DevEducate: The Art of Teaching Developers at Scale Kamran Ayub

This week on DevEducate, Shruti Kuber from Restack joins me to talk about how her startup uses an iterative, collaborative approach to planning developer video content that works for their small team – and why starting with a niche audience is helping them create content that is getting noticed.
Talking Points
Why personas and niching are critical for an early-stage startupHow a small team can approach content planningWhere top-down and bottom-up input meet during planningFiguring out how to make boring content more interestingWhere to start with building a community from scratch
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“To create content, it's very important to initially define the personas because when you define who you're making the content for you can understand their pain points better because there's a lot of content available for everything, right?” – Shruti

“Everybody needs our product so… our personas are ‘everybody.’” – Kamran

“Choosing a niche is like choosing the tip of an iceberg to focus on. You actually dive underwater and you see that’s there’s a huge, massive amount of information – a subculture almost.” – Kamran

“With startups nothing is the same. Two weeks later you have a different thing going on – so it’s definitely not possible to set up a persona and then say, okay, this is what you’re going to work on for the next six months. Definitely not possible.” – Shruti

“Even with the persona set, there’s still intent that you need to consider. For lower intent, you are creating awareness type of content and then as go towards the end of the funnel, you’re targeting people with very high intent.” – Shruti

“With trial and error, we figured out that one-month sprints work out really well for us. And then depending on the kind of content we want to do, we come up with smaller content we can produce more often.” – Shruti

“I would definitely say the kind of conversations you have after the content has been watched is the measure of the success.” – Shruti

“Opinionated pieces are much more helpful for people than just saying, oh, it depends on if you wanna do this, do this. If you wanna do this, do that.” – Shruti

“If you search for certain topics on YouTube, you’ll find people with their hoodies on, head down, looking at the screen, mumbling something for 45 minutes. And they’re definitely not appealing.” – Shruti

“Leading indicators might be likes and subscribes or page views and things like that. But it takes a while for the lagging indicators to show up, which would be comments either in person or on the content itself, or people sharing content.” – Kamran

“If you see my Slack, I’m part of like, a MILLION Slack channels and these are usually communities for the tools that I speak about.” – Shruti
Links
Connect with Shruti on LinkedIn or her website or on InstaCheck out RestackWatch Shruti’s videos on the Restack’s YouTube channelGrab my free DevEd Persona ToolkitGo on a Sales Safari with Amy Hoy / How to find your audienceData Engineering Zoom Camp by DataTalksClub

In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Ivan Burazin to talk about his creative approaches to developer marketing – from designing custom fashion to an API onboarding game. We discuss why adopting a bottom-up motion to attract developers is tough for a traditionally sales-led organization, how to break through the noise, and what it means to design an onboarding game experience for developers. Ivan was Chief Developer Experience Officer at Infobip at the time of recording and is now the CEO and co-founder of Daytona.io.
Talking Points
What does Ivan do as a Chief Developer Experience Officer?Why B2B sales-led tech companies need to get creative with their developer marketingHow Ivan justifies pushing the boundaries of creative marketing to stakeholdersBalancing needs between sales-led and developer-led motionsHow games can help developers learn the API and SDKHow a game differs from the “traditional” developer experienceThe challenge of gaining attention from developersDoes headcount matter when doing creative marketing?
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“How do you get the word out about the problem you're solving to developers without ‘marketing’? How many communities can a developer be a part of? How many Slack groups can you have before it falls apart and you're not looking at them anymore?” – Ivan
“[Developers] have a home. They're never going to go to InfoBip.com because there's nothing for them there. They're not going to read marketing material because they're not interested. It's: does it have the feature set that I have? Is the documentation good? And how can I sign up, and how long does it take me to get to my first sort of hello world.” – Ivan
“The way I look at it is like we can create the best sort of experience, you know, onboarding, documentation, sign up, whatever, but if no one knows you, no one's gonna come.” – Ivan
“There are two things that you have to break through to get developers to sign up and to use your services: you have to be better than competitors, and you have to educate them that you actually exist.” – Ivan
“What can I do that's sort of over the top – because there's just so much noise in the dev space.” – Ivan
“If you're just gonna do what everyone else does, it's gonna be really, really hard to compete.” – Ivan
“If you count how much revenue comes from bottom up, comparable companies to Infobip generate anywhere from 40 to 50%. These end up being upgraded to account executive and managed accounts and whatnot. But they originated from the developer and self-service.” – Ivan
“Constraints breed creativity. In order to compete when you have less resources – that can be an asset. You can look at it as an opportunity to get much more creative with what you do.” – Kamran
“Yes, if you want to build an RPG, then it's probably gonna use some graphics, but you can also do different types of styles that don't require a ton of graphics.” – Kamran
Links
Follow Ivan on LinkedIn or TwitterCheck out his newest venture, Daytona.ioInfobip’s developer hubInfobip Shift conferenceRead the Make Time bookRead the Mythical Man Month bookRead the Purple Cow bookRead about Kevin’s experience with Twilio Quest on Developer ModeNote that the Twilio Quest program is now sunset but the game is still availableExcalibur.js, the open source TypeScript 2D game engine I help maintainPlay some of the games I’ve made

