Update to the Developer Evangelism/Advocacy handbook almost complete

Eleven years ago I wrote the Developer Evangelism Handbook .Last month I was approached by a publisher who is interested to print it in another language. Whilst flattered, I also couldn’t let that happen as there are parts of the book that are quaintly outdated now. Some of the products I promote aren’t available any longer and there are big differences in the way we use social media and the web now compared to 2009.

So I spent a few evenings polishing the book, removing a lot of outdated material and adding new things that are more relevant now.

I added materials about virtual conference participation, code hosting, recording your own videos and screencasts, and incorporated some of the posts and materials I created since first publication. Currently it is at roughly 40000 words and the letter sized Word Doc would me 85 pages.

For now, I will publish the book online again, chapter by chapter and also consider creating some ebooks for those who prefer using readers. There’s a dark and light theme and it will work across all resolutions and platforms. I’m using jekyll/eleventy with GitHub pages and learn a few new things on the way.

Here’s the new table of contents:

• About this handbook
  • About this version
  • About the author
• What is Developer Advocacy / Evangelism?
  • Defining Developer Advocacy
  • Start with the right mindset
  • Find your role and play to your strengths
• Work with your own company
  • Prepare for prejudice
  • Deal with company changes
  • Be there for internal developers
  • Work with PR and marketing
  • Be known as an outward channel
  • Train other advocates and developers
  • Share useful technology
  • Balance your personal and official channels
  • Remove the brand
• Working with your competition
  • Work with the competition
  • Show respect to the competition
  • Acknowledge when the competition is better
  • Know about the competition
  • Build examples using and try out competitive products
• Prepare for outreach
  • Get your facts right
  • Know the audience and their needs
  • Have expert backup
  • Choose the right medium
  • Plan for failure
• Get speaking opportunities
  • Take part in podcasts
  • Take part in panels
  • Go to Grass Roots events
  • Go to Meetups
  • Write articles
  • Offer Brownbags
  • Ask questions at conferences
  • Be a presenter people want to invite – publish your presenter terms
• Travel and conference participation
  • Getting your travel and accommodation sorted
  • Who pays what?
  • Be at the event
  • Give the event some social media love
  • Use the event to build a network
  • Keep track of your conference participation
  • Work with the conference buzz
  • Be a part of the conference you talk at
  • Release immediately
  • Write about conferences
• Deliver a talk or workshop
  • Be yourself
  • Invite communication
  • Prepare takeaways
  • Plan time for and own the questions and answers
  • Be honest and real
  • Follow up communication
  • Delivering presentations tips: timekeeping and more
    • How will I fit all of this in X minutes?
    • Less is more
    • Your talk is only extremely important to you
    • Map out more information
    • Live coding?
    • Avoid questions
    • Things to cut
    • Talk fillers
    • Planning Your Talk Summary
  • Things not to say on stage – and what to do instead
    • “This is easy…”
    • “I’ll repeat quickly, for the few of you who don’t know…”
    • “Everybody can do that…”
    • “X solves this problem, so you don’t have to worry about it”
    • “As everybody knows…”
    • “This is just like we learned in school…”
    • “That’s why Y(your product) is much better than (competitor) X”
    • “This can be done in a few lines of code…”
    • “If you want to be professional, do X”
    • A quick check
• Write great posts and articles
  • Simple is not stupid
  • Say what it is – don’t sugar-coat it
  • Size matters
  • Add media
  • Structure your content
  • Time-stamp your content
  • Cite to prove
  • Pre-emptive writing
  • Ending on an invitation to learn more
• Write excellent code examples
  • Solve a problem with your example
  • Show a working example
  • Explain the necessary environment
  • Write working copy and paste code
  • Have the example as a download
  • Write clean and clever examples
  • Build code generators
  • Hosting code and demos
    • Version Control is your friend
    • Automated Hosting
    • Code showcases
    • Code Sandboxes
    • Live coding environments
• Prepare great slide decks for presentations
  • Know your stuff
  • Start with the content – not the slides!
  • Start with a highly portable Format – Text
  • Quick Presentation creation tip: unpacking bullets
  • Pick a presentation tool that helps you present
  • Illustrate, don’t transcribe
  • Use and find images
  • About code examples
  • Sound and videos
  • Don’t bling it up
  • Keep it brief
  • Consider the audience
  • Corporate and conference templates
  • Don’t reuse without personalising
  • Share and enjoy
  • Additional presentation tips
    • Introduce yourself
    • Use humour
    • Build bridges to the real world
    • Pace yourself
    • Avoid “Hello World”
    • Be fresh
  • A checklist for more inclusive, accessible and understandable talks
    • Talk materials
    • Format
    • Content
    • Tracking
    • Insurances
    • Bonus round
• Keep a record of your work
  • Record the audio of your talks
  • Shoot video
  • Link collections
  • keep a conference participation list
• Know and use the (social) web
  • Find great web content
  • Redistribute web content
  • Be known on the web
  • Use powerful social web sites and products
  • Use the web for storage, distribution and cross-promotion
  • Hint, tease and preview
  • Track your impact
  • Build a network
  • Create or take part in a newsletter
  • Create or take part in a podcast
• Working from your own computer
  • Get a decent setup
  • Screencasts and screenshots
  • Streaming
  • Taking part in live online chats
  • Attending live online events
  • Technical issues to prepare for
  • Design limitations to prepare for
  • Personal issues to prepare for
  • Recording your own talks
    • Check your setup and your surroundings
    • Record the different pieces of the talk separately
    • Remember that you need to share the screen with your slides
    • Use accessibility features to add extra video value
    • Record in the highest possible quality
    • Keep originals and make it easy to get your video
• Final words

Until then, I hope you have a great time and take some time off!