With more and more companies vying for developer attention and dollars, we’ve seen a lot of focus being placed on the developer community. In fact, I’m sure all of us are part of some developer community of some sort on Meetup, Slack, Discord or elsewhere. Developer attention, however, is a limited resource. In this session, Bryan Robinson will explain how ideas around developer community have evolved and how we can best optimize our efforts at building developer communities.

The Rise of the Developer Community

Community is so hot right now.

For the past decade, most product companies have been striving to create their own communities to capitalize on the attention of folks surrounding their products. When the pandemic hit — we saw an almost immediate spike in the rise of community efforts. Our screen time increased spending countless hours and company resources on Slack and Discord groups, forums, virtual meetups, and online gatherings.

When built properly, maintained actively, and measured correctly, these efforts are among the best word-of-mouth “marketing” for developers, a group of people with a historical and notorious disdain for traditional tactics. Unfortunately, we all too often see this optimized for the wrong metrics and reasons, leaving developers running for the hills.

In this presentation, we’ll explore the evolving role of community in technology. From humble user groups and IRC to modern communities of practice or product.