DevRelCon NYC Unconf - Building a DevRel Foundation Open Discussion

[anajsana]

These meeting notes capture the key points and discussions during DevRelCon NYC unconference sessions around the formation of a Developer Relations Foundation, highlighting the challenges, goals, and next steps identified by the ~20 participants who participated on days 1 and 2

Participants' names have been anonymized. If you participated and would like your name or affiliation to be acknowledged in this discussion, please add your name to this thread as a comment below

Intro

1. Participants introduced themselves, sharing their backgrounds and interests in DevRel
2. The moderator explained the idea of a foundation to professionalize the DevRel field and provide structured support
3. Space for open forum starts

Shared Expectations for the Foundation

• Professionalism and Open Practices: Establishing a body to professionalize DevRel work transparently
• Skill Migration and Bootstrapping: Helping developers transition into DevRel roles by leveraging existing skills
• Business Value: Translating DevRel activities into business value understandable by executives, stakeholders and decision-makers
• Core Audience vs. Developer buy-In: Addressing the needs of developers as the core audience versus needing developer buy-in for selling software (?)
• Open Source Projects: Managing the unique challenges of open source projects, such as identifying and understanding users
• Career Paths: Defining career paths within DevRel and providing guidance on how to enter the field
• Collaborating with already existing communities, elevating the already work done through the foundation, to reach more people

Notes - Shared Challenges

Also available in this link

Comment	Segment
What is the value prop of DevRel & how do you measure it?	DevRel value
How do you track people (sales) through the funnel / journey towards customer (and maturity)	Tracking and metrics
How to track feedback from community and make meaningful roadmap changes to product.	DevRel as a business influencer
I’m an advocate and I want to make the job sustainable to me. How do I drive value for myself vs the company. How do I separate personal and company time. How do I take assets from current company to broader career goals. How do I quantify value from going to conferences (metrics for other people).	Professional growth
Positioning devrel with common language (Phil + Matthew talk). This is the flywheel of devrel, this is the sales funnel, what is the common language that we use to prove the value of DevRel. This should be shared for all companies.	Common language / definitions / frameworks
How to define: This is how DevRel drives value for the different business segments. Where do we fit. How do they fit and drive value for the other orgs.	DevRel as a business influencer
Migrating the skills as a dev into a new domain (DevRel). Resources for getting started + growth + maturity.	Professional growth
Curating frameworks & metrics that allows you to bootstrap into it.	Common language / definitions / frameworks
Correlate the activities of DevRel into the business value. Showing value to exec teams.	DevRel as a business influencer
Different orgs are going to have diff ways of mapping the value of DevRel to the business. Different paths to prove and execute value. Based on above comment.	DevRel personas
Open source devrel challenges. Companies with core metrics that they are moving towards vs companies that don’t have access to user data. Different personas / paths.	DevRel personasTracking and Metrics
Common terminology to talk about what you are. Many ways that devrel is done on each company	Common language / definitions / frameworks
DevRel career - paths for DevRel in and outside of Devrel. Also, getting into DevRel.	Professional growth
As DevRel, getting started. Metrics, place in the company (org), and other targets	Common language / definitions / frameworksTracking and metrics
Directory of people - who’s in each space, their region, build connections for other people in the industry. Who can you reach out to for specific DevRel industries / questions.	DevRel personas
Tools, strategies, network - tools (e.g. product hunt).	Common language / definitions / frameworks

Other notes

• Positive feedback on building community working groups to solve this
• Excellent feedback on the value that the Linux Foundation provides us
• Do we have any plans on running events in the future? E.g. DevRelCon, etc
• Shared need to bring together working groups / SIGs to focus on specific issues and share best practices

What's next?

• People can join the Discord community to continue the conversation and contribute to building the baseline of this intent to form
• Work with existing communities to integrate efforts - Think of ways to do this in the best way possible
• Work with the community during the community calls to form working groups to address the core challenges a devrel foundation should focus on first