Book Image

Developer, Advocate!

By : Geertjan Wielenga
Book Image

Developer, Advocate!

By: Geertjan Wielenga

Overview of this book

What exactly is a developer advocate, and how do they connect developers and companies around the world? Why is the area of developer relations set to explode? Can anybody with a passion for tech become a developer advocate? What are the keys to success on a global scale? How does a developer advocate maintain authenticity when balancing the needs of their company and their tech community? What are the hot topics in areas including Java, JavaScript, "tech for good," artificial intelligence, blockchain, the cloud, and open source? These are just a few of the questions addressed by developer advocate and author Geertjan Wielenga in Developer, Advocate!. 32 of the industry's most prominent developer advocates, from companies including Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, open up about what it's like to turn a lifelong passion for knowledge sharing about tech into a rewarding career. These advocates run the gamut from working at large software vendors to small start-ups, along with independent developer advocates who work within organizations or for themselves. In Developer, Advocate!, readers will see how developer advocates are actively changing the world, not only for developers, but for individuals and companies navigating the fast-changing tech landscape. More importantly, Developer, Advocate! serves as a rallying cry to inspire and motivate tech enthusiasts and burgeoning developer advocates to get started and take their first steps within their tech community.
Table of Contents (36 chapters)
34
Other Books You May Enjoy
35
Index
36
Packt

Requirements for success

Arun Gupta: It's a unicorn role in a sense. I mentioned passion earlier and that is indeed a fundamental requirement; otherwise, you can't get your audience excited about the product. You also need to be a good developer; you need to know how to code and preferably a wide variety of languages.

You need to be a really good tester because often you're involved in bleeding-edge products. You should be able to debug the configurations and figure out what's working, what's not working, how it's working, why it's working, what command-line options you need to try, where in the menu you should click, and so on.

You should be a really good technical writer too. This means not only reviewing the documentation but understanding what's happening and being able to talk about it or write articles about it on Medium, your personal blog, or your company's blog. In this Twitter-centric world, you should be able to provide the value of your...