Fireside with Voxgig

In this episode, we're drilling more into the vocational aspect of DevRel, with our guest Thorsten Schaeff. Thor has recently become the Developer Experience Engineer at ElevenLabs, an AI Audio research and deployment company, and he's based out of Singapore, having moved there with Stripe six years ago. Thor tells us that the common thread amongst his various roles has been the learning and teaching aspects, and he's been lucky enough to be able to follow his interests for the majority of his career. We agree with him on the point that if you are driven by wanting to help and teach people, then DevRel is the place for you. We also talk about his multi-modal approach to publishing content. Not only do you need to be targeting all platforms, with both long and short form content, these channels all need to interact with each other as well, and present as a cohesive front. He leaves us with a lovely reminder of just how rewarding it can be to see someone create something great with a technology you taught them to use. Reach out to Thorsten here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thorwebdev/ Check out ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Some people spend their whole lives looking for their “superpower”, but if you're a DevRel, you've probably already found yours. Today we're speaking to Founder of Draft.dev, Karl Hughes about his path through the startup world, and the ever-changing landscape it operates in. Draft.dev is a developer focused content agency, and with Karl we learn about the epic highs and lows that he and the company have been through in this industry. Any small business owners or startup founders can relate to the realities of Karl's journey - one day your cash is flowing, the next it's a dead stop and only those with true skill and dedication can run a company that successfully traverses both eras. We discuss the effects that AI is having on DevRel, as well as the return to in-person events. Karl has been the very definition of hands-on with his projects, and it has allowed him to gain an extremely well rounded understanding of the technical aspects of running a company. Be sure to give it a listen! Reach out to Karl here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karllhughes/ Check out Draft.dev: https://draft.dev/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We're back from our break this week with an excellent chat about the world of Fintech! Carolina Paradas is the Vice President of growth at Fidel API, a classic aggregation API that lets you act on payments in real time. And with code on the homepage, we already know that they've got an outlook we can get on board with. Carolina's role is focused largely, as she tells us, on enabling people to do the best work they can. She monitors sales, customer success and marketing, and ensures that anything client-facing represents the company correctly. As you can imagine, this type of work requires much in the way of collaboration and people skills, something Carolina brings to the table in droves. One thing to pay attention to in this episode is Carolina's focus on developing synergy with others in her field. Through a mutual exchange of ideas, goals and everything down to contract details, it seems that Devrels in Fintech are doing an excellent job. Reach out to Carolina here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolina-p-693b418a/ Check out Fidel: https://fidelapi.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're sitting down for an in-depth technical discussion with Juan Cruz Viotti, the Founder of Sourcemeta, a top provider of JSON Schema tooling and services. Juan has been working in the space for a long time, so we're delighted to be getting his insight into this field. A lot of people have a love/hate relationship with JSON Schema, and much of that originates from the fact that, despite what people may think, it is a constraint language, not a modelling one. Juan explains to us that one of the reasons people can find it so painful is that the language is extremely powerful and expressive. Through his work, he is determined to help people learn and get to grips with it, so it doesn't seem so intimidating. Finally, he tells us about what Sourcemeta is currently working on, and how they are continuing to evangelise and promote JSON Schema. They are diving head first into the conference space, and will soon have a desktop app to further aid people in their understanding of the language and how it works. Reach out to Juan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jviotti/ Check out Sourcemeta: https://www.sourcemeta.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're sitting down for a chat with Alex Rattray, founder of Stainless, to talk about what they do, and how AI could be shaking up the SDK space in a big way. Stainless is an SDK generator that helps create high quality SDKs for rest APIs. Alex's reason for starting the company is simple. He wanted to serve developers in a million different ways. That could be why the Stainless website homepage features a wall of code - they know who their audience is. With every programming language carrying its own nuances, SDK generation can be a mammoth task, especially developing them to the standard that Stainless holds itself to. It was a pleasure speaking to Alex, not least because it's so clear that, for him, the value of developer experience comes first and foremost. Reach out to Alex here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexrattray/ Check out Stainless: https://www.stainless.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we have a very wonderful unreleased episode from last year. It's a dynamic duo on the pod today, as we're joined by Raúl Jiménez Ortega and Courtney Yatteau from the Developer Experience Team at Esri. We talk about the experience of DevRel in a large organisation, and how internal DevRel compares to external. When you grow to a certain size, the question broadens from ‘how do I engage new people?' to ‘how do I engage my own people?' Esri is a leading geospatial tech company helping big and small organisations to make the most out of their data. Courtney compares for us the practice of teaching in a classroom vs teaching developers. Raúl takes us through his DevRel journey and the current role he plays on Esri's Developer Experience Team. It was such a delight to have Courtney and Raúl on the podcast, and we hope you enjoy listening! ‍ Check out Courtney's Medium: https://medium.com/@c_yatteau Reach out to Courtney here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyyatteau/ Reach out to Raúl here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimenezortegaraul/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're speaking to the wonderful Abhishek Mishra of Tune AI, a Gen AI stack, that focuses on fine-tuning and deploying generative AI models. With two products under their belt, they've had their hands full and Abhishek joins us to tell us all about it. In this episode we discuss the topic of playgrounds, and the vital role they play. Something not always considered, is that not everyone has the capability to test if an LLM will work for them or their product, so playgrounds that allow for experimentation are essential for reaching those people. We also get onto the topic of DevRel backgrounds, and how Abhishek believes every DevRel should work as a developer, not just to know the pain points, but to have a fully rounded understanding of how to advocate for them. ‍ Reach out to Abhishek here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stalwartcoder/ Check out Tune AI here: https://tunehq.ai/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Trey Botard joins the ranks of our guests with an unconventional entry into DevRel. He's the Head of Developer Relations at Atomic, a digital financial connectivity platform that manages online payroll transactions. His origin story begins with wine, and helping a team of waiters understand how to sell it to customers. Sounds like a familiar setup… With this background, and an interest in tech, it's not surprising that Trey found his way to DevRel. The importance of making customers feel special and heard is something he emphasises, as well as building trust by not just telling, but showing. As are many people, Trey is stuck in an ever growing pile of Slack channels. So of course, this has inspired his current desire to find a better way to manage information distribution in a way that is efficient but not overbearing. We're very excited to hear his update on this in a few years, but for now, you'll have to enjoy hearing about all the other great work he's doing! ‍ Reach out to Trey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/treybotard/ Check out Atomic here: https://atomic.financial/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're speaking to someone who could definitely give us all a few tips on how to make high quality, engaging DevRel content. We're talking about Martyn Davies, the Developer Relations Leader at Zuplo, who joins us to talk APIs, developer experience and the wider world's understanding of DevRel. Zuplo is an API management platform offering a better, more supportive experience to developers. As Martyn explains, this space has been dominated by a few big players for a long time, and they're excited to continue shaking things up and offering something new to people. Martyn is leading the charge on Zuplo's developer content, namely in the form of their wonderful Youtube channel, which has a distinctly friendly atmosphere. By focusing on the wider API world, as well as the benefits of using Zuplo, they've created something that stands apart in the sea of DevRel resources. Check out Zuplo: https://zuplo.com/ Check out Zuplo's Youtube Channel: https://youtube.com/@zuplo?si=THBY-5wLJ4IgRdLl Reach out to Martyn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martynrdavies/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It can be a hard pill for DevRels to swallow, that not everyone loves learning as much as we do - but at the end of the day, this itself becomes a problem that we can spend time learning to solve! Too meta? Today's guest is Ed Shee, the CTO of Ignitus, where they're working on individualised AI powered mentors that eliminate the need for constant training and retraining of employees. What they discovered is that most people are at least a little resistant to learning new things, especially if they have to sign up for something, or create an account or disrupt their current task. So Ignitus incorporates this mentoring directly into the flow, creating a seamless transition. Ed speaks to us about what he's taken from his DevRel history into this new role - for example, the incomparable power of on-demand learning tools being what sets AI powered tools apart from documentation as a singular resource. So while Ed may have stepped out of the DevRel world on paper, the ethos and ideas have continued to inform and bolster his new work. Be sure to listen for specific insight on Ed's approach and how he goes about his work. Reach out to Ed here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edshee/ Check out Ignitus: https://www.ignitus.app/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

