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Writer's pictureStathis Georgakopoulos

From tactics to strategy: Highlights from Future Developer Summit Episode 1

The Future Developer Summit 2021 features a central theme “DevRel, the next day” and is spread throughout the year across 4 episodes, each discussing a burning industry topic. Episode 1 went live on March 10, focusing on moving “From tactics to strategy”. In this post, I’ll highlight the key points from the sessions and where you can watch them.


Andreas Constantinou, the CEO of SlashData kicked off the event, sharing some key insights from our developer research. One big highlight?

There are 24.3 million developers in the world

If you want to know where they are based or which languages they use and their experience level, make sure to visit SlashData’s free tool Developer Population Calculator.


Panel Discussion | From tactics to strategy

Andreas went on to introduce to the event’s attendees the industry panel members: Alicia Spivak (Sr. Director, Developer Relations at Okta), Daniele Bernardi (Staff Platform Growth, Developer Relations at Twitter) and Chris Castle (Director, Developer Advocacy at Salesforce Heroku) who went on to discuss DevRel tactics and strategy.


Here is a summary of all the key points each speaker had to share:


Ali Spivak

  • Ali’s superpower? Cross-functional collaboration. Getting different groups to work together

  • Great documentation and especially community-led documentation is an incredible resource [for a company] to have

  • All companies that are successful, strike a need with their community. People want to be connected to something and connecting it to something more than a product is what makes you stand out

  • We want to figure out what community means: do we need a community that is closely tied to our company or should we focus on joining more communities?

  • Everyone wants their own community but whether you should grow or join a community depends on your product, goals and more importantly, the existing community’s needs and desires

Chris Castle

  • Chris’ Superpower? Creating polished product demos and making the DevRel team stronger

  • DevRel requires having strong soft skills

  • We have set a high bar for developer experience and we want our product demos to be fun and engaging

  • We’re working on finding the balance between a community that’s strongly tied to the company vs a community that’s tight within. Growing the community with an ethos vs just nurturing existing members

  • Community’s creativity is a very powerful thing that scares many companies from opening up their products to the community

  • If you want to get in DevRel, just build stuff and create things and share your excitement for technologies, communities or bringing people together

Danielle Bernandi

  • Danielle’s superpower? The ability to communicate regardless of the channel or medium

  • Look-alike audiences have proven successful. We highlighted developers who have succeeded in a specific area, so we worked on the data to understand usage and find more developers like these

  • We don’t build things for developers, we build them with developers

  • What we really do is join a community that developers have built for ourselves.

  • You become an influential part of the community by helping the community solve problems. And yet is the community that solves many problems and builds things for us with its very creative members

  • If you want to join DevRel and are an introvert, don’t worry about it! Just build something and show your passion and have empathy.

  • Consistency across your offerings is crucial.


The next day of COVID-19 pandemic: How developers work and learn

Kostas Korakitis, Research Operations Manager at SlashData went on to present the latest updates that developers had to share about the way they were affected by the pandemic and how it led to changes in their education or work life.

Here are some highlights:

  • About half of the developers were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. 30% went fully remote, but only a third think this will last forever.

  • Beginners in software development were affected the least in the way they work.

  • Developers working for large enterprises were by far the most likely to go fully remote during the pandemic.

  • Switching to fully remote work was much more common in the West than in the East.

  • Young developers (18-24 years old) were the most likely to experience changes in the ways they learn.



Episode 2 is coming on June 9.

The episode’s theme is “Developer-led business growth” where industry leaders will discuss how developers can contribute and even drive a business’s success.

It will also feature an industry panel, a trends update on how developers are influencing business decisions and a Masterclass on building effective communications channels with developers.

Agenda | Episode 2: Developer-led business growth

June 9, 2021 | Time is shown in PT


08:00 Welcome Address

Andreas Constantinou, Founder & CEO at SlashData

08:10 Ιndustry Panel

Tyler Jewell, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital

Kimberlee Archer, Head Of Global Marketing - AR & Camera at Snap Inc.

Patrick Chanezon, GM, Cloud Developer Advocacy at Microsoft

Emilio Salvador, PM, Cloud Developer Advocacy at Google

08:40 Break

08:45 Developer Trends Update Q1, 2021

How developers are influencing business decisions

Jack Witkowski, Data Storyteller at SlashData

09:00 Community Networking

 

09:10 Master Class*

Building effective communications channels with developers

Christina Voskoglou, Sr. Director of Research at SlashData

10:00 Thought Leader Networking*

* Accessible to Thought Leader Pass holders.


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