evangelizing explained

Evangelism explained

Christian Heilmann, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 06/11/2008 (Yahoo Internal)

I’m Chris.

Hello I am Chris

I live in London, England

But originally I am German

Doesn’t matter though, both countries keep losing against

you playing football...

Anyways...

Developer Evangelism

Sounds like not working, right?

Far from it.

As a developer evangelist you are first and foremost a

translator.

Evangelist

The Business

Tech Colleagues

The Outside world

You are lucky if the business understands that as an

evangelist you need your freedom.

You are also lucky if the business doesn’t have any

short-term agendas.

Your colleagues are very much needed...

...as they keep you rooted in the now and the reality of the

company.

They can also be bad for the cause as they have to suffer a

lot more day-to-day frustrations than you do.

Your job is to find the middle ground of these frustrated

voices and the business message.

This is where the truth lies.

First and foremost you need to be an independent voice.

Keep your eyes open all the time and follow what is happening on the web.

If a startup or a competitor of your company does

something cool...

...you should know about it.

Don’t barge into the developer “scene” trying to

sell only your company’s solutions.

No matter how cool they seem at the time.

Instead show them as an offering, a system that works

well with others...

...making everybody’s life easier and our jobs less of a

hassle.

This is very important right now as if you don’t work

efficiently...

...you might become redundant.

Which brings me to another, very important asset of successful evangelists.

Don’t bring your own agenda...

... instead know what problems the people you talk

to have.

I’ve had quite a hard time in my career to get my bosses to

sponsor me a ticket to go to conferences...

...or even leave the office and talk to other companies and

developers.

Which meant that when I finally went to one...

...I made sure I got my money’s worth.

Whenever you talk to people about your products and

services...

...make sure people can take something back to impress

their bosses with.

Which means that you need to do your homework and find out what people want

from you.

You show different products to a design agency that you

would to a Python crowd.

Talking about geeks...

Coming from a large international company may

be a benefit...

...but only when you use it right.

Deep down every geek sees every large corporation as evil and replaceable by a

small server script.

I thought that.

Now I know that these corporations are made up by

geeks like you and me.

Photo of Pete LePage of Microsoft and Peter-Paul Koch of Quirksmode.org drinking at The

Ajax Experience in Boston

Not the Antichrist

Not a hairpiece

And our job is to get the world to at least hear about

these geeks...

...if not meet them in the flesh.

Which is why we should not only be present at developer

events...

...but also open ourselves to geeks and invite them to

come to us for some informal (yes, beers) events.

As a developer you need to be visible to get your

concerns heard.

You might be the best deliverer out there but if you

really want things to change...

...you also need to tell people about what you do and how

you succeed in being efficient.

If you share your knowledge, you are less of a risk.

You should work for the company, for yourself and for

the next developer taking over from you.

By sharing information internally you make sure that

developers can have a real life and get sick without

stalling projects.

You also allow for developers to move around from project

to project, thus preventing boredom and elitism.

Sharing information internally is an absolute

necessity to have a successful team.

However, to get the full picture you also need to

validate your ideas with the outside world.

The same applies to big companies.

We could be arrogant enough to say we know what people

need.

But in essence we know jack until we can get it confirmed

from outside our echo chamber.

And that is what we are doing with our evangelising.

Evangelising means that we prove and improve our

products and assumptions.

EvangelistInternal

Developers

Business

Evangelist

World

Internal Developers

Business

Evangelist

So how can we get the message out there?

Well, first of all by using the internet.

Set up a local mailing list that people can subscribe to.

Have a blog that explains techniques and solutions built

in the company.

A good example is the Filament group blog.

http://filamentgroup.com/lab

I found this via a bookmark on del.icio.us...

...that made it to hotlinks...http://dev.upian.com/hotlinks/

...which I have subscribed to in Google reader...

...which meant a friend of mine found it through my

shared items...

...who lives next door to them and didn’t know them!

The web is a web of linked systems.

Not a billboard.

Instead of just building

something and hoping that people

come...

...be present where people already hang out.

Have a twitter bot telling people about things that

happen.

Use social bookmarking, photo sharing sites and social

networks.

Then you will reach much more people and point them

to your resources.

They in turn will tell their friends and contacts.

And word of mouth from people I trust is much more powerful than a corporate

message.

Whatever you do, wherever you show up...

Be very responsive.

Establish yourself as a

“way in”.

So what do *we* have to offer you can talk about?

It all starts at

http://developer.yahoo.com

Designers can benefit from our design patterns:http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

The YUI is an amazing framework to build web sites

with (CSS, JavaScript, Widgets)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Our APIs give access to all our data:

http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html

In various handy formats and now even accessible with a

SQL-style syntax:http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

Using the Yahoo Application Platform, people can develop

applications running on Yahoo! sites:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yap/

The performance team assembled an amazing array of cool tools and information

how to make web sites lightning fast:

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/

There is great information on server security and attack

vectors on the web:http://developer.yahoo.com/security/

And for people who want to mash up data in a nice, visual

way, there’s Yahoo! Pipeshttp://pipes.yahoo.com/

There are several systems to use to authenticate users for

your apps with our help:http://developer.yahoo.com/auth/

http://developer.yahoo.com/oauth/

Lots of stuff to talk about and package up in an easy to

understand way.

Why not have a go at it?

Christian Heilmann | http://wait-till-i.com | twitter: codepo8

Obrigado!