You may have heard of something called a “can-do” attitude. Well for today's guest, Nuno Job, it's more of a “will-do” attitude, as he seems to breeze past industry neurotics and red tape with admirable ease. Nuno is the Co-Founder of Decipad and was one of the organisers of the LXJS conference series. He's here giving a little inspiration to those wanting to shake up the way things are done. Decipad is an interactive notebook that seeks to challenge the spreadsheet's claim to mathematical dominance. Their strategy is unique, letting their community come to them as they continue to focus most of their energy on creating the best product they can. Nuno speaks to us about the power in surrendering - putting your energy into the world and accepting what it returns to you, rather than letting the rewards you seek dictate the way you live your life. It's a refreshing break from the narrative we're used to putting stock into, and the ethos seems to be rewarding Nuno in many ways besides monetary. This was a great chat on conferences, product building and opening your mind to creative solutions. Reach out to Nuno here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nunojob/ Check out Decipad: https://www.decipad.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

If you've ever been tasked with public speaking, then you've probably found yourself amongst the large majority of people who consider it to be one of the scariest things a person can do. And if that's the case, you might be interested to hear from today's guest, Pat Dwyer. Pat revisits us on the podcast, to discuss how he uses his nerves and adrenaline to inform what he does onstage, treating them as a boost, rather than a hindrance. We talk to Pat about what it's like to feel a sense of “home” on the stage, and why it is that so many speakers find it much easier to talk to a crowd of a hundred people than to have a one-on-one conversation with a single new person in the conference room. One thing he draws our attention to is that talks, like products, require testing. How much humour, how much information, when to speed up or slow down? It all needs to be tested and tested again. Ultimately, what you're there to do is serve your audience and give them the best experience. According to Pat, the moment a speaker starts thinking about their own stakes, the quality of their speaking tends to go off the rails. If there's anyone in the speaking world to take advice from, it's Pat. Reach out to Pat here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pat-dwyer/ Check out Pat's website: https://www.patdwyerwastaken.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We're continuing to kick off the new year with Allan Knabe, the CEO and Co-Founder of apiable.io, an API portal that's helping to smooth out the creation process. Building an API is harder than it looks, but it doesn't always have to be such a difficult task. One of Apiable's key priorities is seamless onboarding for developers, which sets them apart from other similar products. It's the kind of thing that becomes important to you when you, like Allan and Richard, have encountered enough API portals that are simply repackaged swag documentation. Allan refers to this as part of his overall strategy of going back to basics. Let's not forget to ask ourselves - what is project management? Are certain features helpful, or just impressive? Is what we're creating practical? Sometimes the most obvious things are what get forgotten in the startup chaos, and we were delighted for Allan to remind us of them. Reach out to Allan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allan-knabe/ Check out apiable.io Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Welcome back! We're bringing in 2025 (and with it a new, exciting lineup of guests) with an oldie but a goldie - Eoin Boylan. Eoin first visited us fireside in 2022, and we are delighted to have him back for an update on all he's been up to since our first chat. SDK strategy can be divisive, with some business strategies being to avoid the topic altogether - but Eoin, who's currently working as the Head Engineer at Evervault, finds them to be worth their salt as an investment. Evervault is a data security platform focusing on the payment space, serving as a one-stop-shop for developers. At their core, they remain developer first, retaining the knowledge from their early days, but now applying it to a more specific group of buyers. While we have time, we may touch on the current state of developer knowledge, and how, as useful as it may be, how ChatGPT may be influencing our bidding developers for the worst. Check out Evervault: https://evervault.com/ Reach out to Eoin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoin-boylan/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're revisiting this New Year's episode from 2024. Our guest was Andrew MacLean, the developer relations manager at DevCycle, a feature flag management platform for developers. If you've never heard of feature flag management, that's probably because it's a relatively new space, despite feature flags having been around forever. If you're not familiar with the ins and outs of feature flags, one of their main benefits is allowing you to update your platform without having to deploy so many versions that you lose the ability to maintain quality. As with many of the people we feature on Fireside, this service could have been a game changer in some of the startups Richard has worked on over the years. Andrew dives into the history of feature flags, and what launched them into the mainstream. From Github devs, to articles, to implementation by major SaaS companies, word of mouth popularisation has made feature flags the staple they now are. Andrew also gives us some insight into his history. It's a typical DevRel story, of falling into the industry somewhat by accident, but in Andrew's case his starting point was studying for a career in forensic science. With a background almost as interesting as the work he does now, Andrew makes for a fascinating interviewee. Reach out to Andrew here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewdmaclean/ Check out DevCycle: https://devcycle.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Top tip: if you're thinking of getting into DevRel, just know that you will hate boxes of t-shirts for the rest of your life. Or at least that's how today's guest, Phil Leggetter feels about them. Merch getting stuck in customs is a minor issue for sure, but it's one of the pitfalls of DevRel we get into in this episode. Phil is the Head of DevRel and Developer Marketing at Hookdeck, an event gateway that strives to be a backbone for event driven applications. We talk to Phil about the utility of SDKs, and where their detractors tend to miss out on their ultimate purpose. We speak about the connection to revenue, and the key to demonstrating it, if you have higher ambitions for DevRel. We also ask the question - is there an advantage for DevRel to stand apart from marketing, or does this cause us to miss out on another community that we might gel well with? Reach out to Phil here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leggetter/ Check out Hookdeck: https://hookdeck.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:  https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're speaking to Kevlin Henney, who, if you scroll back far enough, you'll see was one of our earliest guests on the podcast. We're thrilled to have Kevlin back for a discussion on microservices, agile development and how developers can avoid the “factory line” work style. Kevlin talks to us about how there isn't one service or language that has “the answer”, and the approach to tools should be broad and open to change. When developing a system, you're creating something new - it's not manufacturing, there is always an element of novelty to what you're making, and that should be understood and accounted for. We also get into the subject of legacy code and systems, and how to interact with and manage them. The accommodations required to run such a system can often result in it making more decisions than the developers working on it. A code base that's a decade old with multiple component systems fighting each other can present problems, but if everyone's too afraid to change things up, then the maintenance costs will continue to rack up. It was a pleasure to have Kevlin back and we can't wait to see what he's up to, 200 more episodes down the line! Reach out to Kevlin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevlin/ Check out his website: https://about.me/kevlin Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're talking observability, open source, developer education and the politics of conference speaking. And we're doing it all with our amazing guest, Zameer Fouzan from New Relic. If you don't already know, New Relic helps engineers effectively deploy and run software with Full Stack Observability. Where other companies may do observability, but don't have a single language to communicate it, New Relic makes use of a single specification that caters to all languages and frameworks with the same APIs and languages. Part of Zameer's job is of course, speaking at various conferences and he chats to us about how he's evolved as a speaker since first starting out, and gives us his best advice for both new and experienced speakers. Reach out to Zameer here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmrfzn/ Check out New Relic's past and upcoming events: https://newrelic.com/events Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Coding is like spinning plates, and before you even start you've gotta be spinning seven of them. Today's guest is Jim Bennett, the Developer Advocate at Pieces For Developers, where they're trying to make that plate spinning act run just a little smoother. Pieces For Developers works as a long term memory for your workstream as a developer, feeding across everything you do, allowing you to maintain flow and easily pick up where you left off after being away from your desk. If as a developer, you've ever struggled with the autocomplete style of LLMs that doesn't seem to work in a dense context, then Jim's work may interest you. Jim's key piece of advice to DevRel's out there? Constantly evaluate and report. Don't get caught out by mismatched expectations. Know who you're reporting to and what they want. You may be doing a hundred things at once but your North star must be the thing that centers you. For Jim, it's daily active users, but for you it could be something completely different. Be sure to listen to the episode to hear Jim's full thoughts on this! Reach out to Jim here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimbobbennett/ Check out Pieces For Developers: pieces.app Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Our guest today is Katie Wasilenko Miller, and if you're at all curious about what it's like to have worked in DevRel for Google, Asana, and Slack then this might be the episode for you. Katie has spent a great deal of time across a huge variety of roles in the DevRel space, and after years of working for big companies, she's now enjoying her time doing advising and mentoring as well as being an ambassador for the Developer Marketing Alliance, and a member of the steering committee for the new DevRel Foundation. Katie talks with us about how DevRel might be in its teenage years. Think about it - wanting respect, craving independence, all the hallmarks are there! And while there's a degree of frustration there, there's also a wonderful opportunity to determine where we want to go next. We touch on AI, events, onboarding and more, so be sure to listen to get Katie's thoughts! Reach out to Katie here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillrunner/ Check out The DevRel Foundation here: https://github.com/DevRel-Foundation Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

John Gilhuly is the chief developer advocate at Arize.com, an AI observability monitoring platform, and he joins us for a great discussion on the rapidly evolving AI space, and what that means for a company built to work with LLM applications. He talks to us about Arize's new open source product, ‘Phoenix” - the Garageband to their Logic, and how the inspiration for building it came from how much the team feels they owe to the wider open source community. As much as it is a chance for them to build their own community, that element comes second to their desire to simply give back to people. We of course, get to talking about the classic DevRel questions, proving value and defining your role. With a background in sales and solution engineering, John points out to us that in sales, your work is handed to you, whereas a DevRel must create and build their work from the ground up, creating something from nothing. Perhaps this is why it's so often described by our guests as an incredibly creative job in a technical world? Reach out to John here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngilhuly/ Check out Arize.com: https://arize.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

