I'm starting a Developer Relations program, somehow 🤷

▶️ This article is extracted from a video transcript, slightly tweaked for better readability. Watch the original: https://youtu.be/ERWzk5iOAiU

Hey everybody, look at that! I finally had a chance of using the LinkedIn template with the airplanes, and that’s the announcement number one.

But actually, the announcement number two is that I just added DevRel to my job title. So here’s a story.

If you follow me, you know that I kind of have a passion for sharing content and sharing knowledge. The idea was to match this passion to the other passion that I have, that is: getting a salary from a company I work for. How can I make these two different worlds live next to each other, or at least have some kind of intersection between my work as a front-end developer and the passion of sharing content?

That’s pretty much trying to launch a developer relations program right here at the company I’m currently working for.

But here’s the fun part: I have no idea how to actually run a proper developer relations program, as sharing videos on my personal channel on YouTube is kind of a different story. And it’s also the first time for my company to have an official DevRel program. It’s going to be fun.

You may ask, why am I even sharing this here on my personal channels? Someone else might be in a similar position, working in a company that might benefit from a DevRel program, but they don’t know how to start. And I also don’t know how to start. That’s awesome!

The idea is to share here the experiments we try, the lessons we learn every time we fail at something, and every time we succeed at something.

So if you’re interested, if you’re curious and want to follow my DevRel journey, I got this idea of sharing even more videos about that in the near future.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit talking about JavaScript. That’s still what pays most of my salary, and I will still be a developer for quite some time. But there it is, one more interest that I have, one more challenge that I’m going to face, and one more topic that I can bring here.

My primary goal, or my personal and romantic way of seeing this kind of new experiment, is to try to contaminate my colleagues and get most of them into this passion for sharing knowledge.

So how can we, the employees and the company, find a match and kind of win together? The idea is that everyone who’s passionate about something can have the chance of sharing knowledge about that specific topic, and in return, the company gets some more visibility and can demonstrate the expertise.

If in the company we have some employees that are super skilled and super specialized in some specific technologies, or on how to solve specific problems, it also kind of benefits the company in proving that they have that kind of expertise.

Because here’s one more fun, tiny challenge in my journey: my current company, Claranet Italy, is not a product company. We’re a consultancy company. We sell our expertise in solving our customers’ needs.

But I still want to believe that everyone, the company and the employees, can benefit from kind of a DevRel program.

All of that just to say that if you’re curious, stay tuned, wish me luck, and hopefully see you soon in the next update about this new developer relations journey.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon. Bye!