Evangelism, like GitLab said (https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relations/developer-evangelism/#utms-for-url-tagging-and-tracking), is essential. That's sure. But how to scale up a team to grow that skill inside the company?
Is it better to grow it internally (logically, a founder is the best person to communicate his project)? But how a tech person can develop marketing and communication skills?
Or the best way is to recruit a skilled DevRel person or instead of a marketing person and collaborate in creating great content?
> Is it better to grow it internally?...Or the best way is to recruit a skilled DevRel person or instead of a marketing person and collaborate in creating great content?
I work with ~70 developer tools companies on devrel/marketing and the biggest killer has got to be founders who think they can just throw marketing over a wall to someone else.
Initially, you as the founder need to become that skilled DevRel person.
If not you, get a co-founder level person to help you. The truth is, in the early days, nobody else will care about the project like you do, so you need to be out there:
- Writing about it
- Demo-ing it
- Talking about it (eg: conferences and meetups)
- Talking to users and contributors
Eventually, you'll need to build a playbook that another DevRel or Marketing person can execute, but you can't outsource this when you're still finding product-market fit.
Write/talk/communicate about:
* problems the project solves
* the broader space the project is in
* technical challenges you've encountered and overcome or sidestepped (for a tech audience)
* how your customers are using the product to make their lives betterNow I only have to upgrade my copywriting skills to pass better the message.
What I noticed is, since the project is an open-source App, that is way easier to show the App in person instead of writing about it.
I'm looking to events to be a speaker more than anything
I think this is the main point, I have many and many pages to create a playbook, but, since the project still finding product-market fit, this is a skill that have to come from the founders.
Maybe outsourcing Marketing things such as analytics and so on, but doing DevRel and evangelism on your own.
Thanks for your point of view!
Not everyone can be a good communicator. You can learn communication skills, but sure it helps if you are an extrovert and not introvert.
Who knows better than developer how developers think, how do they operate, what do they expect from products?
Look at it from this perspective, can you learn a marketing person developer skills? You could but there is no need. He heeds to understand the facts about the product, target audience, technology landscape, etc.
I personally think that the core ov the DevRel team should be developers that know the developer community. And then you build upon that.
I've joined my first OSS project in 2009 (left in 2020), and I have to admit - communication can be challenging. There are many best practices, little are documented, and projects and companies differ in their workflows.
Here are few things I would encourage to do, or ensure to have in the very beginning:
- Be transparent in all your decisions. Discuss in the open, record meetings for the public, share the meeting notes with everyone. If the project reaches a level where everything is discussed behind closed doors, and the only community updates are marketing blog posts and AMA threads ... that's a warning signal to lose your community.
- Provide a handbook or documentation for all workflows. How to contribute, which direction/roadmap (in text form, not as a Git* issue board). Avoid so-called "product conferences" where you announce your roadmap. Instead, be open and have milestones to follow and discuss.
- Community members should _never_ be treated as "you can submit a patch, but don't bug me further". Assume positive intent, and get feedback from problem reports.
- Do not moderate or manage a community. Help seed the knowledge, and share trust with creating a governance structure (core team, community advisors, etc.). _Never_ silently remove granted permissions, losing trust. (that happened to me in 2020, I then made the decision to leave the OSS project Icinga after 11 years)
- Establish a sense of belonging, share praise and encourage to contribute. Handle code of conduct violations with care, ensuring everyone feels safe.
- Transfer knowledge in issue description, debug stories, reviews and encourage contributors to learn and follow. Coach and mentor fellow and future contributors. Take the time to thank everyone for their contributions.
- Evaluate roles. A founder or backend developer as community builder may work in the beginning. Plan to hire additional resources who can lead the conversation, and involve teams when necessary. Encourage to learn new technologies and stay in the loop.
- Document everything on the way, lessons learned, changes, what worked, what did not. Do retrospectives when announcements did not work the way you intended. Verify the defined actions.
- Find evangelists/advocates in your company and community, give them visibility and push them in all collaborations. Ask friends who love social media, get the technical content writer champion, and give everyone a chance to learn and grow. Don't expect to hire experts. Instead, focus on existing DevRel communities and exchange knowledge and experiences within the community.
- When you grow, do not hide as a leader. Be approachable with your team, and engage with your community. Coffee chats, meetups, etc. - follow the thought: Everyone can contribute.
There's more to that, I've only shared a few quick thoughts now. Happy to chat more :)
If you want to dive into the topic even more - I've shared my 10 years in OSS community story and all things learned in a talk at the Open Source at Siemens event in 2021.
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HnciJEQ8dDiHMaq1APg5...
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT63olXdS-I
I've switched from a DevOps position to become the Product Owner, managing the delivery of the open-source project and the day to day work, but now I see lack of time in developing a real evangelism and DevRel things inside the Leapp project.
I'm completely aware that this is THE crucial part of an open-source project and I really love OSS because of the contributing from all around the world.
But is turning that maintain and grow a community around the project, make the project well known, is a full time job for a founder of a project.
I still don't know if I have the right skill for that kind of job and where a such particular job can bring me in the future, together with the Noovolari company.
BTW, this is my project (https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp) and I would love to chat more with you!