In this week’s episode, we unpack the transformative power of illustrations in developer education with David Neal. Discover why hand-drawn doodles are more than just eye candy—they're a delightful way to make complex topics accessible and engaging. We also delve into how doodling affects storytelling and authenticity and how David’s work at Okta has led to a long tail of engagement. David also shares actionable tips on incorporating art into your workflow, and we speculate on where AI-generated art fits.
Talking Points
David’s integration of doodling in developer education.How doodling creates authenticity for audience engagement.Overcoming dry and boring product narratives with storytellingAnecdotal and metric evidence for the impact of David’s doodles.Starter recommendations for drawing and illustration.The role of AI in the future of art and illustration.
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“I knew within the first 10 seconds that it was a game changer. I could see the reactions on people's faces and their engagement, the excitement that they had looking at these silly illustrations.” – David

“In the realm of technology, when we are talking about some new framework or product, that can normally be dry and boring if you just stick to the facts and features.” – David

“[Doodling] is more human and more authentic than the clean, pure lines of graphic design.” – Kamran

“My encouragement to folks is that drawing is a skill you can learn. It's not some kind of natural born talent.” – David

“You could create illustrated SVGs that you animate as part of your talks or as part of your documentation or as part of your webinars and anywhere else that you're making developer content.” – Kamran

“You want to delight your readers or your viewers or your audience. And I think that's what unique illustrations allow you to do.” – David

“[At Okta], we found a measurable difference with social media engagement. We saw higher clickthroughs, and we found that people sharing that content was much higher.” – David

“ChatGPT is not going to replace your customer interviews. It's not going to replace talking to developers and getting out there.” – Kamran
Links
Follow David on Reverent Geek, LinkedIn and Twitter (X)Watch David’s Leadership Guide for the Reluctant Leader NDC keynoteShow and Tell by Dan RoamKRAZAM on YouTubePluralsight’s Cloudship Enterprise mini-mockumentaryCSS Cascade, a visual essay by Amelia WattenbergerTayasui Sketches Pro on the App StoreProcreate AppAffinity DesignerApple PencilAdobe FireflyCanva

In this week’s episode, literal developer rockstar Dylan Beattie joins me on DevEducate to talk about writing parody songs for developers, handling live performances at conferences, and creative ways to incorporate music into developer content and education.
Talking Points
How Dylan combines his love of programming with musicParallels between programming and musicHow music and learning science are relatedWorking music into developer marketing and education
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“You could get a laptop, open it up, open up Garage Band, record a song, stick it on SoundCloud, and the rest of the world can hear it today, for free.” – Dylan

“I think a lot of developers are also musicians and there's something about working with an intangible abstraction.” – Dylan

“My kids are young and I see them every day learning songs in kindergarten and preschool just to learn stuff and remember it.” – Kamran

“What you do is you find the people who think like you do and have shared experiences and get excited about the same things you get excited about.” – Dylan

“Music is another element that sometimes is a good way to tell a story.” – Dylan

“The day that you play the guitar for money when you don't wanna play is the day you start to hate it. And once you start to hate it, you will never get it back.” – Dylan

“The idea costs 1 point. Writing the lyrics is 10 points. Making the music is 100. Making the video to go with it is 1000. And then getting it to a point where the rest of the band know the material and you are on stage at a show in another country with the video all queued up and you’re ready to go? The idea is not the hard part.” – Dylan

“There’s something very, very primal about music.” – Dylan

“Come back when we have Roady AI cause that's actually gonna solve a real problem.” – Dylan

“If you take the idea of music and you take the idea of learning and then you marry it with programming education, there's so much stuff that you could probably do there. It might just depend exactly on having the right kind of creative use case for it.” – Kamran

“Someone at Ubisoft Montreal who was an audio engineer and who knew how to play music actually recorded an entire concept album that was in the style of an 80s heavy metal band called Star Lord.” – Kamran

“If I hear a snippet of any of Alexander Brandon's soundtrack from that game, there's a moment when I'm like, ‘Ah, that was an amazing holiday.’ And then I'm like, that wasn't a holiday, that was a computer game that you played.” – Dylan
Links
Dylan’s website / LinkedIn / MastodonDylan’s parody songs on YouTube (plus re:bass)NDC Oslo – the conference where Dylan and his band typically playRender:ATL – a conference in Atlanta which feels more like a festivalKaraoke Version – songs without vocalsSonic Pie – musical programming platformMusicfy – Musical AI toolATARI ST - The Best Music Computer Ever? – credit to Espen Kraft for the sampleSteinberger travel guitarHow We Created the Star Lord Band – Ubisoft’s 80s heavy metal concept albumWhy Does Music Evoke Memories?