When Stacey Kruczek joined Aerospike.com, their community building needed a little TLC from a developer relations expert. These days, the community is 12,000 people strong, the meetups are thriving and she knows exactly how to prove DevRel's business value. In this episode, we chat with Stacey about all of this and more. If there's one word to describe Stacey, it's passionate. This is obvious from the way she has built an immense amount of trust with developers at Aerospike and beyond. Aerospike is a real time database handling massive amounts of data, and Stacey has been key to building the wonderful community they currently uphold. Of course DevRel is a complicated role, but as Stacey puts it, she's really there to listen - and that's what she does, responding in real time to developer needs. Stacey is also doing incredible work with the Developer Relations Foundation, where she's on a mission to be the spokesperson that DevRel desperately needs. The foundation's focus is on promoting the value DevRel adds to business, and supporting their community in that goal. The work that Stacey does is not only huge in its amount but huge in its reach, and we can't wait to see what more she does in the future! Reach out to Stacey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceykruczek/ Check out Aerospike here: https://aerospike.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Nick Schneeberger is the developer behind Freepublicapis.com, which is no small accomplishment given that he's also teaching at a university and studying for a data science masters degree at the same time. We're thrilled to have Nick on the podcast, to give us some insights into how programming is being both taught and learned in the current age. Nick teaches programming basics, and it was his own students that prompted him to found Freepublicapis.com. Every semester, Nick would have to go through the API list he provided to his students and individually check that those APIs were still up and running. Now he provides this service on a much wider scale, helping not just his students, but anyone looking to use an API, and be confident it actually works. We speak to Nick about what it's like to teach coding to beginners. He tells us that it's not so much natural ability, as it is interest that can help people excel. A key skill to develop is being able to find the flaw in your code without losing your cool. It's a tricky thing to teach something that mostly comes with time and experience. Nick is very open to his students using LLMs to aid in their work. From his perspective, it's more helpful to teach them how to use it in an effective way. Despite this, he still believes the old school ways are going to stick around too. Start with the whiteboard - then move on to the new technology. After all, why stick to one way of doing things when you can take something useful from everything? Reach out to Nick here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-schneeberger-814645154/ Check out Freepublicapis: https://www.freepublicapis.com/about Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Back in February, James Higginbotham joined us for a chat about what it's like to work with increasingly large developer teams. Now he's back to catch us up on what he's been doing at his company, LaunchAny. LaunchAny is an API strategy and design consultancy, and so James is the ideal person to ask this question: I've launched my API, now how do I run it professionally? James explains how he's seen commercial forces create a shift, where APIs are now not only being taken more seriously, but an absence of them can create serious issues for otherwise stable organisations. A key example he gives is of a company that lost a bid for a big silicon valley client due to their inability to present a solid API integration plan. A few years later, they bid again, and won. What happened in the years since? James and his team had been working with them to help build up their API portfolio, and they were then in a position to offer all the client wanted and more. James also talks to us about lifecycles, and the deprecation of APIs. While so far he hasn't had an influx of people looking to sunset their API in a professional way, he expects that in the next few years of API sprawl, this will become a lot more prevalent. Be sure to give this episode a listen for some technical insights into the API world! Reach out to James here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshigginbotham/ Check out LaunchAny: https://launchany.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're talking to Ed Stephinson who should serve as a shining beacon to those wishing to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Ed is the Founder of Sailhouse.dev, which he has been building into a thriving startup all while balancing a separate 9-5 job throughout! Hustle is the key word for this episode, as Ed makes sure we know that day-to-day, he loves nothing more than being a jack of all trades and jumping around between projects - but he does acknowledge that when you look at it on a macro scale, the amount he manages to get done in a day is a little bit crazy. Sailhouse focuses on streamlining event driven development, and a common theme from their origin seems to be the mantra “how hard can it be?” Ed describes the early days, and how he quickly learned that focusing his energy on his connections and building community would be far more effective than the scattergun approach of big companies that he had previously been trying to replicate. Ed is currently working as a product engineer for incident.io, and it's clear just how much he has taken from his time there. Namely, incident's approach to customers and maintaining those open channels of communication - encouraging them to be used, rather than closing them off and hiding them away. Ed cites this as something he'll be carrying forward with him from now on, to Sailhouse and beyond! Reach out to Ed here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ed-stephinson/ Check out Sailhouse.dev here: https://sailhouse.dev/about/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're speaking once again to the wonderful Colm Doyle, who you may remember from his appearance on Fireside early last year. It's so wonderful to catch up with Colm, as he's now the Engineering Manager at Personio, and as such has some fresh new perspectives to give us. For those who may not have caught Colm's last episode, Personio is a HR enterprise platform, and we chat to him about what it's like to make the transition from an outward facing DevRel role, to a role helping internal engineering teams deliver products smoothly and efficiently. In short, Colm's job is to help every engineer at Personio be the best engineer they can. Something Colm stresses to us, is that when you don't give your engineers time to breathe, you rob your customers of value. It's as simple as that. He's been fortunate to work for organisations that consistently value engineer time, which as he points out, is one of the most expensive resources a software company has in stock. So how does one become an engineering manager? Well Colm tells us that the key to moving into any role, is to draw attention to something that's losing money, and show how you can put a stop to it. ‘It's taking 6 months to integrate new engineers before they get up and running? I can get that down to 3 months.' Sometimes, that might be all it takes. It was a delight to have Colm back on the podcast, and we know you're going to love this episode as much as his first! Reach out to Colm here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colmdoyle/ Check out Personio: https://www.personio.com/about-personio/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We're fortunate on the Fireside podcast to be able to speak to so many people at the top of their game, and today we're revisiting our chat from earlier this year, with someone who's no different. David Cramer is the Co-Founder and CTO of Sentry, the app monitoring platform designed to quickly help developers get to the root of code problems. David has helped bring Sentry to the top of the pile in this category - to the extent where, in his words, they don't have competitors, they have “ankle-biters”. But does “heavy is the head that wears the crown” have any bearing for a company at the top? We're excited to find out. David has worn many hats at Sentry since its founding, but as a software engineer at heart, he's currently taking up the position of CTO. He dives into how strategy helped set Sentry apart in the early days, and how they manufactured the way they wanted the business to run, as opposed to simply responding to hurdles as they came up. The Sentry team, ultimately, is made up of developers, and David explains how this fact has led to the creation of a platform that is highly developer focused, in both user experience and in sales. He tells us about how yearly price hikes are not something Sentry wants to engage in, and how valuing affordability has allowed them to skyrocket in popularity since their first launch. Community is at the forefront of David's current plans for Sentry, and he talks us through this, and other aspects of what he hopes to achieve with the company the future. Reach out to David here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcramer/ Check out Sentry here: https://sentry.io/welcome/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're delighted to be talking to Pierre Burgy, the founder and CEO of Strapi, a headless CMS. We're getting into how they're trying to eliminate having your CMS be your biggest headache as a developer. Pierre has a fresh perspective on open source business models, and open source itself that we're excited to get into in this episode! It all came about when Pierre and his friends were building websites for themselves and clients, and dealing with the struggles of trying to efficiently build on websites from mobile devices. The APIs were slow, and overall it was a grinding process. This, of course, set them on a course if developing a content management system based on an API - it was a no-brainer. They knew Strapi needed to be a business. We also ask him the key question - how do you get from an early stage project to 60,000 stars on GitHub. According to Pierre, blog posts worked well in the early days, and encouraging friends to get on board in the even earlier stages. But at the end of the day it's about keeping your eye on the project, pursuing improvements and nurturing your community. Make sure to give this a listen! Reach out to Pierre here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierre-burgy-strapi-88671673/ Check out Strapi here: https://strapi.io/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It's time for another talk about community! And who better for us to speak to, than friend of the podcast Jono Bacon? Jono is the Founder of Community Leadership Core, and a community expert. He's sitting down with us to give us a look behind the scenes of how he completely transforms communities. From those that have yet to get off the ground, to those that are experiencing a dip after their heyday, Jono and his team know the practical steps to get these communities thriving - or thriving again! Community Leadership Core isn't quite a course and neither is it a consultancy, or a cohort. So Jono describes it as an accelerator, and like most companies, it's gone through a few stages before ending up where it was always meant to be. Jono is selective in the best way when it comes to his clients, only working with those really willing to put the effort in. Those truly excited take on and apply solutions, rather than allowing fear to come into their decision making process. We find this hugely admirable, as so much of our focus in DevRel is on getting people in the door - but the reality is that not every client is right for you, and we should all be more comfortable with walking away from something that ultimately won't work out! One thing that is clear from this discussion is that for Jono, the devil is in the details. He tells us about his quest to unlock “low friction value” for his clients. When building communities, it's not always the biggest moves that will add the most. So many people struggle to get people into their community, and when Jono looks at their onboarding process it's a tiresome, confusing mess. There lies the unlocked low friction value. Streamlining that process may seem like a small, simple task. But it's those very small tasks that add up into a huge wave of new members. If you're currently building, or want to build any kind of community, this one is a must-listen! Reach out to Jono here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonobacon/ Check out Community Leadership Core here: https://www.communityleadershipcore.com/core Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today we're joined by Ethan Lewis and Simon Cheng, CTO and DevRel of Vaunt.dev for a discussion on how their work enables individuals and companies to nurture their open source communities. Vaunt is a SaaS tool that was built on a key ethos: saying thank you. It's no secret that thanking people for their work creates a rewarding environment where they feel encouraged to continue making that work. Or is it? The treatment of developers can often communicate the opposite message. Instead of thanks, hard work is often rewarded with requests for measurement and insights into revenue growth in proportion to contributions. In other words - if you want a seat at the table, you have to earn your dinner. Simon and Ethan knew that if they could use Vaunt to foster a different attitude towards developers, then they would be able to make a real difference in the open source world. Ethan and Simon reveal that a huge part of their desire to build this service, and eventually product, was their own encounters with the problems faced by open source developers. One of those problems is that open source community building, as valuable as it is, is time consuming. And it often involves a great deal of trial and error; throwing things at the wall until they stick. Vaunt's goal is to streamline these processes into a more efficient set of steps. They also speak on what they believe is missing from GitHub, and how having developers on your side is an asset that won't be going out of style anytime soon. Reach out to Ethan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elewis787/ And Simon here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoncheng-kc/ Check out Vaunt.dev's services here:‍ https://vaunt.dev/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It's always a treat to have a returning guest on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, but especially so when that guest has done so much in the time since we last got to chat to them. We're delighted to welcome back Brian Douglas - the Founder and CEO of Open Sauced, an open source intelligence platform that helps developers and maintainers unlock their open source potential with project insights. It's a service that Richard admits would have served him well at the times when he's had a few more open source projects on the go than he could handle! A lot has happened with Brian and Open Sauced in the year since we spoke with him last. Notably, the shift in their focus towards working more with bigger enterprises. While the mid-tier projects can help you find your feet, there comes a point where bigger is better, and it's time to take a seat at the big table. Along with this, they've been working on an exciting new project called 'StarSearch', an AI tool to help developers understand the logic in code, whether it be someone else's code, or (and this is just as likely) their own code from, let's say 6 months ago. If your ears are perking up at the sound of this, you're not the only one, and Brian goes further in depth on the episode, about how this works and what it could mean going forward. A good way to look at this service is to understand that it helps to reduce the number of ‘wtf's' per minute - which as everyone knows is the ultimate measure of code quality. Reach out to Brian here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianldouglas/ Check out Open Sauced: https://opensauced.pizza/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

