DevRel on Chris Reddington

The DevRel randomisation trap (and how to stop it)

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a word that came up in my dissertation research that I’m all too familiar with: randomised.

As in, “our DevRel team gets randomised constantly.” As in, whichever stakeholder has the most urgent request this week determines what the team works on. As in, there’s no clear prioritisation framework that makes it possible to say yes to some things and no to others with a clear rationale, so the team ends up trying to do everything and not fully realising the value of it all. If you’re in DevRel, you’ll possibly recognise this pattern.

From tactics to strategy: the DevRel measurement gap

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A pattern I see across DevRel is that teams can usually tell you what they did by using metrics like video views, blog traffic, event attendance, stars on GitHub repositories, community growth and Net Promoter Scores. The visible metrics are rarely the hard part.

The harder part is working out whether those metrics tell you anything meaningful about impact (tied back to product adoption and improving the developer experience). Many of us practitioners have known that for a long time. DevRel has plenty of vanity metrics: numbers that are easy to collect, easy to report, and easy to mistake for evidence that something important changed. That doesn’t make them useless, but they they don’t tell the full story on their own.

The feedback loop: how DevRel bridges community and product

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a phrase you likely hear in DevRel and developer-focused companies: “voice of the developer.”

It captures something real, but I think it’s too small for the job many teams are doing in reality. I’ve been in product meetings where “the community wants X” landed with a thud, because nobody in the room knew which developers that meant or what they were actually stuck on. Product teams need patterns, examples, and enough context to decide what should change.

Why developer communities are not brand communities

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve spent a good chunk of my career working with developer communities (whether that’s external communities, or internal ones inside companies), and I’ve seen this pattern several times. A program would launch with strong company branding, get some early traction, and then eventually decline. Developers were using the technology and showing up. But they were showing up for the product and each other, not because of a deep attachment to the brand behind the program.

Company context: the conditions that shape DevRel strategy

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve seen DevRel teams borrow someone else’s playbook and assume it’ll work for them too.

A team sees what a well-regarded DevRel organisation does, the community programs, the content formats, the event strategy, the metrics, and tries to replicate it. It doesn’t work as well. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. The conclusion drawn is often something about execution quality or budget. Rarely is the conclusion about context.

But context is often exactly the issue.

Developer experience: prerequisite and product of DevRel

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve written before about how DevRel creates value and what that looks like in practice, and why DevRel is better understood as value co-creation than as marketing. My second post described Developer Experience (DX) as the “value-in-use” dimension of value co-creation: the value a developer actually experiences when using the product. This post picks up from there and focuses on developer experience specifically: what it actually means, why it sits at the centre of DevRel strategy, and the nuance I think most writing on DevRel misses.

Developer Relations is more than marketing. It's co-creation.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A question that framed my early MBA dissertation research is “Why does Developer Relations (DevRel) get described so differently depending on who you ask?”

Ask a senior marketing leader, and you’ll often hear something like: “DevRel is a specialised form of developer marketing.” It’s a framing that Tessa Kriesel challenges in More Than Marketing, and one I’ve heard plenty of people in the industry either defend or push back against.

I understand where the idea comes from. DevRel involves content, community, events, and advocacy. It contributes to awareness and whether developers decide to use the product. For organisations trying to draw an org chart, marketing is one of the closest boxes on the page.

How does Developer Relations (DevRel) create value? What 13 interviews revealed.

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What does value creation in Developer Relations actually look like?

I’m not asking what DevRel does, as there’s plenty of descriptions of DevRel activities out there. Nor what it should do, as there’s no shortage of opinion there either. But what does value creation (the specific mechanism by which a DevRel team contributes something meaningful to its organisation and its developer community) actually look like in practice?

I’ve spent a large part of my career in and around Developer Relations, so I’ve been thinking about this question for a while. Back in 2024, I decided to stop thinking about it and actually research it.