Fireside with Voxgig Richard Rodger: Voxgig CEO, founder and author

Building an audience is always a bit of a paradox for DevRels. You have a genuine desire to foster a community, so you begin creating content. Yet the more effort you put into that content, the less it seems to draw people in. A balance between effort and authenticity must be struck in order to grow - and today’s guest, Brian Rinaldi has managed to strike this balance perfectly over the course of seven years of audience-building.

Brian is the Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly, and he joins us for a chat not just about audiences, but also about his experience at the first company to roll out feature flags as a service.

He breaks down his thoughts on the online vs in person conference debate, and tells us why he believes virtual can never truly replace live events, but also - why should they? Virtual has the capacity to be its own beast, and while that can’t replicate the feeling of being a crowded room, it can open many other doors that would have been closed in other circumstances.

Finally, he takes us through his history. How did his role evolve into a DevRel position, and what did that transition look like over the course of ten years? I suppose we could call it a kind of natural selection of the technology world. We’re not sure if Darwin would be proud, or turning in his grave at that analogy.

Reach out to Brian here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrinaldi/

Check out CFE.dev: https://cfe.dev/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:
https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Jorge Barrachina Gutiérrez may be an engineer by official title, but he hasn’t let those kinds of labels restrict him in his career, and neither should you. Jorge is our wonderful guest today on the podcast, and we’re delighted to have him in for a chat about authorship, adaptability and his work with AI.

Jorge’s book, ‘DevRel Puzzle’ gives a hefty clue as to its contents. He lays out his perspective on how DevRel requires those engaged with it to fit many elements together in different ways, and in different contexts. Underlying his whole outlook, is his interest in the social side of DevRel, and how humans communicate as a whole.

Jorge has spent the majority of his career between multiple fields, including DevOps, but is now focused on AI, an area that Jorge acknowledges can often be brought down by its bad actors. However this hasn’t stopped those with a genuine passion and curiosity from continuing to make strides in the space.

Jorge encourages us to think less about “best practice” and more about customary practice. In DevRel, the one-size-fits-all approach is rarely effective, and that means you need to be highly adaptable, and ready to mould your approach within a specific context. This is a highly relevant exploration of ideas that we feel will be extremely helpful.

Who said building robust, production grade APIs had to be hard? As we hope for all technology, the creation and design of APIs has only become easier and more accessible over time. This is due in part to today’s wonderful guest, Christos Gkoros, and his work at Postman as an API designer.

Christos comes from a software engineering background and he speaks to us about his journey to his current role. As it turns out, API Designer isn’t just his job description, it’s his job title, something he acknowledges as slightly unusual. What it means is that his major focus is applying a streamlined process when it comes to API design, and conducting user research that can be applied in real time. Postman is an API platform that helps its users to create, test and use APIs, and as a frequent user of Postman’s services, Christos jumped at the opportunity to join their team.

He breaks down how they support developers at all stages of the API life cycle, from conception to design, to testing. Christos takes us through some common API pitfalls, both in design and other areas of creation.

Namely, the murky territory of competing versions of SDKs, and the chaos that can ensue when trying to get them to cooperate with your shiny new API. To top it off, Christos discusses his role as organiser of the API Athens Meetup, proving that, on this podcast, DevRel is never too far away.

Reach out to Christos here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christos-gkoros/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Caroline Lewko has an immense wealth of knowledge and experience in Developer Relations, to the extent where she’s been involved in codifying some of the now ubiquitous aspects of it, including the evolution of its name!

Caroline is the co-founder of DevRel.Agency and according to her, she’s been doing community work pretty much since the day she was born - exactly the kind of thing we love to hear. Though she had a background in tech via telecommunications, this evolved into something a lot more technical in 2001, and she hit her DevRel stride just as mobile and internet devices began to merge.

As someone with almost a decade of experience hosting developer events, Caroline is well placed to educate us on facilitating healthy working relationships between the different areas of DevRel.

For example, you may be working with a freelance writer to develop some copy, a task which requires extensive back and forth between the writer and your developers. Over the years, Caroline has learned that a bit of hand-holding is often initially required for these connections to form, but once they have, they can form the foundation for future invaluable work.


Reach out to Caroline here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinelewko/


Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:
https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're sitting down to chat with Sean Falconer. Sean is the head of marketing and developer relations at Skyflow, and he brings us a fascinating inside look at the growing field of data protection.


Skyflow's main selling point is their data privacy vaults, used in a similar way to an identity protector, but they've taken this concept from an individual service to one that can cater to entire companies with seemingly endless streams of PII flowing through their systems daily, vulnerable to attack from outside sources.

Sean describes their journey, and how their DevRel skills helped to bring SkyFlow, and data privacy vaults to such a massive audience in such a short space of time. According to Sean, the discussion of data protection, and how organisations manage it has moved up from the water cooler to the board room, and developers are increasingly feeling questions as to the state of their data security.


This is an interesting look into a really exciting area of technology, and perfect example of how a strong DevRel team can make or break a company.


Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:
https://voxgig.substack.com/

Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com

Today, we're taking a look back at our 100th episode with Andrew Grill. We spoke to him back in June of last year all about Digital Curiosity, Andrew’s book, which came out at the end of 2023.

We here are at the top of the hype cycle on AI (Generative AI in particular) it is hype that is prompting and causing government action. This is now mainstream.

And Andrew had a brilliant, brief and aha! take on Apple’s Vision Pro. For SciFi fans, there are even attempts to seek answers for the future from great authors!

Andrew doesn’t shy away from the risks and the needs for regulation, but does caution against hysteria. We are responsible, “we have a role” in where this goes.

This is both reassuring and thought provoking, and as usual with Andrew, he motivated us to get off the sidelines and engage with technology and digital opportunities for our own work, innovation and strategies. Leaders need to dedicate time to being digitally curious. There are costs to leaving this up to everyone else.

Enjoy this episode and whet your appetite for playing with and discovering new digital and technological opportunities for your business!

Reach out to Andrew Grill https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgrill/
Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast
Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups:
https://voxgig.substack.com/
Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com