> BTW, this is my project (https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp)
Looks great. A few suggestions for the first impression opening the project:
- Switch to dark mode and verify that the images work in the README and other docs. There is a logo which cannot be seen on the site, it's dark and black.
- Focus on telling the "problem to solve" and "why" in the introduction https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp#leapp I initially did not understand the term "cloud access app"
- The screenshot description is AWS focussed. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9497292/114399348-... If you don't know AWS specifics, it is hard to understand. Think of a more high level catchy architecture overview, or working example. Catch your marketing term with "multiple cloud access strategies". Maybe use a Gif to showcase the key items as done in the one in "key features"
- Installation links to a release download page. https://www.leapp.cloud/releases Improve this, highly recommend to create documentation guides for Windows, Linux and macOS, explaining the different commands step-by-step, more tutorial alike.
Actually, your website has a docs section, but it is not linked from the GH Readme. Suggest to link to https://docs.leapp.cloud/installation/install-leapp/ instead of the releases page.
Here's a PR to fix it: https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/pull/215
- You are using MkDocs for the documentation. That's amazing <3
- PR template - while fixing the readme, I was confused by the template structure. Maybe get inspired by GitLab MR (similar to PR) templates? Gary Bell wrote a great blog post about them: https://www.garybell.co.uk/merge-request-templates/
- You are using a DCO which requires all commits to be signed off. That's impossible with using the browser to make direct edits to the docs, or otherwise suggestions. It may throw off contributors after their first pull request (it throws me off every time I consider contributing on a mobile device).
Did now on my desktop terminal:
cd /tmp && git clone https://github.com/dnsmichi/leapp && cd leapp && git checkout patch-1 && git commit --amend -s && git push -f
Suggestion: Document the DCO requirement more visible, e.g. with a badge in the README.
- The PR fails because because of a check https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/runs/4971776167?check_sui...
"Error: No release type found in pull request title "Update URLs to installation docs in README". Add a prefix to indicate what kind of release this pull request corresponds to (see https://www.conventionalcommits.org/)."
That's additional work for contributors. After fixing the DCO sign-off, the next thing to do. Then again, the commit also needs a "docs: " prefix. At this point, I would have lost the desire to contribute.
- Why is the contributing.md hidden in the .github directory (https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/blob/master/.github/CONTR...) and not present in the main repository? I was specifically looking for it at the repository top level when looking to contribute.
- https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/blob/master/.github/CONTR... encourages you with "Please send a GitHub Pull Request to Leapp with a clear list of what you've done (read more about pull requests)."
What's a clear list of changes?
Suggestions in a new PR: https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/pull/216
- https://docs.leapp.cloud/contributing/get-involved/ links from the docs to contributing.md As discovered above, contributing.md is more a "things to review" document. It should be the call-to-action document. Or maybe move the content from contributing.md entirely into your documentation - and only link there. I do the same with https://o11y.love/contributing/ for example
- Make it easy to spin up a development environment - I don't see any guides to do so?
Suggestion: Add Gitpod or a local Docker build and a development.md to your repository. This will be critical for your success to attract contributors.
- https://docs.leapp.cloud/contributing/project-structure/ exists but is not linked in contributing.md
- Labels help wanted / good first issue are used, but they are not explained/linked in the contributing guide. If you are not familiar with these label types, contributions are harder.
Suggestion: Fix this by adding the Call-to-action in your contribution guides.
https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3A... + https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3A...
Above are my first impressions starting with the project and trying to find ways to contribute. I did not read the source code yet. I'd suggest addressing them, and then focus on DevRel and marketing ideas. The first impression of a project is crucial to help seed the community plants :)
the experience with my project (https://github.com/Noovolari/leapp) is that if someone know the project it become an habit. And users tends to do WOM to other devs. But how to accelerate this project in a pandemic world, without the ability to partecipate to events in person?
You might ask instead "Why is it so difficult for my project to get adoption at all?"
And this is the problem marketers have been dealing with for 100 years. The market is crowded, people are busy with their own lives. For OSS projects, both of these are even more true.
So, how can you succeed? There's no magic bullet. There are many paths:
* finding 10, 100 people that love your project and will evangelize it
* spend money on ads to educate folks about it
* spend your time writing great content about the space so that some percentage of folks will find it and then learn about your project
* do direct outreach to people talking about the problems your project solves.
Now I work with open-source B2D company, when I am just entering into the world of developer marketing. And I can't emphasize enough how many times I heard - developers don't like marketing. My "developers" days finished back when I was writing lines of code on my Commodore C-64, so yeah, I am no developer.
But I think, that marketing has a bad rep, along with media, public relations (I know PR means something different here) and other stuff, like the rise of awful "influencer marketing" that I hate.
But one thing I learned all these years, working in different companies, markets, and even doing political campaigning. And that's my advice to you: - be honest - if it is difficult, then tell us, people who are not psychopaths tend to help other people, like we are listening your struggles and want to help you - be yourself - stupid I know, stupid expression by life coachers, but yeah, you are building something, but you are a person - so be yourself, and you will attract other people. - and last - give something back, contribute
That's it.
And yeah, DevRel and Marketing should be like one, like a team.