I attended DevRelCon in San Francisco on June 6-7. It was a superb event, with great speakers and awesome community. The following are my notes (not complete sentences) and pictures from the event.

Being Better At Developer Relations with Kathy Sierra’s ‘The Kick Ass Curve’

Steve Pousty (CrunchyData)

• Steve’s talk focused on how to be better at Developer Relations. Steve demonstrated this concept using Kathy Sierra’s “The Kick Ass Curve”
• You can find his slides here
• DevRel goal
  • Make users happy and successful with your product/service
• Get users to be awesome in the least possible time

  

• Different companies can have different curves
  • Background knowledge and experience of users (don’t control)
  • Quality of documentation and teaching material (control)
  • The actual design of the product/API (control)
  • The size and helpfulness of your community
• We often disagree with Product Managers and Engineers because PMs and Engineers think they are at a different place on the curve. PM and Engineers are familiar with the service/product and usually don’t experience “learning” about the service/product like outside developers
  

  PMs on the curve

  

  Engineers on the curve
• Summary
  • Think about the audience (who you are targeting and how to get the pas the suck zone ASAP)
  • If we can’t get people out o the suck zone before they give up – we will never get them to experience power
  • Remember, when “talking” to others, to think about where they are on the curve
  • Use the curve when it helps, ignore it when it is doesn’t

Continue reading “Notes from DevRelCon SF 2019” →