In this episode from last year, we spoke to Aravind Putrevu. Aravind is a developer advocate turned angel investor, but to leave it at just that would be a disservice. He has his fingers in many pies, including DevRel consulting, where he helps companies with their product marketing and strategy. And of course, as any good DevRel or engineer should, he also has an itch to build something valuable, so he's working on a SaaS tool that he's still keeping in stealth mode. Aravind speaks to us about his transition from DevRel to angel investing and his propensity for startups and working with founders. When it comes to the world of consulting, Aravind walks us through his role with a company, from strategy, to marketing, to introducing their brand to the public as a DevRel. He speaks about the culture of DevRel, how all too often a singular person gets hired to do the work of an entire DevRel team, both code and community, and how this overload leads to the inevitable cycle of burnout that he sees frequently. We also chat to him about his work as a senior developer advocate at Elasticsearch, where he had the benefit of a large developer team working with a popular product that had insane traction. He says that Elasticsearch is a classic example of how DevRel can work when the founders are the first developer advocates. Aravind is also a speaker who has given talks at many large conferences, and he tells us a little about how he coordinates a team where five people have all signed up to speak at the same conference. A happy problem to have! Reach out to Aravind here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aravindputrevu/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It's always fun to talk about the futuristic potential of virtual reality, but it's even more fun to talk about it with Ciara Sheahan, because she actually knows some real information about this topic. Ciara is a radio presenter, journalist and tech entrepreneur, and she joined us on the podcast last year, to provide us with proof that you don't have to be a former coder to be a founder who does cool stuff with tech. Ciara is the founder of Orb Media, where they're taking the cross pollination of gaming software and integrating it with ecommerce platforms to improve the customer experience. Essentially, they are game-ifying the online shopping experience, allowing platforms to better showcase their products, and giving customers that dopamine hit you would usually only get from levelling up. Ciara tells us that there are many ways to “gamify” an experience. It doesn't have to be all zombies and helicopters (although it can be!), there's also plenty of subtle ways to apply it to the shopping experience. Now, while Orb Media is a Web 3 company at heart, Ciara maintains that her goal was always to keep this technology accessible, so there's no headset required for this immersive experience, all you need is your phone. She also lets us in on how she got her start, from journalism to radio to tech and the roadblocks she experienced along the way. Ciara is also a speaker, and she tells us about how she believes speakers are simply vessels carrying a message, and that focusing less on yourself and more on how the information you're delivering relates to your audience, might help you get out of your head when the nerves take over. Reach out to Ciara here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciara-sheahan360/ Check out Orb Media: https://orbmedia.ie/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: http://www.devrelmeetup.com

