The Microsoft Channel 9 Women In Technology series had an episode on Becoming an Evangelist — Get the inside scoop from not one but two US Developer Evangelists. Its goal was to showcase non-traditional tech roles (to women), but had some useful stuff about the technology evangelist role in general.

  • What does an evangelist do?
    • Help find the proper solutions to problems
    • Educate developers
  • But really, what do they do? If you see a need or demand, they go and meet it. It is rather entrepreneurial that way.
  • So what makes an evangelist successful?
    • Passion – kinda hard to be evangelizing something you are not passionate about
    • Can’t be boring
    • Able to communicate (in the language of the audience)
    • Able to listen for what people are actually asking
  • The path to being an evangelist is circuitous. At best.

My one nit to pick about the interview is that the plural of ‘lego’ is ‘lego’, not ‘legos’. Well, actually, it is ‘LEGO bricks’ but that might be splitting the hair a little too thin.