The Business Value of Developer Relations

Mary Thengvall is a connector of people at heart, both personally and professionally. She loves digging into the strategy of how to build and foster developer communities and has been doing so for over 10 years. After building community programs at O'Reilly Media, Chef Software, and SparkPost, she's now consulting for companies looking to build out a Developer Relations strategy. She's the author of the first book on Developer Relations: The Business Value of Developer Relations (Apress, 2018). Mary is a co-host of Community Pulse, a podcast for community managers and developer evangelists who are looking for information on community building. She curates DevRel Weekly, a weekly newsletter that brings you a curated list of articles, job postings, and events every Thursday. She is also a member of Prompt, a non-profit that encourages people to openly talk about mental illness in tech. She speaks at various conferences and events about building and fostering technical communities as well as how to prevent burnout in yourself and your team. She can be found on Twitter @mary_grace.

Part One: What is the Value of a Technical Community?



1. An Introduction to Community



2. Selling Community to Your Community



3. Keeping a Pulse on the Community



4. Measuring Your Success



5. Building a Developer Relations Team



Part Two: Building and Engaging with the Community



6. Finding Your Community



7. Building a Healthy Community



8. In-Person Events: The How, Why and Where



9. Dealing With Common Community Issues



10. Building Your Personal Brand



Appendix A: Trip Reports



Appendix B: Event Scorecard



Appendix C: Hackathon One-Page Handout



Appendix D: Developer Resource Card



Appendix E: Sample Event Process and Playbook