Back in January, we had a familiar face on the Voxgig podcast! We're speaking to our host Richard's former colleague, Conor O'Neill. Conor is the Director of Product and Engineering at Axonista, an interactive video CMS, where he's helping them transform video from a fun accessory to a key feature of their customer's platforms. Now, as Conor explains, though video may be their bread and butter, what he actually spends most of his time focusing on, is everything around video, metadata being a prime example of what he's interested in. Conor weighs in with us on the recent purge of DevRel jobs, and explains why all may not be as it seems in this regard. While companies dismissing DevRel jobs might help you work out exactly who you don't want to work for, there's also a host of people out there, Conor included, who have encountered a great deal of difficulty finding someone with the capabilities to take on a DevRel job he needed to fill. He discusses that one of the main benefits of having a DevRel on your staff, is that you can have your own “potterer”. Someone who can experiment and play the mad scientist, figuring out creative new ways of doing things, something high level Devs with immense workloads would not necessarily be able to do. This allows for your company to be continuously open to the possibility of newer, better ways of conducting things. We even take a brief trip down memory lane, with Conor and Richard giving some insight into the time they worked together, and the wonderful opportunities that have grown from that adventure. Reach out to Conor here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conoroneill/ Check out Axonista: https://www.axonista.com/about/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We're delighted to welcome Tejas Kumar back to the Fireside podcast! Tejas is a particularly relevant guest for us, as he takes us behind the scenes of his own wonderful podcast - ConTejas Code. We had Tejas on the podcast last year, and we were excited to hear about all the new developments for him in the last year. Tejas believes that when it comes to AI, it's increasingly obvious that some developments are inevitable, and the sooner we lean into that fact, and start to work with the technology, rather than against it, we can unlock a lot of time and energy that is currently tied up in simple, yet time-consuming tasks. He takes us into his process as a podcaster. The way Tejas describes it sounds like a breeze, he sits down, talks to a guest, then uploads everything. There's more to be done, of course, but day to day the outlines, scheduling and transcripts are all taken care of by AI. This is a perfect example of what AI can do for us when we embrace it. Add to that - it's podcasting! The stakes are relatively low when compared to other potential AI integrations in, let's say, the medical field for example. If your AI misspells a word, no one gets sued - or at least we don't think anyone's tried that yet. These adaptations Tejas has made have allowed him to focus on the very part of his job as a host that makes it interesting, and fun - hosting! We get into the nature of podcasting, and how efficient it can be as a place to create content. If you have a thirty minute podcast, then you have three or four clips that you can take from that. If your podcast has video, those clips can now become shorts, or reels, and you've opened up a whole new element to it that fits within your existing structure. Tejas has a deep admiration for his guests, and this is clear in the way he discusses them - there's a reason that ConTejas Code episodes are two hours long each, he has a burning curiosity about people, and a desire to connect that is clear even when he's on the other side of the table. For any would-be podcasters out there, this episode - and Tejas in general - might be a good place to start when looking for inspiration both practically, and ideologically. Reach out to Tejas here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejasq/ Check out Tejas' website: https://tej.as/ Listen to the ConTejas Code podcast: https://shows.acast.com/contejas-code Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: http://www.devrelmeetup.com

Michiel Mulders is a wonderful example of a creative developer, driven to share knowledge and committed to quality documentation. He delivers a module on documentation and technical writing at DevRel University, free online course dedicated to Web3 DevRel. In this episode, Richard and Michiel have a thorough exploration of documentation philosophies, approaches, tools and analytics for content engagement. Listen up here, understand the real benefits of paying attention to your documentation creation and its use. Lots of food for thought here, but also practical steps and proven tools described to help get you started on your overdue Documentation Improvement Project! Reach out to Michiel here : https://www.linkedin.com/in/michielmulders/ and find out about DevRel Uni here: https://www.devreluni.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It's an exciting episode today, for everyone we're sure, but particularly for Richard, as today's guest is none other than Peter Bryant, the Founder of RimuHosting, and something of a personal hero of Richard's. Richard in fact, was a client of RimuHosting, and he still recalls that what first attracted him to the service was their friendly attitude to developers. Peter goes into RimuHosting's origins and tells us all about his initial vision for the company and how they've managed to maintain that vision for all these years. As a developer working for a startup in Washington, Peter felt the entrepreneur itch. He saw a gap to fill, and inspired by those around him, he made the jump and founded RimuHosting. Back in the early 2000's, data space was scarce on the ground, and this was something Peter knew needed to change. Despite the lack of Zoom at the time, Peter successfully launched RimuHosting in his home country of New Zealand, defying predominant business advice to “go local” before expanding. He knew that the market for what he was offering was further afield, and if he wanted them to get on board, he'd have to start making a lot of calls. Today RimuHosting prides itself on its customer retention rates. As Peter puts it, it's a good sign when your customers forget you exist - it means you're doing your job very very well. Despite this, they still manage to remain customer-facing, and with consolidation swallowing up independent hosting services left and right, RimuHosting is an example to all, of the quality and worthiness of independent companies. Reach out to Peter here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterbryant/ Check out RimuHosting: https://rimuhosting.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Please enjoy today's episode featuring the wonderful Jack Coldrick!

