I would like to talk about the reasons for a Developer Evangelist to engage an audience. We already understand the three ways we can engage: online, personal, and onstage.
As a reminder, online engagement has the greatest reach but the least impact, personal engagement has the greatest impact but the least reach, and onstage engagement is a combination of the two with varying results depending on skill, style, and approach.
But as you prepare your talk, ask yourself why. Why are you engaging in the first place? As you are driving to a conference or meetup, ask yourself again: why are you engaging? I would assert there are three reasons for Developer Evangelism engagement.
When it comes to persuasion or public speaking, there is only one reason for engagement. Developer Evangelism is a specialized engagement strategy that uses persuasion or public speaking as a vehicle. Where public speaking aims at changed behavior, Developer Evangelism is more nuanced.
Here’s the list
It is fine to oversimplify at this point. Developer Evangelists engage audiences to either 1) introduce, 2) educate, or 3) inspire. It is not practical to approach any engagement with the goal of accomplishing all three. It is, however, reasonable to span more than one with some planning.
Introduce. One of the most common tasks of Developer Evangelism is to get the word out. Companies with new products rely on these boots on the ground to bring awareness of those products to the right communities. This is where breadth matters, not depth.
In this phase, the assumption is that most of your audience has no idea what you are about to say. The topics are targeted and simple, with outcomes measured by interest, awareness, and possibly registration. This can mean hard work, a lot of travel, and a large online investment.
On the whole, this is a basic use case for a Developer Evangelism team. It often signals short-sighted leadership chasing metrics that are usually artificial, changing, or unimportant. It is an acceptable place to start, but no team should consider this their destination. It is only warming the engines.
Educate. Another common task of Developer Evangelism is spreading understanding. The effort applied here is directly related to the quality of available documentation. In place of excellent examples, tutorials, and docs, Developer Evangelism fills the gaps with education-oriented content.
The biggest problem with this aspect is that education is time-consuming, mundane, and distracting from bigger, better strategies. It usually results in articles and sessions that require significant preparation yet are seen by only a few.
Developer Evangelists are overqualified to impact the effectiveness of documentation, but their involvement is very important. They are not always the best technical writers or tutorial authors, though they can be. Still, the goal is to move beyond this strategy quickly. Get it over with.
Inspire. The highest form of Developer Evangelism is to present developers with a prototype of what they could become later in their career or later in a project’s cycle. Inspiration says, “I understand where you are” and then asks, “Can you imagine where you could be?”
These engagements span technologies, products, and communities. They are relevant because they speak to the “why” before the “how.” They elevate a developer from technical leadership to thought leadership, making the Evangelist’s message a secondary win.
What do I mean? This is simple, yet elusive. Developer Evangelism is often explained as recognizing where a developer is in their personal journey, meeting them there, and helping them succeed. That is noble, but it is also too small and too shallow a vision.
As a Developer Evangelist, if you only attach to a developer’s current situation, you limit your own opportunity to succeed. We want to understand where developers are so we can talk with them, but the reason we talk to them is different. We talk to them to change their journey.
Inspiration is the power to cast vision into someone else’s life. Yes, life. My goal is to change your college major. My goal is to change your career goals. My goal is to change your behavior and your habits. Unless you and I are already aligned, then my goal is simply to encourage you where you are.
Novice Developer Evangelists chase “awareness.” Great Developer Evangelists can get stuck filling the gap of poor documentation. But when we stop at “Hello World,” when we stop teaching class, we miss the chance to challenge developers to be more. No Developer Evangelist needs to fight for attention at that level.
How do you get there? It is easy. Stop and ask yourself why you are about to engage. Is it because you are chasing awareness? Awareness is not important to the developer. Is it because you are trying to teach an approach? Developers have libraries of blogs for that. You need to refine your intent.
You must find goals that matter to developers without making yourself captive to their tactical needs.
Engage to change. Engage to improve. Engage to inspire. And inspiration begins with vision casting, the ability to paint a picture of something that is not yet real but could be, then challenge someone in a realistic way to pursue that vision, that shared vision you have created.
Let developers reframe your vision as theirs. Then show them the tools that can help them achieve it.
Intentional engagement is powerful, and in the end, everyone wins. Give them a fish, teach them to fish, or show them a picture of a fishing boat and inspire them to learn sailing and seafaring. Do not stop with today when you should be showing them tomorrow.
Best of luck.