Mailing List Cleanup - DeveloperRelations.com

(This is part of an open ended series of posts where I write down random things I feel are sharable from the years of mailing lists I’ve not caught up on…)

Fun fact. One of the career pivots I considered was to go to Developer Relations. I like tinkering on things, and helping people solve problems so I’ve got a bunch of subscriptions to devrel-ish things. Like today’s mailbox which is the DeveloperRelations.com mailing list.

It looks like the first thing in there is from June 2020 and a most recent is July 2026 for a total of 76 messages. In doing this, I am rapidly thinking that url-shorteners for tracking are an anti-pattern as there are soooooo many broken links and images. Also interesting to, again, see the evolution of the list over time in terms of content, monetization, etc.

• DevRel YouTube channel
• What is Developer Relations - I like this split
• “I don’t think developers hate marketing. Like everyone else, developers dislike bad marketing.”
• The 10-3-10 Test likely applies across domains, not just ‘first contact to hello world’
• Goals are hard in DevRel. Setting Goals for Developer Relations
• The OSP Blog looks full of nuggets
• Harm reduction for developer relations teams - I’ll admit I’ve never thought about this aspect before. Whoopsie. My priviledge showed again.
• You’re Targeting Developers? So Is Everyone Else. Here’s How to Do Segmentation Better. - Segmentation is key to your GTM, but people miss this too often.
• After event information gathering should be done while it is fresh, and done in a consistent way so it can be mined. Though, I guess in our current AI hellscape you could make it inconsistent and sacrifice some of the environment to get insights.
• Same topic, as above. Writing a Good Conference Summary: DevRel Superpowers
• Even Monitor Didn’t Believe In Five-Forces Analysis! - As someone who just graduated from business school, “Unfortunately the recognition of the lack of utility of the Five Force analysis has not yet reached business schools, many of which continue to teach it as the unquestionable gospel.” cuts deep
• 21 Tips to Write Better Posts for Developers - Writing is hard
• The Client Magnet: Delivering Talks Which Attract Prospective Clients - This article is good, but also nudges up against something that really annoys me in the DevRel space with the header of “Are You Putting Your Identity Before Your Clients’ Needs?”. DevRel is not about ‘you’ or ‘your identity.’ – I can name a handful of ‘high visibility’ devrel people that I can’t tell you who they work for because they are better at shilling themselves than the company they work for.
• How to Come Back From Burnout - Burnout suuuuucks.