Please enjoy this chat from last year with Carter Rabasa! Carter Rabasa is Head of Developer Relations at Courier and joins Richard in this Fireside with Voxgig chat. This starts as a history of developer relations, but exposes a question, a gap; who were the devrel leaders in the API/cloud era? The activity of developer relations as it is recognised today could be argued to have begun from 2010 onwards and perhaps GitHub is the genesis of this stage. They also clearly emphasise the need for empathy and how to harness that superpower communicating in both directions – to developers about a product and from users back to product and technical teams. Let's get personal. How do you understand your role and performance as a developer relations professional? Maybe it actually starts with your company and not with you! And it should involve some awareness about what your company is building and trying to achieve. Reach out to Carter via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/carterrabasa/ https://www.courier.com/ CascadiaJS Fest can be explored at this website https://2022.cascadiajs.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Tune in for an in-depth chat about how companies can improve their revenue through fully understanding their open source project and software. Emily speaks truthful sense. This is a tough message for the overly optimistic among you. As Richard so rightly points out – knowing the right thing to do vs doing it are two different things! Emily outlines the many, many ways a company can leverage open source in their offerings and is beautifully frank about source available vs open source… So where does DevRel come in to this? Well – unless a company has clearly identified its positioning, then how can DevRel communicate the benefits your project, service or product deliver? Version 1 January 2023 Podcast go live - information staging document You need the template – visit Emily's website (link below) – to clearly define your company's positioning. Now with clear positioning, the first thing you should do is raise your prices…what? Crazy! But no. It's a real and possible strategy. Emily shares her background with us, and issues a warning about choosing journalism as a career…a good way to get comfortable with not having any money. Do not ask Emily to write a Kubernetes 101. She's had quite enough of that, thank you very much. But the repeated requests did wake her up to the opportunity to help companies to take their messaging and positioning seriously. Reach out to Emily: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyomier/

Our guest today is none other than the wonderful Matteo Collina. Matteo is a returning guest on the podcast, and we are so excited to catch up with him. There's a lot of ground to cover here, including philosophy, the highs and lows of being a maintainer, and the world of TypeScript. Matteo leads us in a discussion of testing infrastructure. The sequence of events should be simple. Write an application, write a test for it. But when the test doesn't accurately reflect the running environment, the results won't be of much use. Some tests may be good for determining if your business logic is sound, but do they actually do what they say on the tin? We also chat about the muddy world of aging frameworks, especially if you're a maintainer trying to juggle everything. Picture it as a game of guacamole. You patch one bug, but now five more have popped up out of nowhere. It's an unfortunate reality. Then there's the matter of the one person thousands of miles away who was relying on that one bug to hold up their whole system, which you have now ruined, and they will definitely be letting you know about it. Strongly worded email incoming. This leads us on to the topic of (as Matteo dubs them) “open source vampires”. Those who suck the life out of open source maintainers without ever expecting to give anything back - least of all money. It can be easy as a developer to fall into this parasitic relationship, which inevitably leads to burnout, and potentially even more serious mental health issues. It's important to value yourself and your time, even when others don't. Thank you Matteo for reminding us of this! Reach out to Matteo here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matteocollina/ Read Matteo's blog about the stats on Node.js: https://blog.platformatic.dev/nodejs-is-here-to-stay Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: http://www.devrelmeetup.com

Alvin Bryan returns as a guest!

Joe Pettersson joined the podcast last year to talk all things devrel at banked.com. Banked is a global payments network, and if you've ever tried to order anything online, you'll know that the payments systems used by various websites are far from perfect. Banked is on a mission to fix that. They want to get users through payments systems as smoothly as possible. As Joe puts it, the payments industry is big, but old-fashioned. So the question for him and the team at Banked became “how would we build Visa, or Mastercard if we started in 2023?” Alongside all of this, Joe and his team have also made waves in the devrel space, and we were excited to hear about their innovative new system for measuring developer relations. At banked.com, their sales process is developer-enabled. Now you might remember our discussion about developer-first marketing with Anna Redbond on the podcast a few weeks ago. So what is the difference between developer-first and developer enabled? It comes down to whether you're selling directly to developers, or trying to avoid the developers “nope”-ing your product when it's put before them. Joe explains that a huge part of banked.com's success has been down to their focus on the developer experience. From his perspective, payment systems are already complex enough without needing to pass that complexity onto developers. For Richard, this represents a huge leap in efficiency from the days when he spent hours trying to integrate a credit card payment provider with a website, and had to personally calculate the encryption hash. PTSD, anyone? Joe tells us that accounting for the developer experience while designing your product can be directly translated into increased revenue. Developers won't always be choosing the products they use, but they are often given the power to say no. But how exactly do you measure the benefit of time and money invested into devrel? Joe and his team have a system that involves finding out what percentage of your prospect's developers have heard of your project. It sounds simple, but we think this system is a gem that will soon be spreading to other companies. Listen to Joe explain HOW they implement this system

Today, we're revisiting this chat we had with Robert Kaminski from last year, where he talked us through the practice of positioning. What even is positioning? Isn't it that thing you do when you've already established your company and you've kind of already got everything figured out? According to this episode's guest, Robert Kaminski: Absolutely Not! Robert is the co-founder of Fletch PMM, where positioning is their bread and butter, and he's here to tell us about his belief that positioning should be one of the first considerations when getting a startup on its feet. Fletch works with companies to adjust their website messaging. From overcrowded and confusing to simple, clear and informative. But how do you even get to that point? You need to establish your positioning. Richard admits that a common flaw in the startups he's founded over the years was that he never sat down with the other founders to discuss positioning. A bad move, as there may or may not be a clip of him on Irish TV trying to explain what his company did through a rather unwieldy steam engine metaphor. Yep. Robert and Fletch are on a mission to stop founders from doing things like that. In an age where software building is more accessible to people than ever, good positioning and marketing are kind of the only things that can give you that much needed advantage to stand out from the crowd. And yet, it's an area that so many overlook. Fletch often offers their clients 75 minute workshop sessions, and according to Robert, if people can't tell you who they are and what they do in that time - they've got a problem. And it's not that people don't know what they're talking about. They do! They just don't know how to communicate it effectively, and that's where Fletch comes in. Reach out to Robert here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heyrobk/

