[The WHY of DevRel And Other Tales From the Community Pulse Podcast]
I joined a couple of virtual races to help motivate the daily cardio thing and mapped out a couple of loops so I’m sort of aware how much distance I’m doing.
Which means a LOT more podcast action.
But first the news:
- COVID-19 HOSPITAL PATIENTS FALL TO LOW LEVELS BUT NEW CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS SPIKE UP
- VIROLOGIST: FACE MASKS WILL ONLY HELP IF PEOPLE STILL KEEP DISTANCE
- MAJORITY OF DUTCH WANT FACE MASKS MANDATORY IN PUBLIC
ASIDE: Those are ALL in all caps because nltimes.nl was the ONLY person that posted recent, relevant news this morning. *SIGH*
Today I did one of the ‘new’ loops I just mapped out – by the way, it runs BY A LAKE that I DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED – and I’m catching up on Community Pulse and one of hosts or a guest says something along the lines of, “We know HOW to but often times we don’t know WHY we DevRel.”
And immediately I have a brilliant thought which was a perfect little WHY of DevRel that was SO AWESOME that I stopped walking for half a second and then I continued on and I didn’t write it down and I completely forgot it and now it’s LOST FOREVER.
Apparently there are going to be plenty of ALL CAPS today.
OMG I JUST REMEMBERED!! !
Relationships Run The World
How did you meet your partner? How did you land your dream job? How did you start your company? How did you land that massive sale?
Because of relationships.
You don’t live in a vacuum or on an island or under a rock, you’re here.
We have a relationship.
And because of our relationship, you’re more knowledgeable about mental illness and less intimidated by technology and moving toward anti-racism. You’re interested in dance and intrigued by twins and not too annoyed by run on sentences; I know because otherwise, you’d read one article and run away screaming.
DevRel wants those relationships to build a better product or community or project.
Other departments don’t necessarily have that focus – sales wants to make money, marketing wants to develop awareness, support wants you to figure it out yourself, quality assurance wants to find the bugs, security wants to lock it down, and engineering wants you to leave them alone so they can finish this sprint, damnit.
Mostly.
DevRel, though, wants your feedback to make the community a safe, welcome, and productive space, to make the project a joyful place to collaborate, and to make the product as kickass as possible.
To get feedback, you need to communicate.
To communicate, you need trust.
To have trust, you need a relationship.
This is why we DevRel.