This week Dale Meredith, cybersecurity expert and recovering Batman addict, joins me on the show to talk about how to engage developers with “edutrainment”, how to work in branding with developer content and education, and how he came to own Wayne Enterprises.
Talking Points

Ways branding can be incorporated into developer contentWhat branding really means (hint: it's not a logo)How do you figure out if developers respond well to your content?Keeping developers engaged instead of falling asleepWhy Batman is the perfect character for Dale’s brand of education
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“I've sat through live courses as well as online courses before where I'm just like… bored to death and I'm like, get to the point!” – Dale

“[Branding] is every single touchpoint your customer or your learner has with your marketing or sales material. It's how it makes them feel.” – Kamran

“When it comes to a developer relations program within a product business, we sort of leave it to the individuals that are writing and we don’t really talk about how we could incorporate our brand and our positioning and our marketing strategy and flow it into our developer education.” – Kamran

“When we can associate an emotion to learning, it sticks with us longer. And so if I can get you to laugh, you're gonna remember it.” – Dale

“I've had students come back to me in the past and say, ‘You know what? I was taking the exam, the question came up and I actually laughed out loud because I remembered what it is you said. And it made me remember immediately what the answer was.’” – Dale

“The best way for people to learn is not to drill the information in over and over and over, but to create.” – Dale

“I just love catching people off guard. I’ll on purpose teach the wrong thing and be like, I'm just kidding you folks. You know, just to get their attention. Because they'll be like wait a minute, that's not right.” – Dale

“I've actually purchased the name Wayne Enterprises here in the state of Utah. That is one of my business names.” – Dale

“If you wanna learn something, teach it to somebody. It'll force you to learn it.” – Dale
Links
Dale’s Ethical Hacking courses on PluralsightGet Dale’s Certified Ethical Hacker Exam GuideDale Dumbs IT DownWhy are memories attached to emotions so strong?The Influences of Emotion on Learning and MemoryPrinciples of Public Speaking course: Aspects of Vocal DeliveryOne of Dale’s favorite images: Batman Sitting on Throne

This week on DevEducate, Jason Alba joins me to discuss evergreen content – what it is, what it's good for, how it applies to different formats, and why it's not really the panacea you'd expect it to be.
Talking Points
What is evergreen content?How evergreen impacts content maintenanceKeeping track of content over timeHow issues in content can affect your brand unexpectedlyWhat kinds of content make sense to be evergreen
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“Evergreen content is something that you can put out and hopefully it stays relevant for a long period of time.” – Jason

“I don't think I could have 37 courses if my content wasn't evergreen. There comes a point where you have so many courses that you're updating every year that you can't put out new content.” – Jason
“It was very frustrating to create something that I knew that my very smart audience would come back and be like, this isn't relevant anymore.“ – Jason

“I wrote this book and by the time it came out I was flipping through it and I was like, oh, this is outdated. Like, there's things that need to change in here.” – Jason

“If you are talking about an economy of scale here, like yes, your team can churn out 3000 articles on all these different topics, but now you're also creating 3000 articles worth of debt that you're gonna need to pay.” – Kamran

“Let's say I reference a company and then the CEO does something horrific. And now everybody hates the company and it looks like I've endorsed it, right?” – Jason

“Even though everything is relevant, like the how-to and the concepts and all that stuff is relevant, the video doesn't match what their current experience is on my system. And they're immediately gonna say, oh, well this isn't the same system. Do you have anything that's up to date?” – Jason

“We're all lazy. We don't wanna put in the effort to actually go find the content that you're trying to [get me to] look at.” – Kamran

“I cannot emphasize how much [scripting] made my courses magnitudes better, like multiples better, because I could spend time working on my script.” – Jason

“You could have a regular kind of a standard operating procedure where you do an audit to go through content again every so often, once a quarter or something to make sure that it's still accurate.” – Kamran

“There are certain things that people just need to know without you telling them every single step.” – Jason’s former boss
Links
Jason’s Pluralsight CoursesJibberJobber – Jason’s job tracker and CRM