Culture
The content of this post is based on my own personal experience, which is not necessarily true in all cases, and opinions may vary.
What is DevRel?
Image by Henning Westerkamp from Pixabay
As the name implies, DevRel's primary purpose is to create relationships with developers. This includes not only the developers who write the code, but also the planners, designers, and all the production people involved in creating services and products. The specific role of a DevRel varies a lot depending on the nature of the organisation and the industry, but often the objectives converge to promote (product, technology) or recruit.
The primary roles of a DevRel are to
- Product promotion and technical evangelism
- Build, run, and support the community
- Gathering user input and feeding back into product development
- Provide a variety of resources to help users better use the product
Developer Advocate 은 DevRel 안에서도 기술 전파 및 리소스 제공 에 조금 더 초점을 맞추고 있는 역할이라고 볼 수 있습니다.
Developer Advocate can be seen as a role within DevRel that is a little more focused on skills evangelism and resource provision.
Why DevRel?
In order to make their products and services known to the public, companies conduct marketing and public relations activities through various channels and events. These activities are called PR - Public Relations, which literally means creating a relationship with the public. In companies that develop or service IT products, the main consumers are engineers (developers). And products aimed at engineers often need to provide more detailed and technical information, which requires different resources and strategies than general PR activities. DR - Developer Relations, as the name suggests.
The community is arguably the most important driver of an IT ecosystem, especially for open source products like Backend.AI. Moreover, when new technologies of a similar kind come along, the size of the community is often a factor in choosing and adopting them, in addition to performance or maturity. One of the important roles of DevRel is to help and engage with these communities.
A great analogy I like to use to explain the importance of community is the relationship between an artist and their fan club. An artist's primary role is to create music and perform, but it's through their fanbase that viral and secondary creations are born, and it's an important driver of their career and the entertainment business. Nowadays, entertainment companies are well aware of the importance of fandom and support various activities.
Image created by Midjourney
Similarly, the DevRel role in an IT organisation is to support and communicate with the various communities and ensure that the product and organisation don't lose focus.
Developer Advocate in Lablup
Lablup has been active in the Korean developer community for a long time by Wooyoung Yoo, and our CEO, Jeongkyu Shin, is also active in various developer communities, so we have already done a lot of DevRel activities for an organisation of our size. Backend.AI is a great piece of software, and it's an important tool, especially in this era of big AI. However, as a tool for AI learning and inference, it requires a lot of preparation and resources to set up, which can be daunting, especially if you're new to AI (which I am 😅).
Since Backend.AI does not have a large user base yet, we have been conducting various community activities such as the [Open Source Contribution Academy] (https://www.oss.kr/contribution_academy) in conjunction with the theme of open source culture. In order for our own community to grow, information needs to be produced and disseminated among users in addition to the one-way transmission of technology from creators to users. In order for such activities to take place, it is my main task to continue to create and improve various resources and exchange opportunities that anyone can easily use. I will continue to strive to communicate with you in various opportunities and ways.
This post is automatically translated from Korean
