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 when 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 why: why are you engaging in the first place? 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 using persuasion or public speaking as a vehicle. Where
public speaking sees changed behavior as its goal, Developer Evangelism is more
nuanced.
Here's the list
It is fine to over-simplify at this point. Developer
Evangelism 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 objectives. It is, however, reasonable to span more than one with some
planning.
Introduce. One
of the most common deliverables 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 correct communities. This is where breath matters,
and depth doesn’t.
In this phase the assumption is that most of your
audience has no idea of what you are about to say. The topics are targeted, simple,
with outcomes that are measured by interest, awareness, and possibly
registration. This can mean hard work, a lot of travel, and a massive
investment online.
On the whole, this is a banal use case for a Developer
Evangelism team. This approach often indicates short-sighted leadership chasing
metrics that, generally, are changing or artificial or unimportant. It’s an
okay place to start, but no team should consider this their destination, just
warming the engines.
Educate. Another
common deliverable of Developer Evangelism is spreading understanding. The
effort applied in this pillar is a direct reflection to the quality of
available documentation. In leu of excellent examples, tutorials and docs,
Developer Evangelism fills the gaps with education-oriented content.
The biggest problem with this aspect of Developer
Evangelism is that education is time-consuming, mundane, and distracting from
bigger, better strategies. It usually indicates the types of articles and
sessions requiring considerable preparation yet viewed by a limited few.
Developer Evangelists are overqualified to impact the
effectiveness of documentation. To that end, their involvement is very
important. They are not always the best technical writers or tutorial authors,
but they can be great. Still, the goal is to escape 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 be like later in their career, or what they could be later
in a project’s cycle. Inspiration says, “I understand where you are” and challenges
developers with “can you imagine where you could be”?
These engagements span technologies, products, and
communities. They are relevant because they speak to the “why?” of a concept
before speaking to the “how?” of the same. It elevates a developer from
technical leadership to thought leadership, landing the Evangelist’s message as
a secondary win.
What do I mean?
This is amazingly simple, yet illusive. Developer Evangelism is often explained
as recognizing where a developer is in their personal journey, meeting them there
and helping them succeed. Anyone can see this is noble, but this is also a very
small, shallow vision to cast.
As a Developer Evangelist, should you limit yourself to attaching
to a developer, you greatly confound your opportunity to succeed. We want to
understand where developers are only so we can go talk with them, but why we
talk to them is totally different. We talk to them to change their journey.
Inspiration is the
power to cast a 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 habits. That is, unless you and I are already
aligned – then my goal is to simply encourage you where you are.
Novice Developer Evangelists chase “awareness.” Great
Developer Evangelists are hamstrung by insufficient documentation. But when we
stop with “Hello world”, when we stop teaching class, we can start challenging developers
to be more. No Developer Evangelist fights for attention in that world.
How do you get
there? It’s easy. Stop and ask yourself why you are about to engage. Is it
because you are chasing awareness? Because awareness isn’t 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 subject to their tactical
needs.
Engage to change. Engage to improve. Engage to inspire;
and, inspiration starts with vision-casting. The ability to paint a picture of something
that isn’t, but something that could be, and to challenge someone in a
realistic way to push toward that vision, that shared vision you created.
Let developers reframe your vision as theirs. Then show
them your tools that help them achieve that.
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 – don’t stop
with today when you should be showing them tomorrow.
Best of luck.