Getting into developer advocacy
Simon Ritter: It seems that it's harder to get into this kind of role than it used to be. I remember back in the day, when I started out, there weren't that many people who were doing this. There were less conferences, but also less people on the circuit talking about software-development-related subjects. It was easier to get into the role because it was easier to find gaps.
It does seem to be getting harder because there are a lot more people doing this. Both you and I know that when you go to conferences, you will bump into the same people who've been doing presentations for a long time now, which means that there's this hardcore group of people who tend to get picked for conferences.
They're the ones conference organizers want to get to present at their conferences.
Venkat Subramaniam is a great example of that because he's a fantastic speaker. I absolutely love Venkat but, obviously, if you're going up against Venkat...