After the excitement of our 200th episode earlier this week, it's back to our regularly scheduled programming here at Fireside. And what's become regular for us, along with seemingly the whole world, are discussions of AI and the current and potential consequences of its use. We're chatting to Jason St-Cyr, a returning guest to the podcast, who stands as a perfect example of the way DevRel roles might be evolving in the workforce. Last year, when we spoke to him, Jason's title was Head of DevRel - it's now VP of engagement. And while there's only so much that can be contained within a title, we think it serves as a very real indication of the direction the DevRel tide is flowing. The nature of DevRel as a practice, and the skills involved, means there's a great deal of crossover with other fields. This is something that appears to be inspiring not just just DevRels themselves, but employers in other fields, and we chat to Jason about what this means for people who may be considering making this leap. We also discuss the influence of LLMs on technical writing, and the pitfalls of worshipping the ground they walk on. Many people are eager to make the leap to fully AI-produced content. This might work for now (though not to a degree of high quality) - but what happens when all those writers have transitioned into their new ChatGPT consultant roles? The work they would have otherwise been producing no longer exists - and the LLMs don't have anything new to train on, resulting in their redundancy as a tool of “efficiency”. We discuss all this and more in the episode! Reach out to Jason here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonstcyr/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

It's episode TWO HUNDRED! And what a two hundred episodes they've been, from public speaking, to Developer Advocacy, to our recent focus on the API space, it's been an incredible journey, and we want to thank you our listeners above all, for sticking with us, and inspiring us to stay curious, and keep seeking out those in the DevRel world and beyond, so we can all learn from them together. Today's guest couldn't be more appropriate, as we feel the wonderful Steven Coochin sums up so much of what we do here on the Fireside podcast, from his bold ideas, to his empathetic outlook and his staunch commitment to an open source world. Steven is the chief innovation officer at Lilypad. A returning guest of the podcast, he joins us with quite the update on his endeavours. Lilypad, as Steven describes it, is the way he and his team intend to democratise AI, doing off-chain compute, with on-chain guarantees. I*if you've ever dabbled in creating an AI product (and we have), you'll know the costs associated can be prohibitively expensive, due in large part to the heavy duty GPUs required. Well Lilypad acts as a sort of Airbnb for GPUs, leaving you free to build your product, instead of messing around with cloud providers who can barely support their own systems, let alone yours. They've recently exploded in popularity, and Steven talks us through his whiplash of seeing their user number collect a few extra zeroes at the end. And of course, it wouldn't be a Fireside with Voxgig episode without Richard and Steven diving into the DevRel aspects of his work, and how integral an open source model is to the heart of Lilypad. Thank you again to all of our listeners, and lastly to our wonderful guests. Here's to a hundred more! Reach out to Steven here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/developersteve/ Check out Lilypad here: https://blog.lilypadnetwork.org/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

We're nearly at our 200th episode! As that day approaches, we invite you to listen to this throwback from last year of Richard's discussion with Tejas Kumar. We'll be back next week with a brand new guest for you to enjoy and learn from! Richard and Tejas cover fresh ground in today's episode. Watch out for the discussion of DevRel vs DevSell. Tejas talks us through the difference. And he gives wonderful insights in to an often under valued need – how to pace yourself at conferences. To be able to do this is crucial for physical and mental health. Reach out to Tejas here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejasq/ Also mentioned in this episode: Vercel https://vercel.com/ Cloudflare https://www.cloudflare.com/ React https://react.dev/ Platformatic https://platformatic.dev/ Vitaly Friedman https://twitter.com/vitalyf Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Continuing our commitment to bring you voices rom across the DevRel ecosystem, we'd like to take a look back at Richard's talk with Louise Ogilvy, a recruitment specialist for all things developer related, from July of 2023. Louise defines roles clearly, helping companies and start-ups creating developer tooling to get from idea to market. She recruits for the entire product cycle: Product, build and go-to-market. What has Louise noticed in the last few years in software development? Well, pressure on developers and awareness of developer burnout is one trend, including burnout of DevRel professionals. Dedicated VCs and investors for DevTools and start-ups building tooling for developers is another positive. And Louise provides very clear expression of the confusion and challenges in getting DevRel accepted as a valuable function. Add in a difficulty of performing in an organisation that doesn't fully understand and appreciate the value of DevRel professionals. So the setting of expectations around the role is becoming more important and through that, career progression. Marketing awareness functions are not easy to measure, so while it might be nice to say we're not worried about measuring the impact of DevRel on the business, what about the personal contribution or performance of individuals that might wish to know how they are being perceived and supported? Listen to Richard and Louise discuss the complexities of DevRel's acceptance in organisations. Real food for thought. Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Diversity and inclusion have been firmly in the “could do better” section of The tech industry's report card for quite a few years now. But in this episode from November of last year, Furkan Karayel is determined to change that. This was the second time we had Furkan on the show, and we were delighted to welcome her back for an update and further insight into her endeavours. Furkan is an ex-software engineer who pivoted to the diversity and inclusion industry. Her journey began fifteen years ago at an international company, where she took note of the gender disparity that was prevalent. She is now the founder of Diversein, where they provide companies with action based solutions to their diversity and inclusion problems. She speaks to us about the business side of diversity and inclusion. If companies have a problem with their environment, it can lead to major retention problems, which tend to be pretty expensive. Cutting this down by helping companies create welcoming and fulfilling environments for all of their employees is one of the main ways Diversein's solutions can help companies shave down their expenses. To add to this impressive list, Furkan is also an author, having released her acclaimed book “Inclusive Intelligence”. If you like this episode, that's where you can find more of Furkan's words and advice. Reach out to Furkan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karayelfurkan/ Check out Diversein: https://www.diversein.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

“You're only as good as your last delivery”. This phrase may apply best to ambitious UberEats drivers, but when it comes to providing non-food based services, it also neatly fits in the DevRel and Product Managing world. We're joined once again by Jock Busuttil, for an update on his work at Product People, and to gain his thoughts on the wider product managing space (and why Product Management is starting to look more and more like product marketing). The level of crossover between DevRel and Product Management means that we not only share our victories, but also our struggles, and Jock speaks to one of the most common problems he's seen: people struggling and sometimes entirely failing to communicate their worth to those at the top. Another issue - adaptability. Context is absolutely everything, and a solution that might have worked flawlessly for one client might be devastating to another. Knowing when to make adjustments and put the “rulebook” aside is a key skill, and one that the new influx of applicants to project management roles would do well to remember. It was great to catch up with Jockbon this episode, and hear what he's been up to. We hope you enjoy it! Reach out to Jock here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbusuttil/ Check out the Product People here: https://www.getproductpeople.com/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:  https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com