end enterprise software systems, and virtual machine/execution engine plumbing. He is the author or co-author of several books, has been an IBM Champion of Cloud, a Microsoft MVP, an INETA speaker and a PluralSight course author, as well a member of several Java JSRs. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two cats, twelve laptops, seven tablets, nine phones and a rather large utility bill. 

Scott T. McAllister spent over a decade building software in several industries before discovering the world of Developer Relations. Since then, Scott has served as a Developer Advocate at Smartsheet, PagerDuty, and ngrok. Now, he helps others explore tenancy in Kubernetes as a Principal Developer Advocate at vCluster.

David Neal is a family man, geek, illustrator, musician, international keynote speaker, and seasoned software developer. He has spent the last 12 years passionately engaged in the developer community in Developer Relations roles at organizations such as Okta, Asana, Slack, Plaid, and Pluralsight. Before DevRel, David spent over 15 years building scalable web applications from startups to large corporations. His mission is to empower folks worldwide to be more awesome.

Chris Woodruff has been at the forefront of software development since before the first .COM boom, building a career that spans enterprise web development, cloud solutions, software analytics, and developer relations. His work as a previous Developer Advocate at JetBrains and currently as a Solutions Architect allows him to apply his deep technical knowledge to solving complex challenges, with a focus on API design and scalable architectures.  He is a Microsoft MVP in the areas of .NET and Web Development.