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.

Tech Colleagues The Business Evangelist
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.

Business
Evangelist
Internal
Developers

Evangelist World Evangelist Internal Business
Developers

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! Pipes http://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?

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