This is the final part of the series on evangelism. In this installment I’m going to give my thoughts on the role based on past experience and research of the last couple weeks.

There are lots of definitons for evanglism around preaching gospel, etc. but they don’t really fit what a [technical] evangelist does. Wiktionary defines evangelism as Sharing news of something in order to convince someone to join or otherwise accept it. This definition captures it nicely.

Because it is a ‘convincing’ role, it is, at its core a ‘marketing’ role. But a more grass-roots marketing than you would use to get the attention of executives in an organization.

But it is not just marketing, but also ‘development’. You have to be able to talk to people in your solution’s implementation team about how you can help solve their pain (better than anyone else can).

In commercial, closed-source software this is a pretty easy dance. But if your product is either open-source or is a commercialized open-source product then things are much trickier since you have to not only grow your own company’s business, but that of the underlying project as well.

What sort of thing, specifically, might an evangelist do in their day-to-day work? Here is a list

  • Identify key partners and work with them to make using your product easier. This could be through direct integration, or white paper / howtos on the subject.
  • Find the pockets of people who have not heard about your product, and make sure they do.
  • Produce interesting demos to highlight the value of your product
  • Represent the company on standards comittees or project
  • Ad hoc tech support
  • General good will development

There seems to be a lot of ‘sales’ type stuff in that list. And there is, but it is different than sales in a significant manner. In sales roles, there are quotas that need to be achieved ‘or else’. In evangelism, the capital at stake is ‘good will’ which is hard, if not impossible to measure. It is an important distinction though. I’ve seen Evangelists forget this and they come off as used car salesmen for the company. The litmus test for this is whether they would reccomend a ‘competing’ product if the fit really is better for the customer needs.

Let’s got really specific. Since I’m involved in the Selenium community, what could a Selenium Evangelist do?

  • Produce a podcast (along the lines of the excellent Watir Podcast)
  • Product screencasts
  • Write articles
  • Speak at conferences
  • Talk to other projects / companies that consume the Selenium libraries and see what could be done to make their lives easier. (And implement them.)
  • Help influence the direction of Selenium based on the above conversations and, to be honest, the company’s needs / wants.

So there is my (current) thoughts on evangelism. I reserve the right to change them of course, but at its core I think the role revolves around ‘helping you be successful so that we can be successful with you.’